You do know lying doesn't help make your case, right? Ms. Lerner did not erase her hard drive; it had a physical failure. She did not destroy any of her emails. The tapes they were archived on were re-used because the IRS had insufficient funding (despite asking for years) to put in place a long term email archiving program. Ms. Lerner resigned when she was informed that she was about to be fired.

Exactly! People point out all these statutes, over and over again. It appears they are merely trying to overwhelm everybody, hoping people will believe she must have done something wrong just because there are so many statutes. Ask for proof of what, exactly, rose to the level of breaking which specific statute, and you get nothing but crickets. Based on the currently available evidence, we cannot say whether she has or has not broken the law.

You make a claim that I find interesting. You wrote, "Hillary Clinton skipped all those steps" - do you have proof that Ms. Clinton skipped proper procedure to declassify material? I certainly haven't seen such. We know the request for taking points doesn't apply, since they were sent via secure fax, not email.

There is a standing order that all classified emails must be sent using SIPRNet. She did use it, but evidently rarely, as it's challenging to use. She predominantly used paper for classified material.

Simply using a private server is not evidence of intent to do wrong or negligence.

No, sorry, you're making things up, but due to your writing, it's hard to know exactly how to respond. I'll try, though.

The State Department's email system is also non-classified, and available on mobile devices. Those devices, though, must only be used for government work. So, if what you are claiming is that she wanted to use a single device for both her personal and work email, and the State Department said no, you are correct. That makes sense.

She never asked her aides to send her classified material. She did ask, in one case, to have talking points that were stored in a classified system, rewritten so they could be sent to her via a non-secure system. That's a common practice and is in no way illegal. It doesn't matter, though, because her aides were able to send the material via a secure system.

I have no idea what you are claiming she lied about. She never lied about having a private server or having an archive of her emails.

Her attorney has top secret clearance and he handled the email appropriately. When material was reclassified to be above his clearance, he turned over all copies of her email to the FBI.

I don't know what you are claiming when you said she "lied about what the emails contained". She did say that none of the emails she sent or received were marked classified. So far we have no proof that was not the case.

She turned over the email the way that it's stipulated it be done, via paper copies.

We have no idea what the material in the email is; it hasn't been released publicly, and only leaked statements on the content have been released. Those leaks have been politically motivated, and must be treated as tainted information.

You are correct we don't know if the email was hacked while on her system. We do know that during the time she was Sect. of State that the State Department's email system was hacked at least twice.

We do know the lawyer's copies were not accessible to anyone. He followed correct security procedures, including putting the material in a safe.

Thanks. It's astounding how much information is made up in discussions like this and passed off as factual.

Great comment, although I think we're still seeing the impact of the radical right in the House. This next election should sweep most them away, though.

Ms. Clinton is a solid conservative, in the proper use of the term. She's also a centrist. The only reason she's in a position to run is because the GOP has gone so far to the right that they pulled the Democratic Party to the center. If that hadn't happened, the Democratic Party nominee would have to be center left.

If Trump is the GOP nominee, it not only guarantees the Democratic Party continues to hold the White House, but also the Senate. The House is interesting; I doubt it will swing all the way to the Democrats, but with a Trump nomination, it's definitely possible.

There's a lot of what you wrote that's conjecture (for example, we have no proof that her emails contained any of the material you claim; all we have are politically motivated allegations). That's fine, it's fun to use conjecture in discussions, and hey, they could be true. But I do have to point out a couple of things you wrote that are false.

Ms. Clinton gave her attorney the thumb drive container her email before it was released to the government, not afterwards. Therefore your claim that she gave them to her attorney after being told there was classified information in her email is false.

Her attorney does have a security clearance and followed correct protocol in handling the thumb drive. When the review of the emails led some to be classified beyond his clearance, he turned over the drive to the FBI.

Again, as has been written by many others, there is no comparison between this and what Mr. Patraeus did. Pretending there is just weakens your points.

Interesting claim.

Please tell me how you know what information Ms. Clinton sent that would have resulted in you being terminated; after all, it hasn't been released to the public.

There's a reason this matters - it appears to me that you are making a judgement call based on politically motivated allegations. You can, of course, believe those allegations are true, but I think it makes more sense to wait for the investigation to finish then to depend on information from tainted sources. The tainted sources could be right; they could also, as we saw in the Benghazi committee "leaks", be false because only the most inflammatory information was release. Once the full record was released, it was very different then the politically motivated allegations.

To conclude, you could be absolutely right, but it depends on information we don't have yet, so your certainty is unwarranted.

Sorry, that's incorrect. If the material isn't marked as classified, unless the information is such that you should know it's classified, it is not a crime.

It's pretty obvious why that's the way it is when you think about how things would be if the law were otherwise. For example, law enforcement could easily entrap people. Another reason is everyone would treat all communications as classified just to prevent any risk.

The should barrier is actually rather high. The classified material in her emails hasn't been release, so we can't know if that barrier has been met. It's unlikely to meet the requirement, though, because it's pretty easy to make the case that everyone knew that email address was not secure, so she would assume anything sent to her would be not be classified. That leaves only the material that originated with her.

That email gets raised every time a discussion of her emails happens.

It's important to realize that:

1. Her staff got her the talking points via secure channels
2. It's normal for material to be drafted on a secure system then move to a non-secure system when it's been cleaned up
3. The talking points probably weren't classified (they rarely are; after all the reason for them is to talk to the media)

So, 1, it didn't happen, 2, it was normal order of business, and 3, even if it had happened, it wouldn't be proof of wrongdoing.

Care to explain how you drew that conclusion? I'm not seeing it.

See, that's me following this part of the CoC. A response that doesn't follow it would be something like this, "Sorry, but you're simply wrong. You're turning something that has nothing to do with status, and making it about status. Your turning something that is focused on making conversations more effective and claiming it, instead, will end conversations. You're asking us to accept your belief of what will happen as if it were fact."

The initial response gives you an opportunity to explain something that I feel you didn't adequately explain. The latter shuts you down, or, starts an argument.

I haven't read the whole CoC (since I'm not a Go developer, there's really no point), but I think this little bit that I quoted should be something we all do, not just in online discussions, but also face to face.

Sigh.

Read what I wrote, emphasis added

I doubt your math, but it doesn't really matter.

I still doubt the math. It's clearly back of the envelope. The fuel burned by a 747 is not constant, as the link provided makes clear. See Atmosfair Airline Index for 117 page PDF that describes how challenging it is to describe how much CO2 is released by an airplane. Also, the distance is wrong, since the jet certainly didn't follow a straight line

However, one more time, the math doesn't matter. It gets lost in the decimal points when compared to CO2 emissions from coal.

I didn't create a straw man. The clear implication was that the President was being a hypocrite. Putting the CO2 released by his trip in context of his plan makes it clear that's a silly argument. Adding in that the President wasn't saying all CO2 emissions must stop makes it even clearer.

I doubt your math, but it doesn't really matter. For every megawatt of power generated by a coal plant, on average, 2,249 lbs carbon dioxide are generated. In 2013, there were 1,581,115 megawatt hours of electricity generated by coal. That's 3,555,927,635 pounds.

Even so, you're saying, he's a hypocrite, right? Wrong.

The President isn't saying "Shut down everything that emits carbon dioxide". He's saying that it's time to decrease our carbon dioxide emissions. No hypocrisy, and even with your numbers, a drop in the bucket for emissions.

Surely you mean Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, right? I mean, after all, it was the CIA during their administrations that overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran that is more responsible for the situation in the Middle East then anything else. See CIA-assisted coup overthrows government of Iran.

Or perhaps you mean the European leaders who, after WWI, created countries that never existed in the Middle East?

I think putting blame on President Carter is a bit misplaced. While President Carter called on the Shah to stop torturing people and to release political prisoners, the US continued to strongly supported the Shah. Social changes in Iran were too large and too rapid, though, to quell without even more horrendous human rights violations than the Shah was already committing. In reality, there was not way to keep the status quo in Iran. We supported the Shah far too long, against our own stated human rights beliefs and against our own best foreign policy judgements. President Nixon, though, believed that Iran, ruled by the Shah, was vital to American interests in the area, so, that's what we got.