Rav Shmuel Kaminetsy - unapologetically responsible for adultery - is honored with a sefer Torah - "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"

Watch video!

Hi,

I just saw this clip and there are no words to describe it other than unreal.

http://matzav.com/watch-hachnosas-sefer-torah-at-philadelphia-yeshiva-in-honor-of-rav-shmuel-kamenetsky/

What is wrong with our chareidi world today is everything literally upside down? I just don't understand it, there is a woman continuing to commit adultery because of him and they write a sefer torah to honor him. Am I missing something here??

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Below is a letter from Rav Steinman to Rav Kaminetsky

kvod harav 

do you recall any letters sent from e'y rabbonim to the hundreds of  hachnasas sifrei torah a year that take place in the USA or is this some political eishes ish letter??????

Esti Weinstein: Channel 10 Reporter says that the Secular Media has maligned Chareidim with false accusations and reporting

Arutz 7   Channel 10 news reporter Avishai Ben-Haim, who works very closely with the haredi community (but is not haredi himself), thinks the press has committed a grave injustice in its coverage of the suicide of Esti Weinstein, saying that "basically everything you've heard about haredi wickedness in this matter is untrue."

Weinstein was found dead in her car on Sunday after years of estrangement from her Gerrer hassidic family, and her story continues to make waves in Israeli public discourse. The circumstances surrounding the tragic event have sparked debate about the Gerrer hassidic community, its social norms and practices (especially as pertains to the treatment of women), and attitudes within religious circles to those who leave religious observance.

Weinstein left a will explaining her reasons for taking her own life and a tell-all book about her life story. She accuses the Gerrer community of forbidding her children from having any contact with her once she left religious observance, and cites the disconnect from her family as the main cause of her emotional suffering, leading to her suicide. Many in the press have put the blame for the tragedy squarely on Weinstein's family and the Gerrer hassidic and wider haredi community in general. The veteran channel 10 reporter thinks this is grossly unfair.[...]

Ben-Haim opens with his impressions from the funeral itself:

"This is what injustice looks like. We came to Esti Weinstein's funeral today expecting to meet her evil and cold-hearted family and instead met a noble and sensitive family, we heard a eulogy from a loving haredi father and an explanation and request for forgiveness from a hurting haredi daughter.

"All of this means that we need to rewrite the entire story of the past 48 hours and tell the truth: everything you heard about the wickedness of the haredi side was a lie."

The Channel 10 reporter then goes into detail, discussing individual claims made in the press, going point by point through the events, in chronological order:

"Something about this seemed fishy to me from the beginning. First it was claimed that the haredi family members were going to snatch the body to bury it on their own terms. I called and spoke with the family. They were shocked by the idea, 'Of course not! Heaven forbid!'. I don't need to tell you that no one actually tried to snatch the body.

"Next they said that Weinstein's daughters broke off contact from their mother because of a cruel order from the Admor [leader of a hassidic community]. I called again, I spoke with the family, and they swore that there was no directive from the Admor and explained that this was not a religious issue at all, merely a human one. The girls were angry at their beloved mother who simply up and left them one day 7 years ago. Hence the estrangement.

"Afterwards they said that the haredim are demanding she be buried outside of the cemetery walls. I called, spoke with the family, and they were shocked by the idea, 'she was a good mother, we love her. We never had any such plans.'

"Then they said that they don't intend to sit Shiva [week-long mourning period in Jewish law] for Esti. I called, spoke with the family, they were shocked by that idea too. No such thing had ever crossed their minds.

"Next, they said that the family is demanding a small and quick haredi funeral that will demean Esti's memory. I called. Spoke with the family. They said this was untrue and that they had every intention of honoring their late mother's wishes, having already made clear that they have no problem with there being flowers and songs at the funeral [as per Weinstein's instructions in her will].

"Then the courts were petitioned to make sure that the funeral will be held with a secular atmosphere (not that songs and flowers really make a funeral 'secular'), and it was reported that the secular side won as the court ruled against the haredi family. But the haredi family never sent anyone to the hearing to contest any of this and wasn't even part of any fight. They didn't want to fight about this and there was no need to 'beat them' in court, for as I've already written, the family wanted to honor Esti's non-haredi wishes.

"After that, it was claimed that the family was boycotting the funeral, which would indeed be the height of cruelty. But then... well, then we saw a large group of haredi Gerrer hassidic women arriving at the funeral, sobbing, and sad Gerrer hassidic men, all standing to the side, quietly and politely, and waiting for the time when they will be able to take part in the proceedings. We heard the father eulogizing his daughter, and the eldest daughter Raheli eulogizing her mother. No haredi told Raheli that she wasn't allowed to speak in this kind of forum because she's a girl.

"It was then that I understood that this week, a grave injustice was committed among the Jewish people." [...]

Ben-Haim's post ends with a quote of the full text of Weinstein's eldest daughter's eulogy, excerpts from which were available before the funeral and were published by Arutz Sheva.

Rav Yitzchok Isaac Sher's view of marriage - the importance of human love (regarding criticism of Gerrer Takanos/Esti Weinstein)

I first published this on 3/30/15. I am republishing this because of the current discussion of the Gerrer Takanos in connection to Esti Weinstein. The criticism of the Takanos is discussed in detail in the following article by Prof. Brown

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The following is from   Kedushah: SEXUAL ABSTINENCE IN HASIDIC GROUPS by Prof Benny Brown. The pamphlet from Rav Scher is found on Hebrew Books
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The Hazon Ish probably wrote this letter in Bnei Brak in the early 1950s. At approximately the same time and in the same place, another Litvish rabbi, R. Yitshak Isaac Sher (1881–1952), the head of the prestigious Slobodka yeshivah, wrote an article entitled Kedushat yisra’el [the Holiness of the Jewish People], which dealt somewhat more bluntly with the same sensitive issue.[...]

Rabbi Sher begins by drawing attention to an apparent controversy between Maimonides and Nahmanides, the former condemning sexual desire and the latter condoning it as holy. Rabbi Sher concludes that there is no real disagreement between them: sexual desire, like all other physical desires, is natural and should be condemned only if it is indulged by way of excessive pleasures, but it is holy when it functions within the boundaries set by the Torah, namely, in order to fulfill the commandment of onah. He proceeds to analyze the views of Rashi and Nahmanides on the matter, concluding as follows:

One does not observe the mitsvah [of onah] properly if one performs it only in order to fulfill one’s obligation. [. . .] In truth, he who performs coition without ardor violates [the commandment] “her duty of marriage [= onah] shall he not diminish” (Ex. 21:10).78 [. . .] Just as it is prohibited to abstain altogether from the act itself, which is the husband’s duty of onah in respect of his wife, so it is prohibited to refrain from physical intimacy with her, which is what the wife craves—to enjoy her physical intimacy with her husband. This entails desire that goes beyond what is required for [the performance of] the act itself. The husband is commanded to satisfy her desire as she pleases. And see [B.] YevamotOne does not observe the mitsvah [of onah] properly if one performs it only in order to fulfill one’s obligation. [. . .] In truth, he who performs coition without ardor violates [the  commandment] “her duty of marriage [= onah] shall he not diminish” (Ex.21:10).78 [. . .] Just as it is prohibited to abstain altogether from the act itself, which is the husband’s duty of onah in respect of  his wife, so it is prohibited to refrain from physical intimacy with her, which is what the wife craves—to enjoy her physical intimacywith her husband. This entails desire that goes beyond what is required for [the performance of] the act itself. The husband is commanded to satisfy her desire as she pleases. And see [B.] YevamotOne does not observe the mitsvah [of onah] properly if one performs it only in order to fulfill one’s obligation. [. . .]

 In truth, he who performs coition without ardor violates [the commandment] “her duty of marriage [= onah] shall he not diminish” (Ex.21:10).78 [. . .] Just as it is prohibited to abstain altogether from the act itself, which is the husband’s duty of onah in respect of his wife, so it is prohibited to refrain from physical intimacy with her, which is what the wife craves—to enjoy her physical intimacy with her husband. This entails desire that goes beyond what is required for [the performance of] the act itself. The husband is commanded to satisfy her desire as she pleases. And see [B.] Yevamot 62 and Pesahim 72, where it is stated explicitly that whenever she desires and yearns for her husband—this is her [rightful] onah, even if it exceeds the prescribed minimum.

Rabbi Sher goes on to attack the hasidic understanding of kedushah:

I have heard that some pretended God-fearing and pious men [mithasedim] take great care to fulfill this mitsvah for the sake of Heaven, without any desire.80 Such a person would busy himself half the night with Torah and prayer [. . .] and only then, aftermidnight, would he come home and wake up his wife, prattle to her placatingly in order to fulfill this mitsvah. [Naturally,] she allows him to do with her as he pleases, and he is proud of having managed to fulfill this commandment without [succumbing to] the evil inclination, [namely], without any impure lust. He later wonders why the sons he has produced in this way have turned out to be wicked or stupid!81 Surely, the reason is the false belief that it is wrong to perform the commandment [of onah] with desire, whereas [the truth is that] a son conceived without desire turns out to be foolish, as is well known, and when intercourse takes place without the wife’s full consent or desire, that is, when she would rather be asleep and is angry with her husband for disturbing her and doing with her as he pleases rather than as she pleases, then he violates a Torah prohibition, and his sons will possess the nine evil traits82 of the rebellious and sinful.

The Children of Israel, he contends, are so holy that they are able to “delight themselves in the Lord”84 through eating and coitus, just as Adam had done before the Sin of Eden.85 For the Lord wishes his children to “delight themselves in His goodness.” This is why they are able to perform physical acts “for the sake of Heaven,” while those who endeavor to shun the physical pleasure of sexual intercourse end up diminished mentally and spiritually. For even if they declare in advance that they intend to perform the sexual act only in order to fulfill the commandment of onah, they know all too well that when it comes to the act itself, they are bound to be distracted from their purpose by the inevitable stirring of their natural desire, and they end up performing the whole act lustfully.86 To convince the hasidim that his understanding of the matter is correct, Rabbi Sher appeals to their view of themselves as heirs to the kabbalistic tradition by adducing a series of quotations from the Zohar to corroborate his position.[...]

As an adherent of the Musar movement (musarnik), which developed in the Lithuanian yeshivot in the late nineteenth century and called for ethical self-improvement, R. Sher acknowledges that the couple achieve sanctification by ensuring that during coitus they focus on nothing other than the ethical and religious significance of the act. He takes this significance to be (a) the creation of a new human being, which resembles the work of God; (b) the union of male and female in the image of God, by which, “through the power of desire,” they come to resemble Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; and (c) a means of enhancing their love for each other, which is not only a virtue in itself but also serves to enhance their love of God and of their fellow human beings. He admits, however, that the virtue of love “is not properly developed among us [the haredim]. Those who have claimed in their learned books that marital love is contingent on transient factors (ahavah hateluyah badavar)”88 are wrong. “For surely, this love is natural, and it is a mitsvah to enhance and develop it properly,” which includes the husband’s obligation to satisfy his wife whenever she desires him.

It is for this reason, Rabbi Sher contends, that when the couple come together, the husband must address his wife in a way that conveys not only “awe, piety, and chastity,” but also tenderness, affection, and erotic love (agavim). He clearly anticipates the reader’s astonishment at the latter: “The
point of erotic love seems difficult to understand,” but he quotes the Zohar and Maimonides to bolster his argument that the husband must speak to his wife explicitly even “about her [physical] beauty.”

Without expressly mentioning the Gerer hasidim, he condemns what he calls the bad habits arising from a common misunderstanding of the ideal of kedushah:

As for the bad habits that many of them have adopted in error, believing that in order to maintain themselves in holiness they must  refrain from talking to their wives—the rabbis must strive to make them realize that this kind of holiness is the very essence of impurity [. . .] and that the husband must speak to his wife, addressing her with wondrously affectionate words of placation. [...]

   Kedushas Yisroel by Rav Y I Sher

Esti Weinstein - formerly religious Gerrer chasid - commits suicide because of the loss of her daughters she abandoned

Arutz 7   As ever more reactions pour in throughout the haredi world in the wake of the suicide of Esti Weinstein--who was found dead in her car in Ashdod after a week-long search--in a tragedy that has garnered much attention in the wider Israeli public due to its backstory, a more important perspective, that of Weinstein's estranged children, has now been offered.

Weinstein left the Gerrer hassidic community and religious observance several years ago, leading to a complete break of contact with 6 of her 7 daughters, in an estrangement allegedly enforced by Gerrer community leaders.

The late mother left a note and a will on her computer, explaining that the cause of her decision to commit suicide was the estrangement from her children. She also left a book detailing her entire life story in which she makes severe allegations against Gerrer leaders and norms, and asked that it be disseminated in every way possible, mentioning in the will that she wants "as many "Dossim" [slang term for religious or haredi people] to read it." [...]

The husband of one of Weinstein's daughters had the following to say: "You can't blame little girls who get angry at their mother in this kind of situation. It's a normal thing, a human story, something that happens the world over. I don't think it's anything that should be brought in support of any one side's agenda."

In response to the question of whether the daughters broke off contact with their mother for religious reasons, the son-in-law said that "they broke off contact because of this unsolved mystery: a mother who abandons her children. It's very possible she had right on her side, it's very possible that no one was right here, the bottom line is you can't blame the angry reaction of daughters abandoned by their mother."

Ben-Chaim also published a eulogy written by one of the daughters:

"Mother, we will remember and never forget the years in which you raised us. We well always remember the way you walked with us glowing with pride, seven amazing girls."

"We will remember and never forget the sudden, bitter day when you abandoned us. We begged for explanations, we asked to come with you, but you turned your back on our feelings. Little girls who were just abandoned one day and have no mother to explain things to them and pick up the pieces."

"Mother, mother, we will always remember and not forget. I understand there are things we couldn't take back, but now you can watch us from above, listen, and understand everything that the people around us didn't. But the most important thing is that you forgive us now."

What One Rape Cost Our Family

NY Times   WHEN people hear about campus sexual assaults, they rarely understand the true impact such an attack has on the survivor and her family. But I do.

In the spring of 2013, my daughter, Willa, was raped by a fellow student at her college in Washington, D.C. A freshman at the time, she did not tell anyone until a year later. Meanwhile, she developed post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, depression and an addiction to alcohol. And while she chose not to file criminal charges — out of fear of being traumatized again — she struggled so much after the attack that ultimately she had to leave school.

It would be impossible for me to describe in the space of a newspaper article the emotional toll this took on Willa and our family: the grief we felt that our child’s body (and soul) had been violated; the anger that we (and the college) could not protect her; the fear that our once spirited, ambitious daughter might never be more than a shell of herself. But I can offer, by way of illustration, a financial reckoning — collateral damage that demonstrates the devastation, and that rarely comes up in the national discussion on campus sexual assaults.

The financial burdens of an attack can be overwhelming. A 2014 White House report noted that the cost to survivors (of all types, not just college students) can range from $87,000 to $240,776 per rape. While the numbers are staggering, they seem abstract until your family is the one paying the bills. In our case, they were on the higher end of the range, and included the following:[...]

There were other expenses too, but the ones I’ve listed add up to $100,573.63 out of pocket, and approximately $145,000 in lost wages, for a total of $245,573.63. That’s roughly the same as the cost of four years at one of the nation’s top colleges.

I should be clear: I would have done anything, made any financial sacrifices, to see the light again in my daughter’s eyes (which is there now, thanks to Willa’s hard work and the many caring professionals who helped her). I recently went through a divorce, however, and my former husband and I are writers, not investment bankers. These are big costs for us; at times, we had to borrow from family or retirement funds, or use proceeds from the sale of the house we gave up in the divorce.

We’re fortunate to have top-tier health insurance, which helped defray many of the costs. But this is still an extraordinary amount of money, and I often wonder how survivors from less privileged backgrounds recover from these attacks. It’s not a hypothetical question.

According to a 2015 survey at 27 universities by the Association of American Universities, 11.7 percent of all students (including men) reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact, by force or incapacitation, since enrolling at their university, and the incidence among undergraduate females was 23 percent.

These costs are enormous for any rape survivor, not just those who suffered a campus sexual assault. For our family, they continue to accrue. [...]

Oh Boy: Was A National Security Position Given As Payback To A Clinton Foundation Donor?

Townhall   This is a very strange article since it is based on reporting done  by the "leftwing newsmedia" ABC which several commentators have stated have ignored anything negative about Hillary.

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It seems as if anything is up for sale if you give enough money to the Clinton Foundation, even positions on a national security intelligence board that has access to top-secret information. Meet Rajiv K. Fernando, a big donor to Clinton, Democrats, and the family foundation, was given a spot on the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board in 2011, even though he had zero experience in the field. He has since resigned from the board after ABC News launched an inquiry into his appointment. The first thing that they asked for from the State Department was his resume. Emails obtained by Citizens United after a 2-year Freedom of Information Act battle with the State Department showed that Clinton’s staffers were instructed to “stall” and “protect the name” of Mrs. Clinton from the news organization’s review of this appointment. One member told ABC, “We had no idea who he was.”

ABC News’ Brian Ross was threatened with arrest for merely asking Fernando about his appointment during the 2012 Democratic National Convention. He added that Clinton promised Foundation donors would not be given special treatment during her confirmation hearings to become secretary of state (via ABC News) [...]

Before suicide, woman penned book about her ordeals in ultra-Orthodox world

Times of Israel


A formerly ultra-Orthodox woman, who was found dead in her car on Sunday after apparently taking her own life days earlier, had written a short autobiography describing the rigors of living within the Gur Hasidic sect and the pain she felt when her daughters cut ties with her over her choice to give up religion.

Eight years ago Weinstein, who had seven daughters, chose to leave the ultra-Orthodox fold, in which she had grown up and which had seen her married at 17.

Trump campaign falsely claims that State Department gave $55.2 million to Laureate Education after hiring Bill Clinton

Washington Post   “As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton laundered money to Bill Clinton through Laureate Education, while Bill Clinton was an honorary chairman of the group. Clinton’s State Department provided $55.2 million in grants to Laureate Education from 2010-2012. Laureate thanked Bill for providing unbelievable access to the Secretary of State by paying him off $16.5 million. This is yet another example of how Clinton treated the State Department as her own personal hedge fund, and sold out the American public to fund her lavish lifestyle.”   –Donald Trump campaign, email response to Hillary Clinton’s speech, June 21, 2016
The Trump campaign sent out a series of email and Twitter responses during Hillary Clinton’s speech attacking his business record, and among them was this claim that came to our attention. As usual, the Trump campaign did not respond to our request for supporting information. During his speech the next day attacking Clinton’s record as secretary of state, Trump repeated the charge that Clinton treated the State Department as her “personal hedge fund” with no evidence to back it up, either.

This talking point traces back to information from Peter Schweizer’s book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.” In one chapter, in discussing Bill Clinton’s role with Laureate Education, Inc., Schweizer describes a “Clinton blur” between the activities of Bill Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. But critics, including Schweizer, have not been able to prove quid pro quo.

The short answer here is: Laureate Education Inc. did not receive $55.2 million in grants from the State Department while Bill Clinton was being paid by the company. This talking point actually conflates two organizations that are independent of each other, and is worth unraveling for our readers. So we explored it.[...]

Why do some blame rape victims while others blame the rapist?- Why do some people shoot the messenger and protect the transgressor?

The following article offers an interesting explanation of why there are diverse reactions in a wide ranger of situations in labeling who the good guy is and who is the bad guy. Why are some rape victims supported and others are harshly attacked for causing problems for the rapist. Likewise - why do someone people attack the messenger when it is pointed out that some rabbis and even gedolim have committed significant crimes and others view it as a acting according to what halacha and thus G-d wants? The authors argue that it depends largely on whether the prime value is group unity or the focus on the well being of the individual

NY Times

IF you are mugged on a midnight stroll through the park, some people will feel compassion for you, while others will admonish you for being there in the first place. If you are raped by an acquaintance after getting drunk at a party, some will be moved by your misfortune, while others will ask why you put yourself in such a situation.

What determines whether someone feels sympathy or scorn for the victim of a crime? Is it a function of political affiliation? Of gender? Of the nature of the crime?

In a recent series of studies, we found that the critical factor lies in a particular set of moral values. Our findings, published on Thursday in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, show that the more strongly you privilege loyalty, obedience and purity — as opposed to values such as care and fairness — the more likely you are to blame the victim.

These two sets of values have been the object of much scholarly attention. Psychologists have found that when it comes to morality, some people privilege promoting the care of others and preventing unfair behaviors. These are “individualizing values,” as they can apply to any individual. Other people privilege loyalty, obedience and purity. These are “binding values,” as they promote the cohesion of your particular group or clan.

Binding and individualizing values are not mutually exclusive, and people have varying degrees of both. But psychologists have discovered that the extent to which you favor one relative to the other predicts various things about you. For example, the more strongly you identify with individualizing values, the more likely you are to be politically progressive; the more strongly you identify with binding values, the more likely you are to be politically conservative.

Our animating insight was that these two clusters of values entail different conceptions of victims. Proponents of individualizing values tend to see a dyad of victim and perpetrator (a victim is hurt, a perpetrator does the hurting). Proponents of binding values, however, may see behaviors as immoral even when there is no obvious victim — for example, the “impure” act of premarital sex or the “disloyal” act of flag burning — and may even feel that doing the right thing sometimes requires hurting others (as with honor killings, to pick an extreme example). So we hypothesized that support for binding values would correlate with a greater tendency to blame victims. [...]

Consistent with our previous findings, the more participants endorsed binding values, the more blame they assigned to victims and the less blame they assigned to perpetrators. But we also found that focusing their attention on the perpetrator led to reduced ratings of victim blame, victim responsibility and references to victims’ actions, whereas a focus on victims led to greater victim blaming. This was surprising: You might assume that focusing on victims elicits more sympathy for them, but our results suggest that it may have the opposite effect.

Victim blaming appears to be deep-seated, rooted in core moral values, but also somewhat malleable, susceptible to subtle changes in language. For those looking to increase sympathy for victims, a practical first step may be to change how we talk: Focusing less on victims and more on perpetrators — “Why did he think he had license to rape?” rather than “Imagine what she must be going through” — may be a more effective way of serving justice.

Cameras are being put in Jerusalem mikvehs to stop abuse: Increasing transparency at what price?

Kikar HaShabbat

בשל החשש מאירועי תקיפות אכזריות של ילדים ונערים בחדרי המקוואות בירושלים, החליטו במשמרת הצניעות להתקין מצלמות אבטחה במספר מקוואות בעיר.

את הצילומים של מצלמות האבטחה יכולים לראות שלושה רבנים בלבד וזאת תחת מעטה כבד של אבטחה.

על פי הדיווח ב'ידיעות ירושלים', מצלמות האבטחה הותקנו בסמוך לבורות הטבילה, המקלחות וחדרי ההלבשה והסאונה.

המקווה הראשון והמפורסם בעיר בו הותקנו מצלמות האבטחה הוא מקווה 'שומרי החומות'. מי שרשאים לצפות בצילומים הם שלושה רבנים שצריכים להתכנס יחד במקרה שהוגשה תלונה על פגיעה בילד. השלושה יצטרכו להיכנס אל המערכת באמצעות 'טביעת אצבע'.

Breslov Hashkofa: You can't be saved unless you accept Rav Nachman!

See specifically:

The beginning

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The Coming Constitutional Crisis Over Hillary Clinton’s EmailGate

Observer   Suddenly things were aligning perfectly for Hillary Clinton in her quest for the presidency. After months of embarrassing inability to vanquish Senator Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old socialist who represents a state with just two-tenths of a percent of the American population, she wrapped up her party’s nomination for the White House. The Democratic convention in Philadelphia next month will be a formality, no matter how loudly Bernie Bros stomp their feet.

To cap that triumph last week, President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton as their party’s nominee for 2016. While this, too, was a formality, since Mr. Obama was eventually going to endorse her—no matter how much bad blood lingers between them from the 2008 race—it was satisfying to her supporters, if perhaps overdue.

The president’s praising assessment of Clinton, including “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office,” should go a long way toward unifying their party as she faces her Republican opponent, presumably Donald Trump, this autumn.

Obama’s praise was salve on the wounds Clinton recently suffered at the hands of the State Department over EmailGate. The long-awaited report by the Office of the Inspector General at Foggy Bottom can be fairly termed scathing and, as I assessed in this column, it leaves no doubt that Hillary Clinton systematically dodged a raft of laws and regulations on the keeping of Federal records and the handling of classified information.

Worse, the IG report leaves no doubt that Clinton has lied profligately about EmailGate from the moment the scandal broke over a year ago. Since the State Department, which Clinton headed during President Obama’s first term, cannot plausibly be painted as part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that Team Clinton sees lurking behind every piece of bad press, this report caused real damage to Hillary’s presidential campaign.

True to form, she began punching back herself and through surrogates. Their main talking point—that EmailGate remains a nothing-burger, a figment of the overheated FoxNews imagination more than a bona fide story—continues to be peddled daily. As she confidently said to the cameras last week, there’s “zero chance” she will be indicted over EmailGate, no matter what the FBI finds in its still-active investigation of the matter.

For good measure, Clinton stated for the umpteenth time, “nothing I sent or received at the time was marked classified.” This dodge has been employed for a year as cover by Team Clinton to explain how so much classified information, including at least two dozen emails classified top secret or higher, among them enormously sensitive special access programs from both CIA and NSA, wound up in Clinton’s “unclassified” private email. [...]

To make matters worse for Hillary, it recently emerged that at least one of the emails she handed over to investigators under subpoena in fact did contain classified information that was marked as such. The April 2012 email chain discusses an impending phone call with Malawi’s new president. The important part is an email from Monica Hanley, an aide, to Clinton, including the “call sheet” for the secretary. In layman’s terms, this was a note for Secretary Clinton telling her what she needed to discuss during her scheduled phone conversation with a foreign head of state.[...]

In reality, nobody goes to jail for mishandling classified information at the Confidential level. However, the Hanley email proves that Hillary’s staff was emailing her classified information in unclassified channels, that it was marked classified, and that it was transiting Clinton’s personal email server. It’s difficult to believe that a mere aide like Monica Hanley decided to break the law like this, as she surely knew she was, on her own initiative.[...]

Last week the Associated Press broke a big story about how Clinton’s “unclassified” emails included the true names of CIA personnel serving overseas under cover. This was hardly news, in fact I broke the same story four months ago in this column. However, the AP account adds detail to what Clinton and her staff did, actions that placed the lives of CIA clandestine personnel at risk. It also may be a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a 1982 law that featured prominently in the mid-aughts scandal surrounding CIA officer Valerie Plame, which so captivated the mainstream media. More recently, former CIA officer John Kiriakou spent two years in Federal prison for violating this law.

To make matters worse for Team Clinton, last week it emerged that several of the classified emails under investigation involved discussions of impending CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. Clinton aides were careful to avoid hot-button words like “CIA” and “drone” in these “unclassified” emails, engaging in a practice that spies term “talking around” an issue.[....]

How the FBI can look at all this and not recommend prosecution of someone for something in EmailGate strains the imagination. Yet President Obama has clearly signaled that it’s all no big deal. Director James Comey has a tough job before him when he takes the FBI’s official recommendations regarding EmailGate to Attorney General Lynch for action, probably sometime this summer. Since Comey is now under a cloud over the FBI’s embarrassing mishandling of Omar Mateen, the Orlando jihadist mass murderer, perhaps his resignation over that matter would be welcome in the White House, which then could find a new director more willing to bend to Obama’s wishes.

Make no mistake, there are more than a few senior intelligence officials in Washington, DC, who are livid about Hillary Clinton’s willful disregard of clearly defined laws on the handling of classified information. Her misconduct endangered sensitive intelligence programs—and lives. Even if Comey is a sacrificial lamb here, there are high-ranking spies who are perfectly willing to leak the sordid details of EmailGate to the media if the president pulls a Dick Nixon and tries to subvert our Constitution to protect himself and his designated successor.[...]