2016-07-10 – More hysteria about Hillary’s email this week, but I’m going to clear it up for you. It’s partly about motivation. It’s partly generational. And it’s partly about a hate campaign.

The first legitimate question is: why did Gen. David Petraeus and Edward Snowden get in trouble for digital wrongdoing and Hillary did not? It all has to do with motivation. Petraeus gave classified information to his mistress so she could write a book. Snowden delivered classified information to the press to expose the NSA. You could argue that Snowden was the nobler of the two (or not). But both of these guys INTENTIONALLY disclosed classified info. They were motivated to do so.

Hillary did not act intentionally. She had no motive, as Petraeus or Snowden had. You could say she was lazy about her email. But U.S. law does not make laziness a criminal offense. (Good thing, eh?) (Check this link out for other examples. All who were charged with crimes acted deliberately. Hillary did not.)

The second legitimate question is: Why did Hillary use an insecure system? The facts are that she did use a secure system for highly confidential messages, as all Secretaries of State do. But like all Secretaries of State prior to her, she used private email for the rest. As I said, you could call this laziness. I don’t mean to say that setting up a server in your home is lazy. That’s not lazy. But you don’t think Hillary was crawling around under a desk connecting wires, do you. She had some tech guy do it.

The laziness I’m talking about is that she just coasted on practices that her predecessors in the State Department followed. Folks in the Bush administration used private email, so she used private email. There was no one at the State Department who gave her an account on her first day on the job and trained in its use. We get that treatment when we start a new job, but let’s face it: we’re not the boss.

And furthermore, even rank and file didn’t always get the keep-you-emails-secure training videos in 2008 when Hillary started her job. Should she have been more careful? Of course she should have. Did she act different from most big-shot execs of the time? No. None of her predecessors used a secure system as John Kerry now does. It just wasn’t considered necessary at the time. (Yes, I know. Some businesses did follow strict security protocols in 2008. The wisdom just hadn’t yet reached the State Department.)

The third legitimate question is: Why isn’t the FBI investigating the Bush administration for deliberately destroying millions of emails that they ran through Republican Party servers during their time in office? The answer is that Democrats didn’t doggedly demand it. The Republic Party has been running a hate-Hillary campaign for decades. The louder the clamor, the more you will distrust Hillary.

Are you going to buy that? I’m not.