Since she's on record with an email response already, this one is harder to dodge. I think she will point to the security record of her server and say no one could ever prove it was hacked. And they can't prove anything about her blackberries or iPads either, because...
Remember, according to the FBI investigation, several of Hillary's blackberries were literally destroyed by smashing them with hammers or breaking them in half.
I'm sure Hillary cannot recall what was discussed in that private meeting. Perhaps Congress should subpeona the other person who was there and ask them.
26 things we learned from the FBI release last friday
Among other things, someone was messing with FOIA requests by running them through a separate, unusual process with dedicated (and carefully selected) new staff rather than the normal staff. I wouldn't be surprised if that's how Wilkins handled the IRS document production to Congress.
Court rules the First Amendment does not apply to speech about guns
There are a couple problems with this ruling. The most obvious is that the First Amendment doesn't have a national security exception. People can agree not to disclose classified information (such as in return for employment or access to the information), and that agreement can be enforced, but the government can't go to a newspaper and say they aren't allowed to publish something classified. They can ask nicely and most journalists will play along if it's really about national security, but that's it. And this isn't about national security; it's about the ability to 3D-print a very basic handgun. There are millions of handguns legally owned in the United States and probably billions in the world.
Second, this has already been litigated. Decades ago, when BJ Clinton was president, there was a program called Pretty Good Privacy that was able to encrypt messages in a way that the government could not decrypt. The government hated that program and wanted it destroyed. If they couldn't have it destroyed, they wanted to make sure it stayed within the borders of the United States. They had regulations about that, regulations that treated encryption technology as munitions: that is, as a weapon, military technology. If you wanted to export weapons you had to get all sorts of licenses and permission slips, and the government would impose conditions, like don't sell this to our enemies. They brought all sorts of pressure on the author to get him to go through this process or stop distributing his program.
Instead, he printed out the source code of his program and published it, as a book... protected by the First Amendment.
This is exactly the same thing. The files in this case are the source code for a small, mostly (but not entirely) plastic, single-shot handgun.
I've already written about my impressions of the first 2016 presidential debate. Most of that was about the candidates' back and forth. I thought I would add my thoughts on the role played by Lester Holt, the supposedly unbiased moderator.
He was clearly biased.
In 2012, Candy Crowley collaborated with the Obama campaign to ambush Romney; when Romney criticized Obama (accurately) on refusing to call the Benghazi attack terrorism, Obama claimed he had called in terrorism in a speech. Candy Crowley, moderating the debate, jumped in to support him. The combination left Romney flustered and not sure where to go next.
But as it turns out, Candy was relying on a transcript of a speech Obama gave in which he did not in fact call the attack terrorism. He made some references to terrorism but not including the Benghazi attack among them. Romney, and everyone on the Internet criticizing the cover-up, was in fact correct. Candy got that speech in advance of the debate from the Obama campaign. It was, in other words, a planned collaboration.
Moreover, CBS News was sitting on a recorded interview with Obama in which Obama explicitly declined to call the Benghazi attack terrorism. Candy Crowley lied by commission, collaborated unethically with one of the candidates, and lied again by omission.
It has been alleged that someone at NBC provided Hillary with the debate questions in advance, allowing her to memorize prepared answers. I don't know if that's accurate; if it turns out to be true, it would be unethical collaboration. But even if it does not, Lester Holt was pressured by Hillary's campaign and a compliant media to "fact check" Trump live during the debate. He attempted to do that multiple times, with relatively limited success, but very persistently.
He did not try to fact-check Clinton even once.
That's clear and obvious bias, and arguably collaboration.
Lester Holt threw away his reputation and the trust of the public in that debate. He should be ashamed of himself, and the rest of the media should be ashamed of him. He should never be trusted to moderate such an event again.
There's no good answer here. Even her usual dodges (aside from "I don't recall") won't work. FOIA requests are handled separately by different government agencies and records have to be requested from specific agencies that hold them. If Hillary emails, say, obama@whitehouse.gov, then the logical agency to request the email from would be the State Department. That agency would not have a record. You could then guess "Hey, maybe Hillary emailed Obama at the white house email address. Let's file a FOIA request there." That email system may not be set up to preserve incoming emails as opposed to outgoing ones, and even if it is, you're basically making someone who wants Hillary's emails go to every possible government agency and make a separate request for her emails at each agency. Each agency would have time to search and perhaps deny the request, and perhaps even have to be sued. It would be an insurmountable barrier of red tape.
If you believe the email mix-up excuse, you're a fool. They delayed the release because the Presidential debate started at 9pm the night the release was due. If they did the release on time, stories about the release would have been mixed in with the debate stories and gotten a huge audience. By doing the release right after the debate instead, they get a more limited audience and also changed the topic from the debate.
The timing would be pretty close, too, but if the release had happened properly the Trump campaign might have been able to review it before the debate and unleash some devastating attacks during the debate.
I'd rather have Trump, the classic "ugly American" who is quintessentially American, wealthy but unpolished, sincere but undiplomatic... than a corrupt elitist like Hillary. And that's before we begin to discuss whether Hillary is even capable of filling the role of President for 4 years. She can't even manage a diplomatic trip to Mexico during her campaign, and she's afraid to take questions from the press before any stupid blunders she makes as President.
I'll post my notes here. I probably won't try to liveblog it. So far, the pre-game show is that moderators will try to "fact-check" the candidates, which is media-speak for trying to help Clinton like Candy Crowley helped Obama with Benghazi. It turned out that Crowley was wrong, and Obama was wrong, and Romney was right. So my advice is to ignore any instant fact-checks as presumptively biased. Look it up yourself.
Overall conclusion: Hillary scored a few points, but Trump won solidly. There was some substance but less than I would have liked. More details below the fold.
UPDATE: Patterico points out that Hillary had a bit of a neurological event. I missed this because I wasn't watching the video feed when it happened. I had a suspicion it might have because the "WHOO! OKAY!" line reminded me of the "iced chai" comment; it looks to me like she felt something coming and couldn't entirely suppress it so she tried to mask it.
Watch and judge for yourself.
If the best medical support teams can't get her to function on stage for 90 minutes without a malfunction, maybe her warranty has expired and she needs to be replaced with the latest model.
UPDATE: Total of 9 people wounded now. The police say the attacker is dead at the scene, and was a "disgruntled lawyer". That means they know who he was and are choosing not to release his name. The police found "numerous weapons" at the scene and the bomb squad is checking the attacker's car.
I'm betting this is one of those cases where "There are no obvious indications of terrorism" even though it's obviously terrorism.
UPDATE: So apparently he was wearing a Nazi uniform, and had other vintage (unspecified, but "going back to the Civil War") uniforms or military regalia in his home. So, terrorism, but not Islamic terrorism, right? Were his targets of any particular demographic?
His father's first name is "Prakash", which is common in India (where there is a substantial population of muslims), and there are reports from a while back suggesting he had anger issues and was having business troubles.
At this point we can't say whether it's terrorism or not. Too many contradictory indicators and no clear proof.
Scott is right as far as this paragraph goes. Insulting people and calling them tyrants rarely results in improved relations with the tyrants, whether they actually are tyrants or not.
The President under whom she served as Secretary of State had a famous open-mic moment where he told Putin that he would have "more flexibility after the election." That is, after he didn't have to face the American people again, he could betray them. And under that same President, Clinton herself famously botched a gag gift of a "reset" button to Putin, presenting him with a red button that actually translated as "overcharge" (and may have been pilfered from a hotel pool in a remarkably Clintonian moment).
As far as ties to Russia go, Clinton is living in a glass house and operating a catapult.
Prescription drug databases are available to police without warrants
I don't think anyone would be surprised that such records would be available with a warrant, but without a warrant surprised me. I suppose it shouldn't have, since we've had the War On Drugs shaping public policy ever since the puritans gave up on Prohibition, but it did. After all, something as innocuous as your video rental history is specifically protected under federal law and requires a warrant to access. Your prescription drug history is far more personal and revealing, yet it's available to police just for the asking?
Part of this is that Hillary is such a horrible candidate. Obama is horrible in many ways, of course, but those are mostly policy. He did very well at campaigning. Hillary, on the other hand, hates campaigning and prefers to give speeches for corrupt pay-to-play deals.
But there's more to it than that. For all the ink spilled about Trump's supposed hatred of hispanics, that's not what he says about it. He's not calling hispanics rapists, criminals, or horrible people. He's saying that people who cross the border illegally are often rapists, criminals, and horrible people, but there are a lot of hispanics who are here legally, and even those that are here illegally can differentiate between drug dealers and rapists and those who are just trying to make a living.
UPDATE: Mental health questions, but in modern society, the only way to get committed for mental health issues is generally violent and threatening behavior. So, we have a man who is from Turkey, probably Muslim by assumption, with a history of violence, prohibited from owning guns (by the deferred prosecution and drug use), who used a "hunting type" rifle rather than an assault weapon, and still killed 5 people. Authorities are saying no indications of terrorism, which just means he didn't ask permission from a terrorist organization first.
It's probably too early to class this as Islamic Terrorism, but there are lots of indicators.
Hillary email admin refers to deletion of emails as a cover-up
The FBI asked him about it and he said it was intended as a joke. Even if the comment was intended humorously, it was also accurate. And at this point, I feel confident that the FBI investigation, which granted immunity to five separate staffers, can also be accurately described as a joke.
