Woah! You Mean Illegal Activity That We Never Punish is Still Occurring?
Democrats are having fun noting the hypocrisy (after all the focus in the last election on Hillary's email practices) of Trump Administration members doing official business via personal email. I will leave them to their fun.**
But I will note that I am a huge supporter of FOIA and government transparency and from the very beginning I criticized Hillary Clinton's use of private email primarily because it was clearly done to evade government transparency laws. We did not punish her for obvious violations, and we did not punish Gina McCarthy when she used private email as the head of the EPA to avoid public scrutiny of her contacts with environmental lobbying groups. So we should not be surprised if lots of other people are doing the same thing. Politicians would love to sweep all their private conversations under the rug if we let them. We need to start charging people for this crime -- even one high-profile person to start pour encourager les autres would be a start.
** This is an example of the good side of partisanship -- someone is always in opposition. Engadget never did a single article on Gina McCarthy or other Obama Administration officials evading FOIA through private email accounts, presumably because it was much more sympathetic to that administration. But it does not like Trump so it is on the case. Which is fine-- the watchdogs across administrations don't always have to be the same people, they just need to be there.
dreck:
Arbitrary enforcement and application of law make a country effectively lawless - after all, you can put all sorts of generally applicable laws on the books if you don't consistently enforce them, and then selectively apply them to folks you need crushed, presto, perfect tools to maintain power.
The US is particularly bad in this respect, prosecutorial discretion is built straight into the system. If you need to forgive your buddy for theft or murder, that's a-ok, and if you need to exercise some power you can always convict the opposition to ten years of hard labor for driving a carriage downtown on a Sunday morning.
September 27, 2017, 9:17 amOpportunityCost:
In a similar vein, what are we to make of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's cone of silence?
September 27, 2017, 9:18 amThe_Big_W:
The general view of the laws of this country by our political parties has convinced me that only suckers obey the laws......
There go those social constructs and social contracts that have been developed over the years. Lets see how we do without them.
I am someone who would generally care about rampant lawlessness, except for the fact that our Leaders are the most lawless of all....
September 27, 2017, 11:32 ammlhouse:
There is a big difference between occasionaly using a personal e-mail, to using a email pseudonym, and hosting your own email server. THere is also a big difference between admitting it and the lies, obfuscations, and 5th amendment pleas used by the previous administration.
I want to make something perfectly clear about the Hillary e-mails to people who do not think it is a big deal. It really is. Hillary's email's were under subpoena when they were deleted, the deletion of the emails was directed by Hillary's attorney, David Kendell who obviously knew that the emails were under subpeoena, and the tech firm that deleted the emails understood that the emails were under subpeona. That tech guy chose to take the 5th. This is a huge issue, and it is one that hte Obama Administration used at every turn: Fast and Furiuous gun running, IRS suppression of conservatives, illegal use of U.S. taxpayer money to support opposition candidates in Israel.
September 27, 2017, 4:29 pmstan:
"the watchdogs across administrations don't always have to be the same people, they just need to be there." -- ahh, and there's the rub. Need effective watchdogs for both sides. And that's the failure of modern journalism.
September 29, 2017, 1:36 pm