Welcome to Buster's Blog

Irregular commentary on whatever's on my mind -- politics, sports, current events, and life in general. After twenty years of writing business and community newsletters, fifteen years of fantasy baseball newsletters, and two years of email "columns", this is, I suppose, the inevitable result: the awful conceit that someone might actually care to read what I have to say. Posts may be added often, rarely, or never again. As always, my mood and motivation are unpredictable.

Buster Gammons















Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Email Jail? Get Real


A lawyer friend is fond of telling anyone who will listen (and I'm usually not one of them) that Hillary Clinton will be going to jail for her use of private email as Secretary of State.  He also insists that Obama will stage a military coup in January and refuse to leave the White House -- but I digress.

He recently sent a cute Bill & Hil meme to the lovely Mrs. Gammons, along with a portion of the U.S. criminal code -- to be precise, Title 18, Chapter 37, Section 793 -- which he indicated was for me!  Wow!  What a lovely gift.  As I've said to other lawyers at other times, "Thank you for the unsolicited recitation of code/case law/whatever."

This section of code deals with espionage and protecting defense information, and is based on war and defense legislation from WW's I and II.  (It speaks of things like canals, telegraphs, photographic negatives and blueprints.)  The learned counselor reads Section 793 to mean, without a doubt, that Hilz is gonna do hard time in the Big House for sure.  Because . . . Email-ghazi!  He's joined in his opinion by the likes of Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Tom Delay, Dick Morris and other crackpot conspiracy-theorists.

Is it his contention that Hillary Clinton used a private email server for nefarious purposes, to intentionally harm and endanger and weaken the security of the United States?  No?  Then STFU.

After countless hours of Congressional show-trial grilling by Darrell Issa and Trey Gowdy, and, of course, after getting off scot-free for personally assassinating Vince Foster while simultaneously hiding her Whitewater tax losses and planning the Benghazi attack -- after all that, there remains a sub-set of "special" people who are still convinced Hilz is going to email jail.  

(Before that happens, maybe Gowdy can drag her back in for another smear hearing and make her look really good again.)

Let's get real.  Mrs. Clinton's use of private email was ill-considered, not proof of some horrible character flaw which will surely doom our Great Nation.  Not only is she far from the only public official to use private email, she's not even the first Secretary of State to do so.  Colin Powell and Condi Rice did it, too.

Whether it's government email servers or the NSA hack or Apple iPhone encryption, data security is an important issue.  Like our technology itself, our thinking and legal interpretations on the subject are constantly evolving.

In this environment, in these times, do you seriously believe that Hillary Clinton will be charged, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced for using private email?  Guess again, bud.

By the way, in case I'm wrong, would she do time as the sitting President, or only after leaving office in 2024?







3 comments:

  1. Let's see, Hillary and Condi and Colin make three...they need one more for Bridge! And all of this will happen when W, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rummy serve time for "War Crimes" and "Crimes Against Humanity".

    The R's are completely beside themselves with the catastrophic implosion they are experiencing daily within "the party" (I just love hearing that phrase from those elitist ass wipes). I also love reading their "Autopsy Report" of what went wrong in the 2012 election and how they (the Republicans) are using the list of recommendations only to be repeating them with more gusto and verve. What we are witnessing is a prime example of what psychologists describe as the principle of the "most dominant thought". More on that subject sometime, if you desire.

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  2. "Most dominant thought." Is that like a basketball player at the foul line thinking, "Don't miss! Don't Miss!" then promptly missing the free throws? Or the RNC thinking, "Not Donald Trump! Not Donald Trump!" then, "Oh shit, it's Donald Trump!"

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  3. Feel the Bern!
    Food for thought from Huff Post
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/if-america-cant-see-hilla_b_9530100.html

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