Friday, October 02, 2015

Toontime: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Redux

credit: Robert Ariail
Wackydoodle sez: Y'al never knows when ya need a good ploy!
One could call it the death by a thousand e-mails: the death of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. Right wing activists are making sure this story does not go away anytime soon. According to Bloomberg there are 30 FOIA suits pending against Ms. Clinton because of her ill-advised use of a private internet server for official government business while she headed the State Department She really has her self to blame for this persistent torment by giving her adversaries such as easy target. Requested records concern the Benghazi attack. potential conflicts of interest between her husband's foundation seeking donations from foreign leaders, and her aide's employment for the Clinton foundation and the federal government. The dispute has become a daily distraction for the campaign and has allowed her socialist rival to gain ground as well as entice more competition from Vice President Joe Biden. A federal judge has ordered Clinton to turn overs some 30,000 work-related correspondence on a rolling basis by the end of January. The right-wing Scaife Foundation of Pittsburg is partially funding Judicial Watch, the organization behind most of the e-mail requests. It has an annual budget of $30 million.

Ms. Clinton was apparently warned of the potential problems of using a private server by her staff according to released communications. The former Secretary of State was concerned about a 2011 hacking of Google's Gmail which prompted her switch to a private server in New York.  Suspected Chinese hackers tried to steal the passwords for hundreds of Gmail accounts held by senior officials.  She discussed her concerns with State Department staff who were not unanimous in supporting her decision to use a private facility, her chief of staff among those recommending caution. So far 403 classified e-mails have been found in the released documents, including three marked "secret".