A Higher Standard?

Hillary Clinton and her private e-mail server, story or no story?

The Clintons have many political enemies. The first reason for this is the simple equation of opponents for the same office. The second reason is the Clintons are tough and resilient, the harder you charge at them the stronger they become. They are in short, survivors.

Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server violated no laws, department regulations or best practices. The e-mails currently being released were from the original 50,000 pages already provided to the State Department. The ones flagged for review for "classified" information are based on deciding if they should now be marked classified, they weren't classified while Clinton was Secretary of State. This is what the normal process would be before allowing public access. There is also the normal inter-departmental bickering over what should and shouldn't be classified, a detail we would otherwise be oblivious to except this is about Hillary Clinton.

The Republican Party is making an issue of it for obvious reasons. The general media however, is doing a disservice to the country because it is bored with the Democratic Presidential race. In spite of the fact that Bernie Sanders is providing a phenomenal story for them to cover but they don't find it controversial enough. Bernie is just too nice for their taste and they don't believe he's going to be the nominee. They also don't like Clinton's lack of daily media availability. As the presumed nominee they are looking for vulnerabilities in Clinton, even if it means stirring the pot on something as banal as e-mails and private servers.

John Kerry is the first Secretary of State to use a dot gov e-mail address because he is legally required to. That law came into effect after Clinton had been out of office over a year.

Colin Powell used a private e-mail account to conduct affairs of state and oh yeah, a private server that was paid for by the RNC. Powell never turned over his private e-mails to the State Department. We never heard a peep from the media or anyone in government.

If Hillary Clinton was going to sanitize her e-mails, do you really think she would have provided the ones that attack powerful people she would likely have to deal with if she becomes President? Such as John Boehner being described as an alcoholic by a Clinton friend.

The media is hyper-critical of Hillary Clinton, either she is too stiff and formal or described as tone deaf when making jokes about the e-mails. Make up your mind. In my opinion her jokes have been quite funny.

There is nothing there to this story but that won't stop the nonsense surrounding it. The media will gleefully portray it as big trouble in the campaign and the Republicans will do what they do, even regurgitating untruths that have been retracted.

The Republican Party wants Hillary Clinton's Campaign to be torpedoed and sunk because they know that in a general election defeating her will be incredibly hard and in all likelihood impossible. They would be wise to focus less on Clinton and more on their own nominating process.