Ed clintonemails.com: Who is Eric Hoteham?

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Ziggurat said:
Is that a tu quoque I see? Why, yes, yes it is.
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Another new thing that's popped up lately. Apparently pointing out hypocrisy is now a "tu quoque". It's nice to see you claiming it instead of 16.5 this time, good to know you guys pass around the playbook.

Also, it's not avoiding the argument, it's merely showing the hypocrisy of some that have a double standard when it suits them. I addressed the argument in my post, it wasn't avoided at all. Good try though, slugger. Got anything in your fallacy bag you want to bust out?
 
plague311 said:
Just so I'm understanding this correctly. You posted that news article just for educational purposes and in no way to promote the accusation that Clinton broke the law? You just wanted the information available? No agenda?
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I posted it to prove that Clinton violated the rules, she did so in a manner she absolutely should have known violated the rules, and she basically lied about doing so. You have not challenged me on a single one of these points.

Whether or not any of that constitutes a prosecutable crime is a separate matter, and while I have my own opinions on it, I made no claim in that regards.
 
plague311 said:
I'm so sick of this "if you agree with what I say you're a skeptic, if you don't you have no room being on a critical thinkers forum" argument.

Waiting for those in authority to confirm information what is being released by news sites doesn't display a lack of critical thinking. Just like in every investigation some people decide to wait for the evidence to be released. Which strikes me as funny considering I would bet money I could look in any of the police shooting threads, or other threads referring to investigations, and I could find a post from the Zigg, Newton, and Sunmaster preaching patience for all the evidence to come out.
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When there is enough substantiated evidence to come to a conclusion, then I come to a conclusion. When there isn't, I preach patience. In this case, there are enough undisputed facts to draw the conclusion that Hillary violated the law (with respect to her obligations under the Federal Records Act and associated regulations). The latest release of information gives us enough undisputed facts to draw the conclusion that Hillary's claim that she didn't deal with classified information through her private email server was false. Egregiously so. Possibly there are mitigating circumstances so that Hillary's lawyers could gain an acquittal if she were charged with mishandling classified information (which is a crime of course). I doubt it, but more information is needed. But her original claims were clearly false, and I don't have to wait for somebody in the government to tell me that. I can add 2 and 2 together and get the right answer. It's not rocket surgery.
 
plague311 said:
I don't claim to know why you did it, I can't read minds. I have already provided an argument THAT you did it, though.
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That is not what I mean by "why". I'm not talking about motive, but about what lead jhunter to conclude that I rushed to judgment. What is his reasoning? How can he conclude this?

And the only argument you made is an appeal to something (a claim that Hillary committed a crime) which is actually absent here. So that argument fails on its face: I cannot rush to a judgment I haven't even put forth.
 
sunmaster14 said:
When there is enough substantiated evidence to come to a conclusion, then I come to a conclusion. When there isn't, I preach patience. In this case, there are enough undisputed facts to draw the conclusion that Hillary violated the law (with respect to her obligations under the Federal Records Act and associated regulations). The latest release of information gives us enough undisputed facts to draw the conclusion that Hillary's claim that she didn't deal with classified information through her private email server was false. Egregiously so. Possibly there are mitigating circumstances so that Hillary's lawyers could gain an acquittal if she were charged with mishandling classified information (which is a crime of course). I doubt it, but more information is needed. But her original claims were clearly false, and I don't have to wait for somebody in the government to tell me that. I can add 2 and 2 together and get the right answer. It's not rocket surgery.
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The problem with this new argument you're making is that you've been claiming she's guilty since the get go. You've had her tried, convicted and in jail within the first 5 pages. Go back and read it.

So this newly constructed "Non rocket surgery" post is complete crap. You didn't wait for the evidence to come in, and you didn't preach patience. Why you're contesting something so easily proven to be a lie, something you're so adamantly against when Clinton seems to do it, is beyond me. I guess that's just the soup you swim in.
 
plague311 said:
The problem with this new argument you're making is that you've been claiming she's guilty since the get go. You've had her tried, convicted and in jail within the first 5 pages. Go back and read it.
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You're confused. I argued that she is guilty of violating the Federal Records Act. It's obvious that she is. She had a duty to perserve her work records in an appropriate agency recordkeeping system. She did not do this. It is absolutely undisputed that she did not do this. There isn't even a colorable argument that she complied with the law here.

This latest stuff is about mishandling of classified material. I did little to zero opining on whether or not Hillary's email contained classified material until very recently. I think all I really noted was that classification is a property of the information itself, not a property of the classification markings associated with the information. Some information is born classified even before somebody has had a chance to attach classification markings to it. So I thought the focus on whether or not classified information was marked as such was a red herring.
 
sunmaster14 said:
You're confused. I argued that she is guilty of violating the Federal Records Act. It's obvious that she is. She had a duty to perserve her work records in an appropriate agency recordkeeping system. She did not do this. It is absolutely undisputed that she did not do this. There isn't even a colorable argument that she complied with the law here.
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Again, you speak your opinions as truths. Also, you didn't even wait for all of that evidence to come in before you decided she was guilty for that either. There was evidence contrary to what you were saying that still holds true now. You just refuse to acknowledge it. If she was guilty of the recordskeeping issue, that you claim she is, then she would be facing charges for it, which she isn't. This isn't rocket physical therapy.

sunmaster14 said:
This latest stuff is about mishandling of classified material. I did little to zero opining on whether or not Hillary's email contained classified material until very recently. I think all I really noted was that classification is a property of the information itself, not a property of the classification markings associated with the information. Some information is born classified even before somebody has had a chance to attach classification markings to it. So I thought the focus on whether or not classified information was marked as such was a red herring.
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I'm not arguing this because if people really care to know what you said, they can easily go back and search the thread. You've played internet lawyer throughout this entire thread, your consistency is about the only thing to be admired.
 
sunmaster14 said:
So I thought the focus on whether or not classified information was marked as such was a red herring.
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It is a red herring, but she's hoping that the bulk of her supporters will buy the fact that she's says she didn't send anything classified and not something that she did wrong. It's working and the evidence is right here in this thread. Nothing you or I can say or conclude will convince her supporters she did anything at all wrong until she's fined or charged. That, doesn't mean she's done nothing wrong....yet.
 
Reheat said:
It is a red herring, but she's hoping that the bulk of her supporters will buy the fact that she's says she didn't send anything classified and not something that she did wrong. It's working and the evidence is right here in this thread. Nothing you or I can say or conclude will convince her supporters she did anything at all wrong until she's fined or charged. That, doesn't mean she's done nothing wrong....yet.
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You mean skeptics on a skeptic site would rather wait until the relevant legal authorities weigh in on a matter than just believe anonymous internet commentators? Say it ain't so!
 
wareyin said:
You mean skeptics on a skeptic site would rather wait until the relevant legal authorities weigh in on a matter than just believe anonymous internet commentators? Say it ain't so!
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That's right wareyin! Just keeping waiting to be told what to think! Sheeple! /sarcasm
 
String 'um up. Tried and convicted on the Internet. We don't need no stinkin charges, much less trial. String 'um up.

We can add Due Process denial to Science Denial as the cornerstone of conservative thinking.
 
DavidJames said:
String 'um up. Tried and convicted on the Internet. We don't need no stinkin charges, much less trial. String 'um up.

We can add Due Process denial to Science Denial as the cornerstone of conservative thinking.
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I had to go back to the Constitution to refresh my memory on the Due Process Clause:

[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, nor shall any anonymous posters sully his reputation on an internet forum, without due process of law ...
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I had forgotten the highlighted bit, but there it is.
 
Ziggurat said:
I posted it to prove that Clinton violated the rules, she did so in a manner she absolutely should have known violated the rules, and she basically lied about doing so. You have not challenged me on a single one of these points.

Whether or not any of that constitutes a prosecutable crime is a separate matter, and while I have my own opinions on it, I made no claim in that regards.
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The claim of violating rules is premature. Even Politico has held off making that claim because they can't.

We decided not to put Clinton’s claim on the Truth-O-Meter, because there are a lot of unknowns.

They go on noting her not using the government email at all made it different from Powell, GW and Jeb even though that's a quantitative but not a qualitative difference. They claim she must have known and all that line of condemnation, but they don't point out how common it is for politicians to come as close to the line without crossing it, such as with all the illegal fundraising claiming the PACs are separate from the candidates.

Tell me how is Bush skirting campaign finance law any less 'illegal' than Clinton keeping some things out of the public record when both stayed within the law technically?
In Clinton’s defense, we should note that it was only after Clinton left the State Department, that the National Archives issued a recommendation that government employees should avoid conducting official business on personal emails (though they noted there might be extenuating circumstances such as an emergency that require it). Additionally, in 2014, President Barack Obama signed changes to the Federal Records Act that explicitly said federal officials can only use personal email addresses if they also copy or send the emails to their official account.

Because these rules weren’t in effect when Clinton was in office, "she was in compliance with the laws and regulations at the time," said Gary Bass, founder and former director of OMB Watch, a government accountability organization.
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wareyin said:
I agree that she's not the only person to have operated like this. George W Bush, Jeb Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell all spring to mind as examples.
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Which skips the question I was actually asking in terms of whether the act of using the servers itself was a violation of basic etiquette and protocol. I'll take your agreement that the equivalents did so as well as a "yes". Clarify if you wish.

wareyin said:
See, people like Reheat post these claims of being intimately familiar with handling top secret information, but their claims of how to handle top secret information are contradicted by news articles citing "experts". For instance, from the Washington Post:
contrasted with:
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Articles citing experts isn't very telling. I was curious if there was anything more concrete like a researched explanation either supporting or contradicting his remarks. "Brow beating" is just of way of stating you believe the issues raised are a bunch of malarkey but not explaining why. There was no problem in of itself in questioning what was stated, but it seems logical to cross check the claim to either confirm or contradict your interpretation

Also, regarding your comparison... I'm not seeing a problem with what was said. The WP was correct. The other response reference the insecurity of the storage media on both sides. Responsibility of the recipient in that matter would depend on any further awareness or action taken by the recipient... mention of which to my reading was not discussed.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
The claim of violating rules is premature. Even Politico has held off making that claim because they can't.
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Not Politico - Politifact, which is completely biased in favor of Democrats. And actually Politifact did cite somebody who stated quite clearly that Clinton did not comply with the law (my emphasis added):

"While Clinton may have technical arguments for why she complied with each of these and the other rules that have been discussed in the news, the argument that Clinton complied with the letter and spirit of the law is unsustainable," said Douglas Cox, a law professor at City University of New York who studies records preservation.

...

"Using a personal email account exclusively is a potent prescription for flouting the Federal Records Act and circumventing the Freedom of Information Act," Metcalfe said. "And there can be little doubt that Clinton knew this full well."

In response to a State Department request last year, Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails and documents from her private email server, leaving out emails and documents that she said were of a personal nature, like wedding and funeral plans. She later said she deleted these personal emails.

Cox said the fact that Clinton’s staff -- rather than a State Department federal records officer -- chose which emails to destroy is "honestly breathtaking." Her private employees don’t have the authority to decide what does or doesn’t count as a federal record. Further, when she was making these choices, she was acting as a private citizen, not a government employee.
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They go on noting her not using the government email at all made it different from Powell, GW and Jeb even though that's a quantitative but not a qualitative difference.
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It's qualitatively different. Do you know why? Because if you only use a private email address, then it must be the case that you did all of your work on private email. If you used both addresses, then it could be the case that you only used your government email for work, or at least for the vast, vast majority of your work, and your private email for non-work (with maybe the odd exception when you didn't have access to your government account).

They claim she must have known and all that line of condemnation, but they don't point out how common it is for politicians to come as close to the line without crossing it, such as with all the illegal fundraising claiming the PACs are separate from the candidates.
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Politicians do skirt the line, and sometimes cross it. There's no question that they push as close to the boundary as possible with respect to various legal and ethical constraints. But Hillary didn't just come close to the line or step over it. She set up shop on the wrong side of the line and stayed there throughout her entire tenure in the administration and beyond.

Tell me how is Bush skirting campaign finance law any less 'illegal' than Clinton keeping some things out of the public record when both stayed within the law technically?
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Because Clinton didn't stay within the law technically. That claim is already heavy duty spin, i.e. a lie.
 
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/21/us-usa-election-clinton-emails-idUSKCN0QQ0BW20150821

"But the details included in those "Classified" stamps — which include a string of dates, letters and numbers describing the nature of the classification — appear to undermine this account, a Reuters examination of the emails and the relevant regulations has found.

The new stamps indicate that some of Clinton's emails from her time as the nation's most senior diplomat are filled with a type of information the U.S. government and the department's own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not."


She must have missed those.
 
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