Does the employer pay severance when they terminate an employee? For how long? I've worked for firms that gave a week of severance for every year of seniority -- and the troops returned the favor with a week of notice for each week of severance.

I've also worked for places where they came up to you at your desk at 14:30 and handed you your final pay calculated to 14:30 of that day. Sometimes people just didn't come back from lunch, and none of us were surprised.

I'm not sure whose authority you'd normally need to move classified data around, but that's sort of irrelevant for her case; she didn't have permission from anyone to set up her server.

Who would have the authority to give her permission?

18 USC 793(f)

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officerâ"

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Which hinges upon (among other things) the highlighted phrases.

Who decides what is the "proper place of custody?"

Who would be the appropriate "superior officer?"

I have gone to more than a few training sessions telling me that and signed more than a few declarations stating I understand that not treating classified information in accordance with the following rules (X Y Z), is illegal and you *may* be prosecuted with fines and prison time for violating those rules (because there is a law forbidding it).

Laws are made by Congress, that's easy. The fun part is the "rules," which are made by someone higher up in the organization. They're basically a codified version of "your boss says ..."

So who makes the rules that the Secretary of State has to follow?

Under 18 U.S. Code 1924. She also violated several portions of the CFR, which generally wouldn't carry a possibility of prison, but would justify fines and loss of security clearance.

OK, so here's the cited USC, with undefined portions highlighted:

(a) Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.

(c) In this section, the term âoeclassified information of the United Statesâ means information originated, owned, or possessed by the United States Government concerning the national defense or foreign relations of the United States that has been determined pursuant to law or Executive order to require protection against unauthorized disclosure in the interests of national security.

The passive voice tends to hide the fact that "has been classified" dodges the question of whose authority (Congress, the President, the Director of the CIA, the Director of the NSA, the Secretary of the Interior, the head of the Forest Service etc.) did the classification. However, it's patently silly to give a low-level clerk the power to render the President of the United States in violation of the law so there has to be more than passive voice involved somehow. So, for instance, how do the highlighted "authorizations" and "determinations" happen?

As a current DoD employee, I currently sit through several hours of 'trianing' each year, that I must sign a legal document stating I saw it, that tells me that if I do ANY government business over personal email, that I am liable and breaking the law, that I will be fired, and then prosecuted.

Are you saying that Obama could be prosecuted for using the famous Blackberry?

That doesn't change the fact that what she did was a violation of the rules that *could* have been used to support an indictment if the government wanted to indict her.

Such as? Bearing in mind the difference between "rules" and "laws."

I realize that this is repetitious, but so far nobody has even tried to identify one stronger than "violating Departmental policy."

110 classified emails stored improperly; each of those could be grounds for prosecution.

Under which statute? Note that there is a difference between violating State Department policy and violating statutory law.

She wasn't caught downloading other peoples classified material (navy reservist) ,or hiding other peoples classified material in her garage (nishimura), or crazy cyber stalking love triangles (patreaus).

Actually, Petreaus gave his mistress (a journalist) copies of classified materials for her use in her work.

The adultery got the headlines, but the security violation was what led to his resigning.

I know I'd be in Leavenworth if I did what she did.

Maybe you can tell me -- what law did she violate?

I realize that there's a lot of general ickitude, but nobody I've asked seems to be able to identify an actual prosecutable statute.

You kill the wealth creators, wealth stops being created. Simple, no?

Precisely. If it weren't for Bill Gates, nobody would have software.

Can anyone remind me why it's bigoted to point out that most of the terrorism in the world is Islamic?

Because if it's not being done by Muslims, we call it something else.

The terrorist group says that murdering high ranking people can damage the U.S. economy.

They've been reading waaaaaaay too much Ayn Rand.