Emailgate

As emailgate has blown-up in Hillary Clinton's face over the past few weeks, the trained hamsters in the main stream media have tried—they've actually have tried—to ask her a few substantive questions about the growing scandal. In some ways, the hamsters continue to pull their punches, if only because they are so unused to attacking a Democrat candidate for president. But they are, in their own way, trying.

Hillary has done what Hillary always does—stonewall, characterizing the entire affair as a "distraction," suggested (dishonestly) that other cabinet secretaries had private emails (problem is, not one had a private server), and whining about her victimhood.

As it becomes apparent that many, many secret and top secret emails passed through Clinton's unprotected personal server, the media is focusing on those emails.  But the real story, I suspect, lies not in the secret emails, but in the ones that Hillary had professionally deleted (wiped, and not with a cloth) from her personal server. There is every reason to believe that those deleted emails contain much, much more than messages about yoga, her grandchild and Chelsea's wedding (as Hillary claims), but rather damning evidence of questionable dealings connected to the now infamous Clinton Foundation, influence pedaling at the highest levels of government, and political maneuvering and gross dishonesty regarding the Benghazi attack and it's aftermath. The later, I suspect, might provide a trail of bread crumbs running all the way back to the oval office.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there an even more troubling aspect to all of this. Virtually every security expert that I have seen interviewed or who has written about the subject states that there is a 99+ percent probability that Hillary's server was hacked by foreign powers (e.g., China, Russia, Iran). That means that unfriendly powers have every one of Hillary's emails and therefore know every one of Hillary's secrets. Should she gain the nomination and win the presidency, that leaves her open to a sophisticated form of blackmail when she is in office—and that puts our country in danger.

Hillary Clinton has damaged herself beyond repair. Faux outrage, lies, and her shrinking band of true believers won't help her. She might still get the Democrat nomination. She might even win the presidency. But the country has already lost—no matter what.

UPDATE:
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In a wonderfully written, acerbic comment on the subject, Heather Wilhelm writes:

In recent days, after all, it was discovered that in addition to using a shady private email account while acting as secretary of state, then hosting that account on an insecure “homebrew” server in her Chappaqua basement, and then sending sensitive information on the digital equivalent of a wayward Chinese homing pigeon, Hillary Clinton also chose a shady “mom and pop” IT shop in Denver to manage her private email system in 2013. That shop’s servers, employees report, were housed in an ultra-secure bathroom closet, presumably right next to the plunger, the Swiffer WetJet, and a handful of listless, half-dead spiders.

Seriously, who does this, especially someone as high-level as Hillary Clinton? It’s almost like she had something to hide, you know? You can’t make this stuff up, but when it’s revealed to the public, you can certainly dissemble. The FBI seized Clinton’s server last week, with sources telling NBC they were “optimistic” some data would be retrieved, despite an apparent attempt—or more—to wipe the server clean.

Let’s face it: “Email-gate” is byzantine, bizarre, and confusing. It’s clear that Hillary’s ultimate hope is that people will inevitably get so bored or fatigued they either a) no longer care, b) simply give up, or c) reluctantly trudge to the moonshine and Slip ’N Slide out back. Hey, why not? It’s not a terrible strategy. After all, with the Clintons, isn’t that what happens every time?

Asked if her server had been wiped—and trust me, despite her apparent inability to work a fax machine, America’s diligent, self-made rogue email queen knows exactly what this means—the former secretary of state offered an exaggerated shrug: “Like with a cloth or something?” Yes, Hillary, like with a cloth. Lord knows we need to get all those bathroom closet spiders out! (Where are those nuclear codes again?)

Hillary’s email issues may come and go; they may also, if some glorious shift in the space/time continuum occurs, unseat her from power. But her server also serves as a powerful metaphor for our sprawling, increasingly absurdist, and largely unaccountable federal government. It’s a government that often makes things way more complicated than they need to be. It’s also a government that inspires, at least for the average, outside-the-Beltway American, a dominant, growing sense of utter futility, paired with a quiet, “you can’t be serious” disbelief.

It's Wilhelm's last point that may be the most important. The federal government gets bigger and bigger under Democrat governance, but at the same time it gets more corrupt, more incompetent, and more intrusive. At the end of the day, that may be the biggest problem of all.