“…The most damning revelation about Hillary’s e-mails from the last 24 hours is not the details of the investigation into her homebrew server. What’s making headlines across the political spectrum is that some of the material she sent via her personal server was so sensitive that it was designated “Top Secret.”
This is a jaw-slaps-the-table moment. Even for those of us who hold a very low opinion of Mrs. Clinton’s character, integrity, and judgment, this is a graver offense than many had contemplated. Merely the storage of “Top Secret” e-mails – never mind their dissemination over open channels to some individuals likely not cleared to read them — is a federal felony. On top of that, it is unthinkable that Hillary could have sent such sensitive information and not known at the time that it was sensitive…”
Next, also courtesy of NRO, Charles W. Cooke recounts…
“From the Associated Press, a headline for the ages: “Clinton Relents, Gives up Possession of Private E-mail Server.”
“Relents” isn’t quite the right word, of course. A better way of putting it would be, “runs out of options.”Since the news first broke, Hillary has run and she has run and she has run, and now the men with guns have caught up with her. “Federal investigators,” the AP confirms, “have begun looking into the security of [the] Clintons’ email setup amid concerns from the inspector general for the intelligence community that classified information may have passed through the system.” What was once casually derided as so much partisan hype has matured into a full-fledged criminal investigation. (As “full-fledged” as an investigation by The Obamao’s Department of Injustice can be.)
There’s another word in the AP’s report that doesn’t belong: “concerns.” Back in July, the Office of the Inspector General confirmed in no uncertain terms that classified information had indeed “passed through the system.” “Emails that contained classified information,” the OIG reported, had been “transmitted via an unclassified personal system.” In consequence — and despite some truly preposterous dissembling from Hillary’s many allies — the question before us now is not so much whether Clinton could be plausibly suspected of having violated a number of federal statutes, but how close we are to knowing whether she is in serious trouble. Heretofore, speculation that Clinton may eventually be on the receiving end of criminal charges has been waved away as idle, perhaps even pernicious, chatter. At this stage in the developments, this is a grave mistake. There are still a good number of “ifs” and “buts,” yes. But we are nevertheless approaching the point at which, should they be so inclined, prosecutors could begin to construct a case…”
Only as close as The Dear Misleader wants her to be!
In a related item, the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel watches as…
“The Titanic was a beautiful ship. It was a colossus—the culmination of decades of wisdom and design. It was financed and booked by the world’s rich and famous. It was unstoppable. And because it was, it steamed full ahead. Until it sank.
Democrats are this week beginning to freak out that Hillary Clinton is their Titanic, and to debate whether they might be better off on this 2016 political crossing in a less awesome, but more prudent, boat. The debate is overdue. The Clintons are masters at projecting invincibility and lulling their passengers into blanking the danger signs.But holes in a hull have a way of focusing minds…”
Wrapping up our coverage of Clinton’s comeuppance, this Journal editorial details one of the only people truly keeping the pressure on Hillary:
“Talk to the hand…and meet the underside of the bus!”
“…Judge Sullivan is overseeing a Freedom of Information Act case brought in 2013 by Judicial Watch. The watchdog group sought documents relating to the employment ofHuma Abedin, who was allowed to work outside the government even as she served as a top Clinton State Department aide. State told Judicial Watch in 2014 it had turned over everything relevant, and the group then dropped its lawsuit.
But the news of previously undisclosed Clinton emails convinced Judge Sullivan in June to take the rare step of reopening the Abedin case.To ascertain whether State was finally searching through every record, he ordered State on July 31 to request that Mrs. Clinton and two of her aides—Ms. Abedin and Cheryl Mills—confirm under penalty of perjury that they had produced all government records in their possession, and that they describe their use of Mrs. Clinton’s server for government business. That response deadline was last Friday.
Mrs. Clinton’s reaction to the deadline was a classic. “While I do not know what information may be ‘responsive’ for purposes of this law suit, I have directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody, that were or potentially were federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done,” she wrote in a declaration submitted to the court. Translation: If everything wasn’t turned over, it’s not her fault.
But her declaration to the court did disclose that Mrs. Abedin had an “account” on Mrs. Clinton’s server “which was used at times for government business.” The admission that her aides were also using her server demolishes Mrs. Clinton’s previous claim that she used this server for personal “convenience.” She was really running a parallel mini-State email operation…”
Here’s the juice: sure, it’s still early. But from where we sit, Hillary’s campaign is rapidly resembling…
…a Chinese warehouse!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch with The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight, courtesy of Bill Meisen and Avik Roy writing at Forbes:
“…First, some terminology. Single-payer health care describes any country in which the government is effectively the sole insurance company: the “single payer” of health insurance claims. Socialized health care describes a country in which the government owns the entire health care system—not just the insurance companies, but also the hospitals, the nursing homes, and the doctors’ offices.
Canada is single-payer because while Canada’s insurance system is controlled by the government, there are private hospitals and doctors. Scotland’s system, like the rest of Great Britain, is socialized, because the British National Health Service runs everything.
So, back to Donald Trump. His argument last night was that single-payer health care in Canada “works,” and that fully socialized medicine in Scotland “works incredibly well.” Let’s start with Canada.
…Canadian health care is popular with healthy Canadians who never really have to use it. But if you’re sick, look out. A 2014 study by the Fraser Institute found that wait times for medically necessary treatment in Canada have increased from 9.3 weeks in 1993—not great—to 18.2 weeks. Wait times were especially bad if you needed hip, knee or back surgery (42.2 weeks) or neurosurgery (31.2 weeks).
As we know from the scandal involving the U.S. Veterans Health Administration, health care delayed is health care denied. The people who suffer the most under the Canadian system are those who can’t afford to hop on a plane or pull strings to get treated in the United States.
Martin Samuels, the founder of the neurology department at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, found this out when he worked as a visiting professor in Canada. “The reason the Canadian health care system works as well as it does (and that is not by any means optimal) is because 90% of the population is within driving distance of the United States where the privately insured can be Seattled, Minneapolised, Mayoed, Detroited, Chicagoed, Clevelanded and Buffaloed,” Samuels wrote recently in Forbes. “In the United States, there is no analogous safety valve.”
The sick in Scotland, unfortunately, have no such safety valve. They are forced to wait, and wait, and wait. In 2008, a group of investigators conducted a worldwide study of cancer survival rates, called CONCORD. The investigators asked the question: if you get diagnosed in your country with breast cancer, or colon cancer, or prostate cancer, how long are you likely to live?
In that study, the U.S. performed better than every country in western Europe. The United Kingdom came out second-to-last. The researchers broke out the data for Scotland, and the results are revealing. If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S., you have an 84 percent chance of living for five years. In Scotland, it’s 71 percent. If you have colon cancer in the U.S., you have about a 60 percent chance of surviving five years. In Scotland, it’s 46 percent. If you have prostate cancer in the U.S., you have a 92 percent chance of living five years; in Scotland, it’s 48 percent.
This is the system that, according to Donald Trump, “works incredibly well.”
Yeah…and The Donald’s worth $10 billion!
Fortunately for Republicans, if Jonah Goldberg is right, the…
…”Bernie’s failure to take these Black bulls by the balls and give his speech over them, or have them escorted off the stage, tells you all you need to know about the craven nature of a Sanders presidency: he’d make Jimmy Carter look like Ronaldus Maximus.”
Moving on, writing at NRO, Kevin Williamson recounts the ridiculous rantings of…
“…We moderns, of course, have science, and so we have set aside the question of “ensoulment” for the question of “personhood,” which is . . . basically the same concept, if you think about it for ten minutes, albeit shorn of divine investment and reshaped in light of the new god of the times, the state. “Personhood,” despite the progressive rhetoric surrounding the abortion question, is not rooted in science at all but is in fact a retreat into metaphysics away from science.
One doesn’t expect Senator Marco Rubio, a pro-life Republican running for president, to explain that to Chris Cuomo, the second-most-useless man in journalism (Martin Crutsinger’s claim to that title is indisputable), for approximately the same reason that one doesn’t try to explain quantum mechanics to a Mr. Potatohead doll, though the charismatic young senator acquitted himself quite well. Cuomo, taking a cue from the Fox News debate panel, attempted to catch Rubio in an inconsistency: If you oppose abortion because every life is sacred, then how can you advocate exceptions for such admittedly horrific situations as those of women who become pregnant through rape or incest? Rubio explained that he’ll support any bill that meaningfully restricts the abortion license, that his support for, e.g., a 20-week abortion ban does not mean that he doesn’t want to eliminate abortions at 19 weeks, too, if and when political conditions permit.It is the sort of obvious thing that one really shouldn’t have to explain to anybody with the critical thinking skills of a fifth-grader or better; it is one of the great mysteries of politics that people of substance consent to interviews with the likes of Chris Cuomo…”
Let alone allow the likes of George Snuffleupurass and Candy “All I Can Eat” Crowley to moderate any debate involving a Republican.
And in another sordid story ripped from the pages of The Crime Blotter, we learn of another narrative as believable as those Progressives have perpetuated for Trayvon Martin…
A police officer who killed an unarmed college football player during a suspected burglary at a Texas car dealership was fired Monday for making mistakes that the city’s police chief said caused a deadly confrontation that put him and other officers in danger. Arlington officer Brad Miller, 49, could also face criminal charges once police complete their investigation, Police Chief Will Johnson said.
Called to the scene of a suspected burglary early Friday morning, Miller pursued 19-year-old Christian Taylor through the broken glass doors of a car dealership showroom without telling his supervising officer, Johnson said. Instead of setting up a perimeter around the showroom, Miller confronted Taylor and ordered him to get down on the ground, Johnson said.Taylor did not comply. Instead, he began “actively advancing toward Officer Miller,” Johnson said.
Miller’s field training officer, who had followed Miller into the showroom, drew his own Taser. The training officer heard a single pop of what he thought was Miller’s Taser, but Miller actually had drawn his service weapon and fired it at Taylor, Johnson said.He fired his gun three more times, Johnson said.
“Decisions were made that had catastrophic outcomes,” Johnson said.
Yeah…and from what we can glean from the record to date, like the shooting of Ferguson’s “gentle giant”, the catastrophic outcomes had almost NOTHING to do with the decisions of Officer Brad Miller:
“…There is no video of the shooting itself, though security camera footage from Classic Buick GMC dealership’s parking lots shows Taylor walking around and damaging some vehicles.
Before his final confrontation with Miller, Taylor allegedly held up a set of car keys and told another officer that he intended to steal a car, Johnson said. He had driven a vehicle through the glass front doors of the showroom and, after officers arrived, was slamming his body into the side of a different part of the building to try to escape, the chief (i.e., Johnson!)said.
“It is clear from the facts obtained that Mr. Taylor was non-compliant with police demands,” Johnson said.
But the chief said he ultimately decided Miller’s mistakes required his firing. He said it would be up to a grand jury to decide whether Miller’s actions were criminal…”
In other words, it’s the rule of mobs…
…inspired by the most callous, calculating, discordant “leader”…
…in American history. With no bearing whatsoever on the facts.
On the Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll call it a week with, courtesy of Carl Polizzi, News of the Bizarre:
“Aliens came to Earth to stop a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War, according to the sixth man to walk the surface of the moon. Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, says peace-loving aliens visited our planet during weapons tests at US missile bases and the famous White Sands Proving Ground in the New Mexico desert – where the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated in 1945.
…Mitchell also says that other officers support his claims. “I have spoken to many Air Force officers who worked at these silos during the Cold War,” he said. “They told me UFOs were frequently seen overhead and often disabled their missiles.” “Other officers from bases on the Pacific coast told me their [test] missiles were frequently shot down by alien spacecraft,”he added…”
Talk about an asstronaut! The hell with the “right stuff”; Mitchell’s made himself the Jimmy Carter of the space program!
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