Wednesday, July 6, 2016

F.B.I. Findings Damage Many of Hillary Clinton’s Claims

NY Times   Is this proof that the leftist media ignores Clinton's problems?
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Even as he declined to recommend a criminal case against Hillary Clinton, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, undercut many of the arguments she has used to play down her use of a private email server while secretary of state, describing a series of questionable, even reckless, decisions made by her and her aides.

At least 110 emails sent through her server contained information that was classified at the time it was sent, he said, meaning it should never have been sent or received on an unclassified computer network — not hers, not even the State Department’s official state.gov system.

That fact refutes the core argument she and others have made: that the entire controversy turned on the overzealous, after-the-fact classification of emails as they were being made public under the Freedom of Information Act, rather than the mishandling of the nation’s secrets.

Mr. Comey’s announcement was, arguably, the worst possible good news Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign could have hoped for: no criminal charges, but a pointed refutation of statements like one she flatly made last August. “I did not send classified material,” she said then.

“Even if information is not marked classified in an email, participants who know, or should know, that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it,” Mr. Comey said, suggesting that Mrs. Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Mr. Comey said the emails included eight chains of emails and replies, some written by her, that contained information classified as “top secret: special access programs.” That classification is the highest level, reserved for the nation’s most highly guarded intelligence operations or sources.

Another 36 chains were “secret,” which is defined as including information that “could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security”; eight others had information classified at the lowest level, “confidential.” [...]

165 comments:

  1. Hillary Clinton was certainly irresponsible in her usage of the email server. But it should be noted that the question is not if she should be elected president. It is if she or Donald Trump should be elected president.

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  2. The answer is simple. If Hillary wins it's death to America and if Trump wins there is yet hope.

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  3. Thanks for the astute analysis. That really clears thing up! (Not).

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  4. This is an amazing story. Comey is a strong Republican, he admitted he could have charged her but didn't. And all this a few days after the Attorney General met with the Big Dog. Was he warned that if he charged he might become an accidental suicide like previous Clinton appointments?

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  5. Or maybe you should listen to what he actually said, that there has never been an indictment for this sort of misbehavior.

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  6. Politically IncorrectJuly 6, 2016 at 5:04 PM

    Here's another illustration why we shouldn't readily assume that we live in a democracy...

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  7. This article appeared on page 13. On the front page was a very lengthy article defending her and saying why she is somehow trustworthy to be president.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/us/politics/clinton-campaign-trump.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article
    It definitely looks like it is biased toward Hillary Clinton. If the tables would be reversed, you can be sure that the front page articles for the next three weeks would use this against Trump.

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  8. I have long been of the opinion that politicians should be judged solely by their actions and not by their talk.
    I would rephrase your answer as if Hillary wins it is surely the end of America as we know it. If Trump wins, it may or may not be the end of America as we know it.

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  9. I'm sorry but that statement simply is not true.

    David Patreus was convicted
    Scooter Libby
    Edward Snowden

    And most importantly Bryan Nishimura was convicted of doing virtually the same thing as Clinton:
    https://www.fbi.gov/sacramento/press-releases/2015/folsom-naval-reservist-is-sentenced-after-pleading-guilty-to-unauthorized-removal-and-retention-of-classified-materials

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  10. I am sorry but the cases are not the same as the FBI was careful to point out.

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  11. Several news sources, legal analysts and the Speaker of the House disagree with you. Which is why within 24hrs of the FBI director making said statements he has been issued a formal summons to appear before the oversight committee to answer for his own gross negligence.

    Thank you though, I was wondering where you stood. Clearly you are a Clinton supporter and defender. The clarification is extremely helpful.

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  12. Patreus was convicted on mishandling classified information as part of a plea bargain. They really had him for much more serious charges. Libby was charged with making false statements to investigators. Snowden has absolutely nothing to do with this matter. As for Nishimura, whoever that is, the circumstances there are not as all the same as here, although I do grant that that is the most similar of the bunch. But even he did not see any jail time, he was put on probation.

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  13. Why is this case any different than the one with Bryan Nishimura? It's certainly different than Snowden, but not of Nishimura. They both did not have permission to take the classified information home, or out of the government's secured systems.

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  14. clearly you have problems reading and digesting what I write. I am not a Clinton support nor a defender. She is not someone I hope to see occupying the White House. However I find that the Trump supporters place the prime value that Trump be elected - no matter what he does. I can't imagine anything that he might do or say that they will not dismiss as insignificant. There is no way of having an intelligent discussion with them - because no matter what point is brought up - it doesn't matter to them. Clinton is problematic - but that doesn't mean she is everything that Trump declares.

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  15. Smells to high heavens.

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  16. I seriously suggest you peruse her emails on Wikileaks. When the subject line reads CLASSIFIED or TOP SECRET: its kinda hard to say that she didn't know.

    Sure she denied knowing it... She was lying.

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  17. Interesting you quote media matters.
    This is from Ben Shapiro's article about Media Matters:
    "In 2004, perverse former conservative David Brock, a highly paranoid alleged drug devotee, founded Media Matters for America. It was an offshoot of the John Podesta-run Center for American Progress (CAP). Podesta, of course, was the former chief of staff to President Clinton, and CAP was a liberal nonprofit designed to act as an outlet for leftist politicians and viewpoints. CAP originally granted office space to Media Matters; Hillary Clinton advised it, and one of her closest confidants received some $200,000 to help out. Clinton even explained, “I only wish that we had this active and fighting blogosphere about 15 years ago because we have certainly suffered over the last years from a real imbalance in the political world in our country. But we are righting that balance– or lefting that balance–not sure which, and we are certainly better prepared and more focused on taking our arguments and making them effective and disseminating them widely and really putting together a network in the blogosphere in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure–institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress. "

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  18. Interesting that you focus on the website and not the content. The content was from the Wall Street Journal . Did in fact the WSJ say that which they were quoted in saying? If so then please respond to the material and not the delivery boy.

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  19. Ok. From former FEDERAL PROSECUTOR Andy McArthy who's opinion should carry alot more weight then the people quoted above:
    There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services. Yet, Director Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States. In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence."

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  20. Of course there was intent. She deliberately schemed to find a way to hide her public records from scrutiny. Why didn't she want her emails to be public record like every other public servant, and as the law expressly requires? Because she needed freedom to act outside the law, without oversight.

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  21. Clearly you are less than rational on these matters and overly prone to ad hominem rebuttal. That clarification is extremely helpful to DT & others to recognize that reasoned reply with factual material will only be a further waste of time.

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  22. Trump said it himself: Were he to murder someone in broad daylight on 5th Ave his supporters would not flag. No loyalty quite like the angry American white male. Well, them & dogs....

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  23. Rudy Giuliani doesn't agree with you at all. Comey worked for him at one time. Rudy analyzed the case and said it was clearly a case that demanded prosecution and he quoted chapter and verse of the applicable laws.

    He is an expert in these matters and he and other rational people clearly see that she is absolutely guilty.

    However, I am glad that she will be able to stay in the race because she is a total disaster and Trump will have an easier time beating her.

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  24. thank you for a substantial reply. At this point we will have to see what Congress does with the FBI. If it is as black and white as you claim than eventually Clinton will be charged because the Republicans are not giving up.

    In the meantime the FBI clearly disagrees with you and the Justice Department is going along with the FBI.

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  25. ???
    The Republicans have no say in the matter of bringing charges as the justice department is under Obama.

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  26. http://www.sunjournal.com/news/0001/11/30/gop-examine-fbi-decision-hillary-rodham-clinton-emails/1954948

    the Republicans disagree with you

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  27. While it is true that intent is needed for some of the statutes discussed by Comey, it is not true of others. From Michael Mukasey, former US attorney general, and former US district judge:

    ... That left the two statutes discussed in Mr. Comey’s statement—one a
    felony, the other a misdemeanor—and here the announced decision is
    harder to understand.

    It is a felony for anyone entrusted with lawful possession of information
    relating to national defense to permit it, through “gross negligence,”
    to be removed from its proper place of custody and disclosed. “Gross
    negligence” rather than purposeful conduct is enough. Yet Mr. Comey
    appears to have based his recommendation not to prosecute on the absence
    of “clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to
    violate laws governing the handling of classified information”—though
    he did say in the same sentence that there was “evidence that they were
    extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly
    classified information.”

    As an example of the kind of information at stake, he described
    seven email chains classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program
    level. These were the emails that the government had said earlier are so
    sensitive that they will never be disclosed publicly. Mr. Comey went
    further, citing “evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable
    person in Secretary Clinton’s position . . . should have known that an
    unclassified system was no place for that conversation.” To be
    “extremely careless” in the handling of information that sensitive is
    synonymous with being grossly negligent.

    And what of the finding that the investigation did not disclose “clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information”? Even the felony statute requires no
    such evidence, and no such intent.

    The misdemeanor involves simply the knowing removal of classified documents to an unauthorized location.


    http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-makes-the-fbis-least-wanted-list-1467760857

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  28. I agree she wanted to hide the public records. But that is not want the charge would be. The charge would be mishandling of classified information. There is no evidence that she had intent to mishandle classified information.

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  29. Scott Adams has an interesting take on this:
    This gets me to FBI Director James Comey’s decision to drop the case against Hillary Clinton for her e-mail security lapses. To the great puzzlement of everyone in America, and around the world, Comey announced two things:

    1. Hillary Clinton is 100% guilty of crimes of negligence.

    2. The FBI recommends dropping the case.

    From a legal standpoint, that’s absurd. And that’s how the media seems to be reacting. The folks who support Clinton are sheepishly relieved and keeping their heads down. But the anti-Clinton people think the government is totally broken and the system is rigged. That’s an enormous credibility problem.

    But what was the alternative?

    The alternative was the head of the FBI deciding for the the people of the United States who would be their next president. A criminal indictment against Clinton probably would have cost her the election.

    How credible would a future President Trump be if he won the election by the FBI’s actions instead of the vote of the public? That would be the worst case scenario even if you are a Trump supporter. The public would never accept the result as credible.

    That was the choice for FBI Director Comey. He could either do his job by the letter of the law – and personally determine who would be the next president – or he could take a bullet in the chest for the good of the American public.

    He took the bullet.

    Thanks to Comey, the American voting public will get to decide how much they care about Clinton’s e-mail situation. And that means whoever gets elected president will have enough credibility to govern effectively.

    Comey might have saved the country. He sacrificed his reputation and his career to keep the nation’s government credible.

    It was the right decision.

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  30. Doesn't compete at all with all the rabid left that is wreaking havoc left and right in the country unimpeded by the lame and crippled law enforcement groups. The San Jose leftist riots are just one small example.

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  31. I like Adams analyses a lot, but he's reading way too much into this. Director Comey's expressed justification for not recommending prosecution was very reasonable: that it would be unprecedented.

    Adams is confusing evidentiary guilt with criminal severity. No one, for example, was ever executed in America for manslaughter; even when 100% guilty of that crime, such a criminal falls far short of being a murderer.

    According to the Bureau's findings, Clinton -- as well as those she corresponded with, Comey took the effort to point out, as well as the culture of the whole dept generally, which precedes her governance of it -- was definitely guilty of being criminally negligent, and habitually and repeatedly so, with privileged info of all levels. But that is a far different crime than attempted espionage, and all the precedents under the statute were apparently for the latter. And while she may have misrepresented the severity of her conduct, she & her subordinates did not obstruct the investigation. (That too is his finding.)

    One may disagree with the recommendation as regards the particulars of this case, and it's entirely possible the recommendation won't be followed, but for an intelligent person to label it "absurd from a legal standpoint" is to be so willfully inattentive to the announcement as to be absurd itself. There's nothing so attractive for projection as a conspiracy & corruption, and nothing so easy as intellectual laziness. Hilary may be hateful several times over, but Adams is flat wrong here. Comey made a lot of sense.

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  32. Please, this is not her first ride on the merry-go-round. She knows and knew full well that classified material comes into her email, and for that reason, among others, she was not supposed to have an outside, insecure server. If you imagine for a moment she did not know that, you are naive.

    Either way, the question of intent is moot, b/c, as Mukasey pointed out in the article I excerpted above, she violated two statutes where intent is not needed. Yet, she was not prosecuted.

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  33. You are unaware of the facts. This was not the email that she was using for classified information. The FBI said that of the 35,000+ emails on the server, fewer than 100 were of classified material. All her classified email was done on a standard government server. The 100 slipped through the cracks somehow or other.
    And Mukasey sure is an objective party here.

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  34. I don't know if I agree that it was the right the decision, but it does sound highly likely that this was a large part of Comey's reasoning.

    I don't see how it could be considered the right decision. The American people do not have the right to allow certain people to be elevated to the ruling class of the Federal Government, and therefore make them above the law. This will in a certain sense go back to the civil war, but why should any state be bound by such a decision which is made by another state's voters? Part of the reason why each state was separate, was to ensure that there will never be a ruling class that can go around doing as they please, making "suicides" happen, and imposing laws, unelected leaders and officials against the law or will of the public.

    The unelected FBI and the Justice Department should have no right to go around and force their "reforms" on every police department. And if a police department resists, then they will find silly corruption charges to bring against its senior officers - as they did in NY. The big hoopla in outlawing the Confederate flag possibly stemmed from the same place - diminishing the rights of individual states.

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  35. Comey was the right man for this outrageous cover up and gross ignorance of the crime of gross neglect for handling highly secure information.

    Debbie Schlussel has the history on Comey and all that happened would be obvious to anyone who knows this information.

    http://www.debbieschlussel.com/82836/james-comey-freed-these-islamic-terrorists-got-them-citizenship-prosecuted-feds-who-got-guilty-verdict-against-them/

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  36. Listen to Gowdy's questioning of Comey and you will see that Comey totally disregarded the most obvious case of gross negligence that any decent prosecutor would have prosecuted to the hilt.

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  37. Your naivete is touching. There are untold numbers of emails the FBI never saw b/c of deliberate destruction on the part of her people. Is there any doubt they included classified material? There is none. And besides, why are 100 classified emails nothing?

    Why are you so desperate to exonerate this dishonest woman?

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  38. "The FBI" does not necessarily disagree. The director is politicized, clearly, or perhaps cowed, but he does not speak for his investigators. It is the Justice Dept. who decides whether or not to prosecute, not the FBI.

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  39. I am not trying to exonerate anyone. What she did was irresponsible and reckless, and her claims about what she did have been shown to have been false. As someone who plans to vote for her in the fall, I would be much happier if she would just come clean and tell the truth about this. If she was running against a real candidate instead of a clown without any redeeming qualities, this might even prove fatal to her campaign. Yet, I am willing to accept the judgement call of the FBI, whose director worked for George W. Bush, that what she did is not the type of offense which is usually prosecuted. There is tremendous discretion for prosecutors at all levels as to whom they should indict and for what, and I am willing to take his judgement call at face value without imputing all sort of conspiracy theories to it. I would not want them to hold her or any other politician to a lower standard than others, but I would not want them to hold her or any other politician to a higher standard either.

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  40. Gowdy is suggesting that Comey should have been setting a precedent -- i.e., making an example of her.

    There are two schools of thought on that, of course, and there the FBI is historically quite conservative. Your beef would be will be with the DOJ when there's no prosecution, not with the FBI. Making examples is not their thing.

    Rhetorically powerful though Gowdy's delivery may have been, he did nothing to refute the thrust of Comey's original conference, which is that such a prosecution would have indeed been unprecedented. That's a substantive argument.

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  41. This has nothing to do with precedent. There are laws about gross negligence in handling of classified materials which Gowdy pointed out beautifully. Her actions are the classic example of gross negligence which does not at all require negligence which any one up on the law understands.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxW71xO7Ics

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  42. Come clean and tell the truth? You've gotta be kidding. She doesn't have that in her DNA. Talk about a lack of redeeming qualities.

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  43. I agree that Hillary's main character fault is an overdone paranoia that causes her to be overly secretive. But I will take her, warts and all, over the no-nothing who is poised to become the Republican nominee.

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  44. Is it so hard to read a few paragraphs of primary text? Comey's statement is super-clear: He did not say she didn't violate the Statute. He said her "extreme carelessness" did violate it, as did others in correspondence with her, as did the culture of the Dept encourage habitual carelessness in this regard.

    But Comey also specified that the recourse for violations of that sort--i.e., mere negligence--have been confined to "administrative" action, not legal. In other words, this brand of recklessness has hurt people's careers and security clearances. The only "precendent" for legal action in this area--his word, not mine, Mr. FoL "up-on-the-law"--has been, basically, espionage (three subcategories of which he specifies) and obstruction-of-justice, neither of which they found any evidence of in this case. Hence no precedent for prosecution.

    It's not exactly the Theory of Relativity here...! This is simple stuff. Are people spending way too much time watching Fox News, or listening to Rush Limbaugh, or something? I haven't seen misunderstanding and misinformation this rampant since I read media accounts of the gay marriage decision, when liberal coverage across-the-board contrived to mis-portray the four clear & well-reasoned dissenting Opinions as bigoted.

    Please get yourselves better sources of coverage, or start reading with some modicum of care.

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  45. Politically IncorrectJuly 11, 2016 at 2:50 PM

    Overly secretive? From who, from the government? That's who she was hiding the emails from???? (Looks like from our government yes, as opposed to another one. ..) Why them? Perhaps from the truth!

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  46. You obviously didn't listen to Giuliani's comments while you keep rehashing the ignorant comments of Leftist sellout Comey. Giuliani and other experts have said the gross negligence doesn't require intent and is fully subject to prosecution. He specifically commented on Hillary's violations and said it's and open and shut case fully suitable for prosecutions and Comey deserves censure for not pursuing it.

    I'll take his analysis over any rehash of Comey's distortion of the law any time.

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  47. Ben Shapiro beautifully explains how Comey totally purposefully misinterpreted and distorted the law in the first few minutes of his comments.

    http://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/7283/ep-146-fbi-defended-hillary-destroying-law-ben-shapiro

    Andrew McCarthy and Mukasey and other legal experts have also expressed their extreme disapproval of Comey's glaring distortion of the law.

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  48. You obviously didn't listen to Giuliani's comments while you keep rehashing the ignorant comments of Leftist sellout Comey. Giuliani and other experts have said the gross negligence doesn't require intent and is fully subject to prosecution. He specifically commented on Hillary's violations and said it's and open and shut case fully suitable for prosecutions and Comey deserves censure for not pursuing it.

    I'll take his analysis over any rehash of Comey's distortion of the law any time.

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  49. I listened to the first 10min of Shapiro's broadcast, as you suggest. It's just a fast-talking version of what you already wrote with an abundance of legalese regarding "intent," obviously designed to sound very official & indicting while mischaracterizing quite a bit (rather obviously so) and still missing the substance of Comey's argument. Very Limbaugh/Coulter-esque and an obvious waste of time. Don't do yourself the disservice of feeding at such troughs.

    On the other hand, there is one name in your list worth the time: former U.S. AG Judge Mukasey. He's no cheap ideologue or media hound, and, sure enough, he makes what does in fact qualify as a substantive rebuttal point to Comey's argument (finally!): that while it may be true the DoJ may never have prosecuted this Statute before (the basis of Comey's refusal to prosecute, which you and pundits (Shapiro, McCarthy, etc.) all seem to be ignoring entirely), there is indeed precedent of such by the U.S. Military, Mukasey points out. That's not talking across Comey with ad hominem conspiracy theories, but a substantive reply; see the difference, FoL?

    Personally, I'm not sure I entirely understand whether Mukasey's objection has true force, since military personnel are under a separate jurisdiction than the rest of us. (This is true even to the point of having a different standard of evidence.) They're not even in the same judiciary, and are not governed by common law, and even if common law were assumed, since they operate effectively as a separate branch of due process, would precendent apply across that divide? Sounds like a question requiring a full-blown professor of constitutional law. (See here for an example of how quickly complicated the basics become.) I don't know the answer. But were it a stronger point, no doubt Mukasey would have lead with it and not have made it in passing at the end of his criticism, so he too probably recognizes that it's not decisive and feels Comey is being too summarily conclusive of grounds for prosecution. In other words, he'd be taking issue with the strengh of Comey's pronouncement "No reasonable prosecutor...".

    It's a worth point, so thanks for the heads-up. I'm assuming it is the same Statute under which Military personenl have been prosecuted, otherwise it'd be somewhat surprising for Mukasey to make the point, one worth considering and which Comey omitted.

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  50. The charge would be mishandling of classified information.

    Incorrect. That's one charge. But Hillary is also in violation of the Freedom of Information act, precisely b/c she deliberately schemed to hide her public records.

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  51. You mean "know-nothing." Talk about knowing nothing.

    For goodness' sake, she held back at least 30,000 emails, and deleted who knows how many more. And the "cracks" the 110 (not >100) "slipped through" were her the cracks in her deletion team. She is thoroughly dishonest.

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  52. Surely he's more objective than you, which admittedly is not saying much.

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  53. Actually, I am not a lawyer, and since lawyers have expressed opinions on both sides of this issue, it is irrelevant what I would respond to his claims. My point about his objectivity is that it is no coincidence that former justice department figures associated with Republican administrations say that there should be an indictment (other than the head of the FBI, who worked in the Justice Department under George W.. Bush), while those associated with Democratic administrations say that there should not be. The bottom line is that indictment is a judgement call, and I am fine with relying on the judgement of the FBI.

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  54. Again, not every criminal act leads to an indictment. Whether or not to indict is a judgement call, and I am willing to give the FBI the benefit of the doubt that they know what they are doing.

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  55. Famous But Incompetent (FBI) has failed on many grounds recently but especially in this case. If there ever was any meaning for a gross negligence and beyond law, her handling of the emails was it. There are probably many dead agents of ours and national security secrets that are now known to our enemies do to the extreme recklessness and mismanagement of her emails and the most sensitive secrets. If this is not a reason for indictment, the law is meaningless.

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  56. What everyone seems to be missing here:
    It is the FBIs job to determine if a crime was committed. IT IS NOT THE FBI's JOB TO DETERMINE IF THE CRIME SHOULD BE PROSECUTED.
    This decision should be with the federal prosecuters.

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  57. I am quite familiar with the excuses and justifications given for failing to indict. I am also familiar with the culture of cronyism and corruption of this administration and of the Clintons.That's really all anyone needs to know.

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  58. Being that the Federal prosecutors would been seen as biased, they wisely committed to abide b the recommendations of the FBI, no matter what they would be. Imagine the outcry if the FBI recommended an indictment and Lynch decided against. Would you still be saying that it is the Justice Department's job to decide?

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  59. This was not a recommendation that the FBI should have an opinion about. I cannot think of any other case where the FBI stated that there was a crime but it is our opinion is that you should not prosecute. Can you show an example where the FBI ever did this before?

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  60. This is not my area of expertise. I have not been closely following the outcomes of other FBI investigations.

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  61. You have it backward! The bias goes entirely the other way. The Justice Dept. in the Obama admin is pro-Democrat. Had they prosecuted, it would have been seen as honesty in government, no playing favorites.

    And the FBI should not have been making recommendations at all. The Justice Dept should have decided based on the evidence, as is usually done. What happened here was they played a game to take the heat off Justice, especially after Lynch had her little meeting with Bill Clinton. These people are just too brazen for words. And you have a problem with Trump. It's laughable.

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  62. Bizarre question, mainly because, as Dir. Comey initially mentioned in his press conference (feels like the umpteenth time in this thread I've typed those words, but I guess people are just stubborn about reading actual text instead us of drinking up pundit-drivel), while it is not unusual for the FBI to make recommendations to the DoJ prosecutors based on the findings of their investigation, what is unusual is their publicizing those recommendations, so why would you expect to know about it if in fact they commonly recommended not to prosecute? It's not the public's business, and so the public would never know about it. Have you worked at the DoJ? They have to prioritize their resources, like everyone else. Why would you leap to the supposition that this is so very unusual?

    Also, just like there's legal precedent for judges to determine law, there's also executive precedent to prosecute the law. The latter is to ensure against selective prosecution. A good attorney guards against partisanship, and to ensure such impartiality strives to apply the same standards as his Dept has in the past whether to prosecute or desist. If the DoJ had decided in the past many times, say, not to expend its resources on cases of mere negligence and had focused instead on actual espionage, and then all of a sudden it should, under much public scrutiny against Secr. Clinton, decide to hit-her-with-the-book and follow the letter of the law to come down on her, would anyone be able actually to call that fair? Comey's judiciousness & moderation reflects a lot of integrity, as do his efforts at transparency. Yet the politically animalistic public being what it is, that's just not enough for most folks, such as those finding voice here, and some of those in Congress, of course (which says something about the kinds of personalities that win elections). Like the Romans of yore at the arenas, if the spectacle doesn't yield blood, the public booes--or, as here, whinily cry "Foul!". We are in edus Edom, truly.

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  63. Double standard: Try applying your standard here retroactively to the U.S. intelligence community over the many decades that Ames or Hanson spied for our enemies. Investigators later identified literally dozens of instances where internal audit resources dropped the ball (read: negligence!!). Would you have had large chunks of the CIA & FBI thrown in prison for their negligence that definitely resulted in just those consequences you list here but many times over? ...Not to mention, of course, the dozens of other reckless & negligent intelligence catastrophes over the years.... Your implicitly proposing we redo our entire attitude toward U.S. foreign affairs agents.

    It's good that you have some righteous indignation, of course, reflecting as it does an appreciation of the grave consequences regarding these matters. But practically speaking it's moot; a cursory review of the history readily shows we cannot afford to get punitively worked up over negligence. To do so here is selectively to target our favorite target for hatred, ol' Hilary.

    (Actually, it bears mention that the conclusion above is one of the famous lessons of ancient history. Ancient Athenian democracy was in the habit of punishing its own decision-makers for what proved to be poorly managed or poorly executed decisions. The tragicomic upshot was that, during the long Peloponnesian War, they ended up replacing their war leadership multiple times, executing a few rounds of leaders collectively, and occasionally causing some to flee punishment by defecting to their enemies in Sparta to avoid death. Needless to say, that attitude to toward leadership--really, what you are implicitly suggesting here--did not bode well for famously "democratic" Athens, a regime also governed by the "wisdom" of public opinion. Ultimately, it lost the war.)

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  64. With your argument you are freeing all the violators of gross negligence and saying that none should be punished because there are so many didn't get punished in the past and punishing too many will reduce the ranks. There has to be a balance and the most blatant violators should certainly be punished. The fact that violators have not been punished sufficiently has weakened the FBI and allowed incompetents to stay on.

    In high stakes situations such as the leadership of a large corporation simple mistakes can lead to gigantic consequences. That's why people who have great responsibility are often punished for failure to do a difficult job on what may seem to be minor issues. The safety and security of the United States is an extremely important issue and requires the utmost care to not have our agents killed or our most sensitive security plans revealed to enemy agents. Failure in this even due to negligence can lead to great tragedy and should be subject to the severest penalties. In the case of Hanson and Ames, the major ones that messed up should have been punished. There needs to be consequences at least for the most severe violators and not amnesty for all. The fact that others weren't punished is no reason for not punishing those that deserve it. Otherwise, the integrity and productivity of the organization will be severely compromised.

    The example of Athens is not relevant because it describes a situation where they over punished. A good current example of Athens like behavior is the massive thinning of the leadership ranks across the military by the current administration for flimsy reasons.

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  65. The difficulties of this argument that you've followed-through--that we both have, actually, each speaking out different sides--is the result of looking backward, vainly hoping judicially to right the negligent wrongs of the past. We're either handcuffed (your complaint) or self-destructively zealous (my warning, citing ancient history).

    The way out in such cases as this, where Comey's team uncovered a whole "culture" of carelessness at the State Dept, is the same way as that for the massive discoveries of systemic supervisory holes in counterintelligence culture they encountered at the FBI & CIA in the sobering wake of Hanson & Ames. That way out is not retro-spective but pro-spective: productively changing policies & practices going forward so as to stamp out such harmful negligence in practice.

    Contrariwise, the best way to deal with wrongs past is the way we seek to administer all justice: objectively & fairly. After all, in "the high-stakes situations" with potentially "gigantic consequences" such as you mention, there is as well all the more a concern that proceedings be de-railed by politics so as to compromise those judicial values. There, all the more must we guard ourselves against part-iality/-isanship--exactly what Comey did.

    Betterment is the solution--not a justice that singles out only the most conspicuous of criminals, like you are calling for. (And that too is the lesson of Athens, that when our righteousness gets the better of us it gets out of hand.)

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  66. No comparison between ineptness, as in your CIA example, and gross negligence deriving from deliberate breaking of various laws and protocols, as in the example of Hillary and her minions.

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  67. You are misunderstanding my point. The general practice is for the FBI to issue a recommendation whether or not to indict. Then, the Justice Department will decide to accept or reject that recommendation, i either direction. In this case, being that people would view the JD as having a pro-Hillary bias, they announced in advance that they would accept the FBI recommendation no matter what it was, in order to prevent the outcry that would result were the FBI to recommend indictment and then the JD were to decide not to indict.

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  68. What Comey did was the essence of partiality and party line with no regard for the laws already in place. This was the place to start the betterment or continue any improvement. Party line politics is what got out of hand here in my opinion.

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  69. As an aside, I watched the speeches of Presidents Bush and Obama yesterday in Dallas. Can anyone imagine a President Trump being able to speak with the seriousness and empathy that they did?

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  70. Comey's a longtime Republican with a sterling reputation for being a straightshooter and not a Washington player, so that reading seems awfully fanciful.

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  71. The historical facts prove otherwise.

    http://www.debbieschlussel.com/82836/james-comey-freed-these-islamic-terrorists-got-them-citizenship-prosecuted-feds-who-got-guilty-verdict-against-them/

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  72. What good are Obama's "seriousness and empathy" after all he has done to worsen race relations in this country?

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  73. Kimberly Strassel, a serious person and astute political commentator, disagrees with your assessment of Comey:

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/comey-ran-true-to-form-1467932483

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  74. I just read the text of his speech. Unbelievable to me that he took this opportunity to double down on his BS talk about how the country and the justice system in particular is still biased against blacks, and to call for more "righteous anger." This is seriousness? Empathy? You are delusional.

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  75. First of all, I do not accept the premise of your question. By what methodology due you assess that Obama has worsened race relations in the country? Note, not that race relations have not worsened in the years he has been in office, but that he is responsible for it. Perhaps it would be even worse if there was a different president.
    Second of all, I was raising the point that one of the roles a president has to fulfill in office is to participate in events and give speeches such as that one, and that I cannot picture Trump doing that. Perhaps you can, I don't know.

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  76. The country and the justice system is still biased against blacks. I largely identify with the BLM movement. Discussing the murder of the police officers without discussing the murder of two citizens last week would have been a disgrace.

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  77. I'm taxing myself trying to understand why someone would think to turn to her as a source of news? I cannot see anything that would recommend her as a good source, and in fact everything about her screams self-promotional shock jock. The page itself that you link to doesn't even make any sense, conspicuously lacks any coherent context, and reads like a paranoiac rant.
    Most troubling is that you seem to feel some chronicle of "historical facts" are to be found therein.

    It seems that you feel any conclusion a investigative team reached that did not fry the candidate you hate must be an agent of duplicitous partisanry. It bears asking if there's anything you might encounter to lead you to question or revise that closely held tenet, or if in fact it is, unnoticed by you, held religiously.

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  78. The site won't let me see it. Can you just copy-paste the relevant part(s)?

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  79. In my other reply, it should say "homicide," not "murder."

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  80. I was questioning the principle FoL proffered, that negligence should be more readily criminal the greater the responsibility neglected. On that principle, there would be such a thing as criminal ineptness, which is of course absurd.* That's why I followed through with those historical scenarios, not to draw a strict analogy.

    More simply, the point is this: If a driver causes a massive accident because an insect in his car succeeded in distracting his driving, while the driver is of course liable for all the damages caused, we don't toss that driver in jail for criminal abdication of automotive attentiveness. Getting distracted by an insect can never really be criminal; it just happens (conceivably to enormous civil liability, as in this concocted example). I'm not saying Clinton's negligence was akin to being distracted by some insect; I'm saying that standards for what should constitute criminal negligence do not shift with the gravity of a person's station & responsibility. The law still needs to be fairly & impartially applied, not shifted to be more onerously punitive against transgressors who stand to cause more damage. Keep in mind we're talking about prosecuting the law, not just defining it. Comey said she was criminally negligent, just not guilty of anything the Dept hadn't dismissed prosecuting before.

    * (excepting phenomena like professional malpractice, the standards for the determination of which are hyper-delimited a priori)

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  81. I don't know whether you've confused or conflated me with another, but I am certainly not he.

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  82. I read a bit of Ta-Nehisi Coates. I gagged on it. I suggest you read Kyle Smith's on-target criticism of Coates. But it's revealing that you cite Coates. It plainly shows that you are a sucker for the progressive cause du jour, and are not to be taken seriously. No dout you'd be voting for Bernie the Brooklyn Bolshevik were he on the ticket.

    No, the country is not biased against blacks. [It's laughable that this claim is still made with a twice-elected black president in office, with numerous black appointees in the highest positions in the land.] Specifically, white cops are not biased against blacks. You, like your jug-eared hero, ignore the clear evidence that shows that black and Hispanic cops are far more likely to shoot black suspects than white cops. You and he also ignore the fact of the proportionally far, far greater crime rate among blacks than other races, and the context it provides for why blacks are stopped more often than whites.

    You need to read some Heather MacDonald. I'd provide links, but I suspect all this is falling upon deaf progressive ears.

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  83. By what methodology due you assess that Obama has worsened race relations in the country?

    By the methodology of memory. Specifically, the memory of what he said after Trayvon, what he said after the arrest of Prof. Gates, after Ferguson, after Dallas, and on every other occasion he has had opportunity to speak on these themes.

    His approach is the opposite of the racial healing he promised. He does nothing but fan the flames.

    Can Trump give such speeches. Why not? You think Obama writes his own? Don't make me laugh. Trump can hire good speechwriters too. Good grief.

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  84. Here's Smith's article on Coates's book:

    https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/hard-untruths-ta-nehisi-coates/

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  85. The editorial is cool in two respects: (1) Carefully unravelling a single description ("tough"), it allows us to understand how easy it is for soundbite-driven press to fall so naturally & easily into exagerrations; (2) the spotlighting on John Adams is both rhetorically effective & the kind of intellectual benchmarking we need more of in journalism today, in which among daily/weekly publications generally there has been a major lowering of the bar for readers' memory & rigor.

    But it is short on substance. All she really says, ultimately, is that Comey's not as "tough" a fellow as folks seem to want to pretend. She does not attempt to demonstrate political bias with any kind of compelling examination of the record, just insinuates it in her counter-portrait and thought-experiment hypothetical portrait of the would-be crowd-pleasing prosecutor. No one truly believes, anyway, that a career, much less a character, is well fleshed out by a short list of incidents such as this, so even the portrait is questionable. In short, there's nothing here to help substantively question the impartiality of Comey's conclusion--the conclusion being that it'd be unreasonable to single Clinton out. Nor is there any evidence presented that Comey's team worked to ignore anything more incriminating than what was presented.

    There is one part of the editorial I find odious: the implicit suggestion that the Valerie Plame affair was overblown. On the contrary, Novak & Rove's conduct was nothing short of unconscionable, and on several levels. Whether Libby got swept up in it more than he deserved, who knows? but that happens amidst such stink. Why hang that on Comey, if indeed there's any fault to hang at all?

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  86. A better example for what Clinton did would be someone who commits arson, and ends up killing a person, not realizing that he was inside the building. [They actually sent someone to prison recently for doing precisely that.] She deliberately and with intent violated the FIOA act. The whole point of her homebrew server was to hide her actions from the public. In the course of deliberately committing that crime, she was guilty also of criminal negligence with regard to national secrets. None of this has anything to do with professional malpractice. It is criminal from the get-go.

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  87. One more point: You mention the "murder" (or homicide) of two citizens. It's not yet clear whether that was in fact homicide. I'm aware that for the progressive left, of which you seem to be a part, trial by tweet is enough to convict. But the still-sane rest of the country believes in investigating crimes before convicting. If the investigation discovers that the officer(s) had reason to believe the fellow was pulling a gun, he's off the hook. Of course, the progressive left just knows that the investigations are crooked, b/c "racism," so there's no convincing them.

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  88. I wasn't providing an analogy of what she did. You misunderstood the Comment entirely. I took pains to be clear. (And the malpractice footnote was to cover an exception to what I said, not provide further support.)

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  89. Your point would be well taken IF in my example the driver caused not property damage but killed someone. If the facts as I depicted them were never to fall into question but taken as certain, namely that the driver's only wrongdoing was getting hounded by an insect, even then, in the case of a death caused, would the crime charged be manslaughter (which drunk driving can be prosecuted as).

    Your example of arson turns into a manslaughter for the same reason that if no one died or was hurt, the arsonist could/would be charged not just with arson but with reckless endangerment of human life.

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  90. Don't get bent out of shape. I'm not exactly doing massive iyun on each jot and tittle of the riveting debate between you and FOL. Point is, Clinton is the criminal whose intended crime led to other, unintentional but more damaging crimes. It's crimes all the way down.

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  91. What she's saying is that he's a typical go-along-get-along DC player with his finger to the wind, and that's plenty substantive, especially when the popular notion is the exact opposite.

    No comment on Plame. I didn't follow it closely enough then, and don't remember enough of the detail now.

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  92. Commentary is behind a paywall. Here it is somewhere else:

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3345499/posts

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  93. Just because you don't like Debbie's style does not mean that her content is invalid. Have you found any contradiction to the facts of the release of Islamic Jihadists and the prosecution of agents that found them? I have found her to be a unique and valid source for all sorts of information that is usually hidden by the MSM and I've never found any valid contradiction to the facts that she presents.

    Comey in presenting the facts of the case has shown that Hillary is the poster child for the most lurid form of gross negligence and has made many clumsy efforts to cover up her transgressions. Nixon was fried for deleting a few minutes off a tape. Hillary has compounded her felony of negligence with a deliberate attempt to delete incriminating information by rendering the devices that contained the information impossible to recover. She has openly lied. She probably has the record for exposing information that would lead to death of agents and revelation of the most sensitive US secrets to our enemies thereby endangering us. She is the super star of gross negligence and she should get away with it?!

    The point of singling out is a ridiculous point because whenever a new peak of violation is reached, one could argue that it's singling out the culprit since nobody reached that nadir of villainy. If the crime has been committed with such severe consequences, the law is worthless if it is not applied in this case. The reason she got off is simply partisan politics and Comey's complicity in that.

    This situation is very good because she is a very vulnerable opponent to Trump.

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  94. What he said after Trayvon etc. is uncomfortable for you. You would prefer that he tell all those uppity black folks to quiet down and be thankful they are not still slaves on the plantation. Do you think that MLK, John Lewis, and the like were also "fanning the flames," or perhaps trying to led America to a better age of equality?

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  95. The definition of homicide is "the killing of one human being by another." There is no question that this is what happened. It is irrelevant whether or not the cop thought (or in fact was) in danger. It is still homicide.

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  96. Thanks, I will read it.

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  97. For example, try this speech, by an African-American Republican senator.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmMQimrT8qk

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  98. Such childish projections might make you feel virtuous, but they do not represent my thinking in the slightest. What I would prefer is that the president not personalize the boy's death and give credence to the charges of racism by saying that he could have been his son, and that he wait for an investigation to be complete before passing judgment. It is the height of irresponsibility to make such incendiary statements when tempers are high. He's supposed to be the president of all the people, not just the ones who are black. If you don't understand this, you're just not worth talking to.

    Comparing this guy to MLK is a joke. MLK's ideal was equality, color-blindness. Obama's ideal, like that of all progressives, is to make every single thing about race. Which is why he is the arsonist to MLK's fireman.

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  99. Sorry, I will childishly take the side of John Lewis over yours on this one.

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  100. I read it and identify with some of what he wrote. But he is missing one essential point: The experience of Coates is representative of what many black people in America experience. Unless we as a society are willing to try to understand why that is, and to correct whatever is causing that, we will not get anywhere. Once again, please watch the speech from the senator from South Carolina to get a small window of what being black in America can be like. Then, extend that to someone who is not educated like that senator is, is not wealthy like that senator is, and may even have a police record of some sort.

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  101. PS- Actually, FoL, I just noticed that "that whole rigarmarole with Yehoshua" that I made the same point about as to you now was not to you but to the fellow monikered jb17112. Sorry for the mixup.
    So now I'm saying the same to both of you. Search this thread for the string "Bizarre question" to find someone operating on the same fallacious line of thinking as you tend to. (Those are the first two words of my reply. This Comment thread has really grown.)

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  102. That's an unusually weak response, even for you.

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  103. Oh, I get it, but once we start basing policy on feelings rather than facts, we're done. The fact is that pre-emptive community-based policing in high-crime areas has saved many, many black lives over the past couple of decades. It is also a fact that high-crime areas are most often minority areas. I get that pre-emptive policing doesn't feel very good for those who are pre-emptively policed, but the fact is, it saves lives. Many of them. Facts over feelings. BLM claims to be concerned about saving lives, but in fact, homicides in cities have gone up considerably since Ferguson and the BLM protests. Police are pullling back for fear of being pilloried. Those homicides are mostly blacks, but evidently, some black lives don't matter to BLM activists.

    Anyhow, I ask you, as a self-avowed supporter of BLM, what's the end game? Stop all proactive policing and let the suffering people in high-crime areas become victims? Make cops afraid to do stops that need to be done b/c they won't be able to defend themselves? What's the plan?

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  104. A good speech. I certainly understand the frustration, and I'm looking forward to his third part containing solutions. B/c one thing I haven't seen yet is anyone offering solutions. Well, other than BLM, whose "solution" is to shoot police.

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  105. Your assertion that motivation comes before facts is ridiculous and pshita that a preconceived bias of straight shooter will kill any analysis of troubling facts. However destroying truth for the sake of ideology is the way of the Left Just take an example from recent Islamic attacks such as Orlando where Obama wouldn't allow them to be attributed to Islamic fanaticism and the entire main street media followed along with denying what was as clear as day like a pack of suicide crazed lemmings.

    From the reports that I have seen, the honest investigators were surprised and dismayed that the servers were wiped to the point that they could not be recovered and it did not seem that that was standard operating procedure. In any case, enough of her hacked emails have been coming in from Wikileaks and other sources to indicate the lack of ongoing security.

    Comey had his agents sign NDA's and secrecy agreements. What was that for? Comey is not a straight shooter in my book and in the eyes of others such as the WSJ writer.

    In terms of his conclusion, Mukasey, Giuliani and Andy McCarthy think he's wrong and she should have been indicted and I'll take their opinion over his and yours any day.

    In any case, most of America agrees she should have been indicted and her poll numbers are showing it. She is the best candidate for Trump to beat.

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  106. The definition of homicide is "the killing of one human being by another."

    Incorrect!

    hom·i·cide
    ˈhäməˌsīd/
    noun
    North American
    noun: homicide; plural noun: homicides
    the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder."he was charged with homicide"

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  107. I can also cut and paste. Mine is from dictionary.com, where is yours from?
    homicide
    noun
    1.
    the killing of one human being by another.

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  108. Read up on what has been going on in Dallas the last few years. The basic idea is a much less adversarial relationship between the police and the neighborhoods they serve. It has been quite effective.

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  109. To say that the BLM solution is to "shoot police" is just about the most vile slander one can say.

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  110. Oh, yeah? Well, here they are, calling for the murder of police:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Yqv8mnywU

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  111. Plain old google.

    I can also cut and paste.

    Good for you. Point is, if you're going to nitpick, you better be 100% correct, and you clearly are not.

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  112. Effective, huh? But their rate of murders and other violent crime is going through the roof. Can it possibly have to do with the police engaging less?

    http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2016/03/dallas-murder-rate-up-dramatically-so-far-this-year.html/

    http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2016/03/rising-violent-crime-forces-massive-dallas-police-changes.html/

    http://cw33.com/2016/03/29/dallas-murder-rate-up-86-from-last-year/

    Great example. Really.

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  113. There, all the more must we guard ourselves against part-iality/-isanship--exactly what Comey did.

    The other view is that Comey did not guard against partiality and partisanship, but rather implemented it by failing to indict Clinton or any of her aides. Not on their deliberate crimes nor on their crimes arising from negligence.

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  114. I'm tired of your pedantic pompous and often baseless put downs. Keep believing the Leftist swill that you swallow wholesale.

    The fact that you believe that Orlando was not an Islamic attack and I don't care if it was ISIS or not, shows me that you are really very far from any semblance of truth. Best of luck to you.

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  115. seeing as nearly everything you, kish', jb, et al. have mentioned on
    this blog is, as far as I can see, baseless, some of it even rubbish,



    What have I written that is baseless and/or rubbish?

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  116. "swill" Great word. (Seriuosly.) Don't remember quoting any, but I catch your meaning.

    By "ISIS" I meant I don't consider it a terrorist attack, which I do think is an important point. But I gather I'm in the minority there....

    If you'll permit me a parting word, know that when I detail as much as I have as to why I think your leanings are irrational, I don't consider it to be insulting you. I think I've explained plenty my basis for that conclusion. I am sorry you feel so insulted.

    I really do recommend, however, you carry out that birther exercise, as I think it'll prove revealing and may potentially free you a little from the fringe. There's a reason none of that stuff that you like (i.e., Schlussel & the like) gets picked up by any reputable rightwing source such as Commentary, New Republic, etc., and those reasons are nothing conspiratorial. Just contrast two of the sources that've come up in this discussion, Strassel & Schlussel, and if you manage to exercise some distance I think you'll notice vastly different tones & approaches between them. Very revealing differences. Very different leagues.
    (Remember I didn't repudiate Strassel; I just pointed out that she doesn't really back up any of what she says characterizing Comey as a party-player. Doesn't mean she wasn't worth reading. Short on substance, but still coherent.)

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  117. Snide is fine. This is the internet. People need to toughen up.

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  118. I actually am. See the moderators comment. In addition, Garner's Modern English Usage (considered the premier English usage guide today) writes "homicide refers not to the crime (as it is commonly thought) but to the killing of a person, whether lawful or unlawful." I would think that the point is if you are going to criticize someone for their English usage, it might be a good idea to have a clue what you are talking about.

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  119. 1: Ms. MacDonald seems to be conflating different issues. She is citing overall numbers about who gets shot by police. That is irrelevant. I certainly believe, and don't think there are many that disagree, that in a case where a police officer is being attacked, or there is a crime in progress where there is danger to civilians, it would be correct to shoot. The BLM matter movement is focused on the cases where either A: The victim was already subdued or could have been subdued with something less than "shoot to kill" and was nevertheless killed (the case in Baton Rouge), or cases where in fact the victim had done nothing wrong but the police were very quick to pull the trigger (the case in Minnesota and the the kid in the park in Cleveland). Her statistics say nothing about the relative frequency those types of homicides occur.

    2: She cites the statistic, which you are a fan of as well, that the fact that the bias can be shown in Hispanic and black police officers somehow means that is it not a racial bias. I am at a loss to understand how telling black people, "Don't worry, it is not only the white officers that are out to get you, it is the Hispanic and black officers as well" is supposed to be a comfort.

    3: While the murder of black citizens by other black citizens, as in gang violence, is certainly a major issue, it does not mean that this issue is not an issue. In addition, although the numbers there are greater, there is a particular danger when the homicides are carried out by the very agents of the state who are meant to be protecting the people they are killing.

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  120. Just answer why his publicly provided birth certificate was proven false by Sheriff Arpaio's team, why he has a phony Connecticut social security number, why no one who attended Columbia when he was there remembers him For icing on the cake that you love one of the only women who could have testified to his Hawaiian birth records was the only person killed in a weird plane crash and his photo id from Columbia University (this may be fake) has the logo foreign student. Why are all his college records or for that matter any public records of him except his government service under total lock and key?

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  121. Just for you:
    http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/dueling-claims-on-crime-trend/

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  122. And you believe all this rancor why?

    (Not that it matters, but FYI the Columbia part I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were true. Had never heard Obama went there for undergrad until you wrote it just now. So looked on Wikipedia, and sure enough he transferred there junior year. I attended Columbia undergrad; transfers are largely invisible, esp. so late in their 4-yr college career. One less item for your X-File?)

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  123. Can you recommend a place where I can buy a tin-foil hat?

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  124. http://2012election.procon.org/view.additional-resource.php?resourceID=004760

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  125. I am not sure why you think that it is okay to speak with people on the internet in a manner that would be unacceptable in other situations. It is true that studies have shown that the worst of people tends to emerge when they are anonymous, but that is not an ideal; it is a tendency we should try to overcome.

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  126. “ Is this proof that the leftist media ignores Clinton's problems?”

    My 7/8/2016 Wall Street Journal Comment:

    “Posted In House Republicans Push for New Hillary Clinton Investigation

    “WASHINGTON—House Republicans said Thursday they would seek a new Federal Bureau of Investigation examination into Hillary Clinton, this one focused on whether she lied to Congress about her handling of classified information, raising the likelihood the controversy over her private email system will continue through the fall elections.”

    “Surely, the FBI investigation with some 15-20 agents assigned, already compared Hillary’s testimony to Congress versus her 3.5 hours Saturday at the FBI. Did she lie? I live in Israel. I’m a Trump supporter. The FBI head testified that all 15-20 agents working on the Hillary email business came to the same conclusion. What about normal disagreements in judgment, say, on Hillary’s intentions?”

    Yes, this is proof the leftist media ignores Clinton’s problems.

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  127. Your current dense helmet which blocks any truth works just fine. How about answering some of the questions?

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  128. if you are going to criticize someone for their English usage, it might
    be a good idea to have a clue what you are talking about.


    Huh? You're the one who criticized me on my English usage; specifically, the meaning of homicide. I simply responded to show that it's not so clear. You're losing the thread.

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  129. Okay, it casts some doubt on the apparent trends. Still doesn't equal your "quite effective."

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  130. I can see why you're voting for Hillary. You purse your figurative lips in the same schoolmarmish way.

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  131. "Substantive" meaning something of substance, not something substantiated, as you seem to think in your tuchis-covering essay.

    Prosaic. I've been "kishke" for donkey's years. When I needed an email address, kishke was taken, so I added "yum" b/c some people like kishke. Although not me particularly. For some reason, Disqus displays me as kishkeyum not kishke.

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  132. Correct. Support needs to be substantive in order to substantiate. What's then substantiated is the claim that's supported. "Substantiate" = to make substantive, which in this case is to lend substance to something.

    And there's nothing in Strassel's editorial to substantiate a claim that Comey's a political lackey; all she does, as I said already, is undermine support that might lead us to suppose him as "tough," insinuating along the way a general lack of rigor on the part of the press in slirping up what each other say. The counter-portrait of him she offers, however, remains entirely unsupported. Yet you cited this source, as FoL does all his sources (it was to him I was speaking), as if they're something more than opinion pieces, as if there's some hard evidence therein to be found to help a reader to determine which is the right/wrong characterization.

    Actually, to confirm whether or not I'd misspoken I just now took my own advice and went back to read the original sentence. Hadn't noticed before that your question removed all the relevant context, which itself answers your question. The full two sentences from which your quotation of me is drawn read (I'll bracket what you quote with asterisks ("*")): "You [FactsofLife] have no good cause to think me [PF] to hold any "preconceived bias" [as he'd written] regarding Comey's honesty. I was repeating secondhand evidence in the face of a glaring lack of counter-evidence, *seeing as nearly everything you, kish', jb, et al. have mentioned on this blog is, as far as I can see, baseless, some of it even rubbish*, as I've elaborated to such length it embarrasses even me." [emphasis added].

    So, look at that! Everything I wrote you by clarification is already right there. Could have saved myself the trouble...or you both of us by reading in context.
    (a) The qualification I numbered "1" in my answer that paraphrases the question under discussion is already right there in the sentence (the first underlined phrase);
    (b) the qualification numbered "2" specifying that "baseless" refers to lack of evidentiary support is right there too (in the second underlined phrase); and
    (c) the playback I gave you of who-said-what is cautionarily referenced as well (in the last underlined phrase).

    Perhaps you were thrown by the phrase "mentioned on this blog"? That does seem to have been mis-written, since obviously I can't mean "blog," which refers to the whole domain daattorah.blogspot.com, and would contradict the first & last of the phrases I just underlined. That phrase, "[what you all have] mentioned on this blog" would best be revised to "[what you all have] offered on this question" [i.e., regarding Comey's honesty].

    One addendum to my "essay": I see that 'substantive support', 'evidentiary basis', or what-have-you is also commonly referred to, in discussions of rhetorical mechanics, as grounds, which again is keeping within the same general metaphor of standing & solidity. Baseless, groundless, unsubstantiated -- whatever you will.

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  133. For the third time, there's something perverse about asking people to disprove accusations that are wild. The discussion would no doubt prove more productive by your explaining why you believe to be true all those items you listed--other than seeing them mentioned on various websites, that is. What's the basis for believing any of that stuff?

    That said, in addition to Yehoshua's helpful contribution, here's more:
    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth-certificate-part-ii/

    If you were to dig into the matter, as I originally suggested you do, I think you'll find that much of this fodder is just plain straight-up, brazen fabrication. For instance, the thing about no one remembering him from Columbia? I know you don't like the NYT, but come on..... Not exactly hard to find, is that? Well, welcome to the world of PR hitmen, where facts don't matter. (Reminds me of Aish Discovery's presenting the Bible Codes as having never been refuted. Then you leave and go Google them.... Oops! Of course, now with smartphones in the room they've probably had to revise their rhetorical tactics somewhat.... I wonder how many thinking people were alienated from Judaism over the years by those tactics and how many idiots brought into the fold? Kiruv seems to be practicing some reverse Darwinism?)

    But we all play the telephone game, so it's not so surprising that you should let stuff like that go unchecked. What really gets me is this: Let's say, just to explore this question some, that it were true that no contemporaries from Obama's Columbia undergrad days had ever come forward. Well, would that be so mysterious? He was a 3rd-year undergrad transfer living off of campus! Those folks, the late transfers, were invisible to us who'd entered as freshmen. So this item you mentioned is so baseless in both fact & logic, and meant to buttress a claim so very logistically unviable (let's not even get into the many timeline problems of conspiracy & so many other kinds of real-world hurdles), that I truly do find it hard to believe how you can, psychologically, stand by this stuff with the confidence you evidently do. Ditto with the other items, by the way (no, I won't be going through them one-by-one, and I actually didn't even mean to get going on this one, but my incredulity let's my fingers run away from me....) And let's not even go to the decades-old college ID baloney, which is so beyond mere stupidity that a 4-second question will rebut it completely: Could you obtain a reproduction of your college ID decades after the fact? Just think about it. I'll grant that it'll take slightly more intelligence to pose this other question: Why would anyone manufacturing a false native history fake a college ID that made themselves out to be a foreigner? Ugh. I take it back; also ridiculously dumb, so much so it has "concoction" written all over it.

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  134. Ah, so you're actually -pro-snide, clearly.

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  135. If you read carefully, Dallas murder rates plummeted to record lows over the past several years. There was a strong uptick in the first months of 2016, so the "this year vs. last year" comparison looked especially bad, but the long-term trend is definitely positive. In addition, the uptick has slowed over the last couple months, so that may have been due to a small sample size.

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  136. See the page I linked to. Also, try googling it. You will even find a newspaper article Obama wrote for the Columbia school newspaper.

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  137. Actually, not. You criticized me for accusing the officers of being guilty of a crime by using the term homicide. And it is clear. The fact that some am haratzim don't know what homicide means doesn't change anything.

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  138. My criticism had nothing to do with grammar. You were first with an entirely unsubstantive criticism of my grammar, to which I responded with Google's definition.

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  139. The BLM movement had its first big moment in Ferguson. The guy killed there is their poster boy. The investigation showed that Brown was in the process of attacking the police officer. Don't tell me they're not protesting such cases. Trayvon too was in middle of beating Zimmerman's head into the pavement when he was shot. He's another BLM poster boy.

    The fact that it's black and Hispanic cops more than whites shows that this is not due to white racism, which is what BLM claims. That should be obvious.

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  140. I see you put a lot of work into this, but it's wasted on me, b/c there's no way I'm gonna get this granular. It's simply not worth my time. I will only note that I cited Strassel as someeone who "disagrees with your assessment of Comey." And in fact, she does disagree. Whether or not you consider her points substantive does not change that fact. It is neither "baseless" nor "rubbish" nor "insubstantive" to say and demonstrate that Strassel disagrees.

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  141. This is strange coming from you, seeing that you are in the habit of calling people who disagree with you liars. Is that how you speak to people off the internet?

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  142. It's what makes commenting fun.

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  143. I don't care at this point if he is a true citizen or not. Politifact is a leftist discredited organization and their so called verifications of facts can't be trusted. His birth certificate has been proven false by Sherrif Arpaio and his team. I just threw out the other garbage because I knew you would enjoy it so much.

    In any case, I really don't care at this point whether he's fish or fowl. He's certainly foul. He has single handedly destroyed America by destroying its medical care system, destroying he coal industry, crippling the military by frivolous politically motivated firings of capable leaders and imposition of a sexist and pro Muslim driven program which will severely weaken out armed forces and demonstrations of this weakness have been noted in the capture of the ships by the Iranians and the flybys of Russian and Chinese aircraft. He has attacked the American public by hamstringing the DHS and releasing criminals time and again into the innocent public. He also is reintroducing previously controlled diseases into the public by not vetting the masses of immigrants with which he is flooding into the country.

    Despite the recent stock market surge, the job market is very weak and a college degree means nothing these days. All the colleges have become radical leftist anti Semitic and anti normal sexual relation enclaves. Almost half the population is on welfare with no hope of ever getting off.

    He killed the space program and made it a Muslim support group. He has exacerbated racial issues and caused racial tolerance to regress to a pre 1960's state. He is bringing friendly Muslims to a neighborhood near yours. Be sure to prepare the Sharia wagon, oops I meant the welcome wagon.

    There's plenty more but this is good for starters.

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  144. I fully admit that at times I let my emotions get the better of me. But I do not hold it up as some sort of ideal, as you apparently do.

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  145. First of all, word usage is not grammar. Second of all, then what was your point in writing: "It's not yet clear whether that was in fact homicide. I'm aware that for the progressive left, of which you seem to be a part, trial by tweet is enough to convict. But the still-sane rest of the country believes in investigating crimes before convicting. "

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  146. The point is simply that there's no basis on the table to conclude, from what little we know, that Comey acted as a partisan--neither any offered by you, nor by FoL, nor by jb, nor by Strassel. Simple as that.

    If you can't glean that much, the question under discussion, you probably suffer from a thinking problem.

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  147. Neither Obama's merits (nor Hilary's, nor Trump's) have yet been the topic of discussion here, which focused initially on whether there was any good basis to believe Comey's decision to have been politically motivated.

    From your "source" citations it then branched off into what constitutes a decent source of news, and there I came to suggest that you hold to un-falsifiable beliefs. As a parting challenge I then threw in birther-ism (?) as a phenomenon which, like Holocaust denial, demonstrates mass irrationality in its stubborn refusal to subject its core claims to examination of evidence, and I did so as way to suggest that perhaps you suffer from the same condition. And then now it turns out that you're already a birther yourself (oh, my my my my....), so I guess it's not the best test example....? Clearly you do suffer from this.

    Here's some perspective on your condition. It's a good collection of opinion, mostly from conservative sources, by Wikipedia:
    _________

    Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin has said trutherism exists on both the left and the right, and has described its persistence: "The plain truth will never mollify a Truther. There’s always a convoluted excuse – some inconsequential discrepancy to seize on, some photographic 'evidence' to magnify into a blur of meaningless pixels – that will rationalize irrationality".[195] A number of conservative commentators including Malkin have criticized its proponents and their effect on the wider conservative movement. [...] Talk-show host Michael Medved has also been critical, calling them "the worst enemy of the conservative movement" for making other conservatives "look sick, troubled and not suitable for civilized company."[196] Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has referred to them as "just a few cranks."[197]
    An editorial in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin dismissed the claims about Obama's eligibility as proposing "a vast conspiracy involving Obama's parents, state officials, the news media, the Secret Service, think-tanks and a host of yet-to-be-uncovered others who have connived since Obama's birth to build a false record so that he could eventually seek the presidency 47 years later."[198] The St. Petersburg Times' fact-checking website, PolitiFact.com, concluded its series of article on the birth certificate issue by saying: "There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact's conclusion that the candidate's name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn't authentic. And that's true no matter how many people cling to some hint of doubt and use the Internet to fuel their innate sense of distrust."[199]

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  148. You obviously didn't read what I wrote but you generally hover in the world of your own leftist fantasies. You decided that I must be birther and followed your prejudice regardless of the facts.

    There is only one strong birther point that I fully believe at this point and that is that his birth certificate is false. Read about Arpaio's evaluation of his birth certificate released to the public and if you are no totally blinded you will see that it is clearly false. Politifact is a Leftist hack organization and not worthy of serious consideration.

    What I did write was a collection of all the grievous blows that he has struck Amierica whether or not he was a legitimate candidate for president. Why don't you respond to that.

    Your denial of the Orlando attack being terrorism is equivalent to Holocaust denial.

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  149. My point was that it was not yet clear whether it was murder or had been justified. You did a word-usage-nitpick to which I responded with a google search. You were first to make an issue of my supposed misuse of the word. As you would say, quit lying.

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  150. We'll just have to see how it continues. Murder rates in many cities have been low in recent years but have been rising this past year. Some claim it is the Ferguson effect. Time will tell, in Dallas and elsewhere whether the disengagement by police in black areas which BLM (and you) demand is a good thing or not. I strongly suspect not, and that we will see a high body count before that is understood. But since those black deaths will mostly be the product of other blacks, they won't matter to BLM. Or they'll blame them on systemic racism.

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  151. We cannot conclude, but there is much, much room for suspicion.

    Strassel's article had nothing to do with proving that Comey acted as a partisan, but was intended only to debunk the idea that he is an independent straight shooter. That was the relevant question for which I cited her, O Great Thinker.

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  152. A tin-foil hat is not necessary when you have a tin-foil head.

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  153. I fully admit that at times I let my emotions get the better of me.

    Well, that explains why you have such trouble thinking clearly.

    But I do not hold it up as some sort of ideal, as you apparently do.

    Not at all. Snideness has nothing to do with emotions. Quite the contrary. Unlike you, I rarely let my emotions get the better of me.

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  154. Again, if you would have a good command of the language, and would not get all of your knowledge from Google searches, you would know that it makes no difference if it was murder or justified. Either way, it is homicide.

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  155. If it is going to take you more than two days to respond, I would expect better than that.

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  156. You are right. Snideness has more to do with just being a nasty person than letting one's emotions get the better of him.

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  157. And as I pointed out, O stubborn mule, even on that point she is thin, since all she really managed to rebut was the predication of him as "tough", not "straight-shooter.

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  158. Now you're babbling.

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  159. Of course you would, given my ability! Whereas your dullard response is precisely what I would expect from you.

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  160. As I said, it's the internet, snowflake.

    Besides, you're nasty enough, only in a plodding way.

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  161. So you disagree with her assessment. Right. That's what I said from the get-go.

    Anyhow, go-along-get-along people cannot be straight shooters. It doesn't go with the territory.

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  162. Hillary is the "Establishment" candidate. If she wins, it'll be more of the same, prob. quite similar to what we've known the last 8yrs, and could well even well prove to be more to the center, since she's shown herself over the years to be (to put it very inoffensively) ideologically malleable and always willing to negotiate with the other side.

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  163. No, there you go again, collapsing all critical context away. You may call it "granular" to frame an argument in its particulars, but frankly, fella, in this case it's quite basic. Super-basic, actually. The problem is this:

    You make out like it's a case of I say one way, but she (Strassel) & you et. al (FoL, jb) say the other, as if it's "Do you swing Republican or Democrat?" "Would you prefer soup or fish?" Formally, this question is no matter of mere disagreement or preference, and it has nothing to do with suspicion or supposition or other matters subjective. The question before us -- for the I've-just-lost-count-how-many-times -- is whether there's any basis to dismissing Comey's very public (and unusually transparent) decision as politically motivated? And we can address that question intelligently whether we are inclined so to dismiss it or not. It's a material question, not a personal one. Sort of like: Some think the accused guilty, some not... but what's the evidence?!! That last has the same answer no matter which side you ask.

    I've pointed out that this Strassel provides no such basis for anything beyond "Well, there's no need to suppose he's as 'tough' as everyone keeps repeating he is". Yeah, that's pretty much about it that she has to say. The portrait of him as possibly a go-with-the-party guy is, in that editorial, unsubstantiated by any support. Yet you seem to feel that by citing her you're providing some basis to your suspicion/supposition/preference/etc. regarding the Comey question. That's not being high-level, bird's-eye-view of you; that's just straight-up misunderstanding.

    Yes, you're entitled to your own suspicions; it's a truism that everyone is. The issue is if there's a rational objective basis to the suspicion.

    Shouldn't be so difficult, this matter, and so you'll excuse my coming to suspect your skull to be unusually thick. Well, from one of your more recent Comments it would seem that we can at least both agree that I surely did try to explain it you....

    What comes out of it is that probably you just like believing the worst in any situation where it hurts the candidate politically you don't like (Clinton), and, for that matter, probably the converse as well, i.e., that whatever Trump says/does you'll receive filtered favorably. Blog moderator DT hit the nail on the head at the top of this Post's Comments when in reply to Payen he opined that “the Trump supporters place the prime value that Trump be elected - no matter what […regardless of what] he might do or say […]. There is no way of having an intelligent discussion with them - because no matter what point is brought up - it doesn't matter to them.”

    Or are you so far gone that you do not recognize the essential irrationality of the argument, "Comey must be lying because I hate Hillary" ?

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  164. You totally ignored my comments on Obama's impact on America regardless of whether he is Kenyan or American.

    You brought up birtherism as a red herring to see if I would jump for your phony bait so I played along a little bit.

    The truth is that the official birth certificate that was released is absolutely fraudulent and has been shown to be so by electronic document experts which Sherrif Arpaio brought onto the case. You can check this out yourself.This smells very bad.

    There are many weirdness factors involved in whether he is a citizen or not and many curiosities in his record. Why has he made his entire past secret? All his college records are sealed tight and there is very little public documentation of anything he did that can be easily found. The main street media has been deaf and dumb to any serious investigation or vetting of his past.

    In any case, I really don't care and it doesn't matter anymore since he's inflicted his damage on the USA and will continue to do so until the end of his term.

    As far as the terrorism issue, I guess you would pardon all the Palestinian stabbers, car rammers and shooters because they were all acting out of frustration from not having some weird desire of theirs fulfilled. Therefore, we should just find some lame excuse for each one and mourn for the unforeseen tragedy imposed on our people. You would also maintain that any Germans during world war 2 that attacked or damaged Jews on their own by following Nazi philosophy on their own without officially signing up for it were all innocent. The same goes for all those supporting the Nazi home effort.

    This is a totally blind, evil and ridiculous point of view not worthy of an intelligent human being. All the so called lone wolves were acting out the philosophy of Jihad whether they signed up for the course or not and they were materially aided in many cases by receiving arms and other supplies by their fellow terrorists. To deny this, is fatal blindness and self destruction and homicidal denseness.

    You can go on forgiving the Tzarnaevs, the Orlando shooter, Major Nidal and all other self motivated terrorists. I go with pshita may ko mashma lon rather than making up some idiotic excuse to face reality.

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