2016 May 31^st

We have two columnists today, both of whom are slashing away at Hillary Clinton. The columnists, Mona Charen and Cal Thomas, have each written taking Mrs. Clinton severely to task for her use of an in-home email server. Charen quotes Clinton, “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email.” Then Charen says that, “The State Department itself has declined to release 22 Clinton emails because they were secret. Having been trapped in a lie,…” But the lie here, or at least the gross mislead, is that these “secret” emails were, according to Charen, classified as secret, when they passed through Clinton’s server. After Clinton turned over her emails, a cottage industry developed dealing with the classification of her old emails. Can anyone say ex post facto, or understand the meaning of the term?

Then Charen turns her artillery on Donald Trump’s potential Presidency. She says, “Americans blanch at the thought of this unstable, emotionally stunted man with access to the nuclear codes… Trump deceives about serious matters. Thousands of American Muslims were not dancing in the streets after 9/11. Ford did not cancel plans for a factory in Mexico in response to criticism from Trump. Trump did not oppose the Iraq war pre-invasion. We are not losing $500 billion a year in trade with China…Wisconsin’s real unemployment rate is not anywhere close to 20%.” After exposing this chronicle of Trump’s lies, this columnist still believes that Clinton is just as bad. Charen is always conservatively correct.

Then on to Cal Thomas; Cal is more accurate; he points out that disconnecting the smoke detector on an airplane can get you fines and jail time. Then he asks, “Isn’t what Hillary Clinton did far worse than that, if she potentially compromised U.S. secrets?” Pleas not that Cal Thomas makes Clinton’s transgression conditional; he says, “…if she potentially compromised U.S. secrets.” Mona Charen, on the other hand, leaves no doubt about the matter.

The matter of Clinton’s server’s location seems to be of considerable importance to both of these folks, and to most other Clinton opponents. It seems very necessary that every time the personal server is mentioned it must be precisely located in the Clinton residence; to wit, in the Clinton’s bathroom closet. Note that it is never said simply to have been in their house, but to have been in a bathroom closet. One is almost convinced that Clinton’s opponents believe that having a server in a bathroom closet makes its contents much more available to Chinese or Russian master spies. Personally, I believe that the bathroom closet location is very sensible; if a spy thought secrets were available in the house, would they think to look there?