By John Kass, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
OCT 29/16
Has America become so numb by the decades of lies and cynicism oozing from Clinton Inc. that it could elect Hillary Clinton as president, even after Friday’s FBI announcement that it had reopened an investigation of her emails while secretary of state?
We’ll find out soon enough.
It’s obvious the American political system is breaking down. It’s been crumbling for some time now, and the establishment elite know it and they’re properly frightened. Donald Trump, the vulgarian at their gates, is a symptom, not a cause. Hillary Clinton and husband Bill are both cause and effect.
FBI director James Comey’s announcement about the renewed Clinton email investigation is the bombshell in the presidential campaign. That he announced this so close to Election Day should tell every thinking person that what the FBI is looking at is extremely serious.
This can’t be about pervert Anthony Weiner and his reported desire for a teenage girl. But it can be about the laptop of Weiner’s wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and emails between her and Hillary. It comes after the FBI investigation in which Comey concluded Clinton had lied and been “reckless” with national secrets, but said he could not recommend prosecution.
So what should the Democrats do now?
If ruling Democrats hold themselves to the high moral standards they impose on the people they govern, they would follow a simple process:
They would demand that Mrs. Clinton step down, immediately, and let her vice presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, stand in her place.
Democrats should say, honestly, that with a new criminal investigation going on into events around her home-brew email server from the time she was secretary of state, having Clinton anywhere near the White House is just not a good idea.
Since Oct. 7, WikiLeaks has released 35,000 emails hacked from Clinton campaign boss John Podesta. Now WikiLeaks, no longer a neutral player but an active anti-Clinton agency, plans to release another 15,000 emails.
What if she is elected? Think of a nation suffering a bad economy and continuing chaos in the Middle East, and now also facing a criminal investigation of a president. Add to that congressional investigations and a public vision of Clinton as a Nixonian figure wandering the halls, wringing her hands.
The best thing would be for Democrats to ask her to step down now. It would be the most responsible thing to do, if the nation were more important to them than power. And the American news media — fairly or not firmly identified in the public mind as Mrs. Clinton’s political action committee — should begin demanding it.
But what will Hillary do?
She’ll stick and ride this out and turn her anger toward Comey. For Hillary and Bill Clinton, it has always been about power, about the Clinton Restoration and protecting fortunes already made by selling nothing but political influence.
She’ll remind the nation that she’s a woman and that Donald Trump said terrible things about women. If there is another notorious Trump video to be leaked, the Clintons should probably leak it now. Then her allies in media can talk about misogyny and sexual politics and the headlines can be all about Trump as the boor he is and Hillary as champion of female victims, which she has never been.
Remember that Bill Clinton leveraged the “Year of the Woman.” Then he preyed on women in the White House and Hillary protected him. But the political left — most particularly the women of the left — defended him because he promised to protect abortion rights and their other agendas.
If you take a step back from tribal politics, you’ll see that Mrs. Clinton has clearly disqualified herself from ever coming near classified information again. If she were a young person straight out of grad school hoping to land a government job, Hillary Clinton would be laughed out of Washington with her record. She’d never be hired.
As secretary of state she kept classified documents on the home-brew server in her basement, which is against the law. She lied about it to the American people. She couldn’t remember details dozens of times when questioned by the FBI. Her aides destroyed evidence by BleachBit and hammers. Her husband, Bill, met secretly on an airport tarmac with Attorney General Loretta Lynch for about a half-hour, and all they said they talked about was golf and the grandkids.
And there was no prosecution of Hillary.
That isn’t merely wrong and unethical. It is poisonous.
And during this presidential campaign, Americans were confronted with a two-tiered system of federal justice: one for standards for the Clintons and one for the peasants.
I’ve always figured that, as secretary of state, Clinton kept her home-brew email server — from which foreign intelligence agencies could hack top secret information — so she could shield the influence peddling that helped make the Clintons several fortunes.
The Clintons weren’t skilled merchants. They weren’t traders or manufacturers. The Clintons never produced anything tangible. They had no science, patents or devices to make them millions upon millions of dollars.
All they had to sell, really, was influence. And they used our federal government to leverage it.
If a presidential election is as much about the people as it is about the candidates, then we’ll learn plenty about ourselves in the coming days, won’t we?
Listen to the Chicago Way podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin. Guests are Tribune cartoonist Scott Stantis and former White House Chief of Staff William Daley: www.chicagotribune.com/kasspodcast.
jskass@chicagotribune.com
If the Justice Department attempts to interfere with the Clinton “investigation”, it will be doing so at Obama’s behest. Lynch is merely his functionary. He does not warn her. He gives her orders. Everything she has done as Attorney General has been designed to implement Obama’s will.
In a comment on a thread began earlier today on Israpundit, I brought attention to a statement by the White House that President Obama does not regard Comey’s actions reopening the Clinton investigations as an attempt to interfere in the presidential election nine days from now.
I consider that as nothing less than a warning to US Attorney General Loretta Lynch that Obama will back Comey if the Department of Justice attempts to interfere with the Clinton investigation.
It tells me further that Mr Obama thinks Clinton’s campaign will probably fail, and that he does not want his legacy as outgoing president to go down with her.
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
@ bernard ross:
Remember when the Dems painted Governor Palin as the shrew from hell who abused her authority based on a lot less? HI, kids, does anybody know how to spell, “hypocrite?”
“It doesn’t matter if he or she is a crook. The question is is she or he our crook,” – Nixon/Clinton supporters 1972/2016
looks like its getting too big for the crooked lynch to stop… I wonder if its a restricted warrant.
even if its the same emails it breaches the espionage to be on wieners computer and huma would lose immunity for having sent them without informing FBI
Kirk (in Lester’s body): “Yes. To get the power she craved. To attain a position she doesn’t merit by temperment or training.” Janice Lester is within a hairs-breadth of taking command of the Enterprise.
“”at 14:36:
Lester (in Kirk’s body cross-examining Kirk (in Lester’s body) on the witness stand) : Can you tell me, why, uh, Dr. Janice Lester would agree to this ludicrous exchange?
Kirk (in Lester’s body): “Yes. To get the power she craved. To attain a position she doesn’t merit by temperment or training.”
: Star Trek (1968), Season 3, episode 24, “Turnabout Intruder” (last episode). Whole series available streaming on Netflix. Can’t really take full credit for noticing this. The day, that she first made her “unfit for command” speech, a cable station played this episode twice. Somewhere towards the end, that phrase is used. So apt.
Her use of the phrase is right up there with Kerry having the nerve to show up at the Democratic convention dressed in his uniform, saying jocularly, “reporting for duty.” Wikipedia claims that the Swiftboaters were discredited but I don’t buy it. He was an anti-war activist who joined so he could rack up some quick medals just so he could throw them on the White House Lawn and undermine the war effort. He founded Vietnam Veterans Against The War which held bogus trials of American soldiers — without actual witnesses to paint them as “baby-killers.” In earlier wars, he would have been convicted and imprisoned for sedition. See
“Main article: Schenck v. United States
Holmes, writing for a unanimous Court, ruled that it was a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 (amended with the Sedition Act of 1918), to distribute flyers opposing the draft during World War I. Holmes argued this abridgment of free speech was permissible because it presented a “clear and present danger” to the government’s recruitment efforts for the war. Holmes wrote:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. […] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
The First Amendment holding in Schenck was later overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot). The test in Brandenburg is the current High Court jurisprudence on the ability of government to proscribe speech after that fact. Despite Schenck being limited, the phrase “shouting fire in a crowded theater” has since come to be known as synonymous with an action that the speaker believes goes beyond the rights guaranteed by free speech, reckless or malicious speech, or an action whose outcomes are obvious.”
Abbie Hoffman later famously parodied this with: “Freedom of Speech is the freedom to shout theater at a crowded fire.” I don’t buy it.
Holmes was right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater
Looks like huma was storing the emails going back years.. for what purpose? why keep copies of all those emails? Did she send any of them out again the the muslim brotherhood… or was she conveniently hacked…. did she use weiner as a dupe to keep the espionage treasure for her without him knowing?
aha, the smoking gun of obstruction of justice to protect clinton.
and then the shoe drops
dirty filthy corrupted scum who are corrupting the FBI and the DOJ
corrupted DOJ…lock them all up
read the whole article to see how they manipulate the prosecutors in the DOJ to protect the crooks.