Friday Open Thread

Dakinikat had a problem with her car to deal with this morning, and I have to go out pretty soon myself, so I’m just going to put up some links that might get a discussion going. Maybe Dak will be able to post something more substantive later on–I’m not sure.

The Clinton email story is getting me so confused, the I’m about to throw up my hands and just let it play out. The right ringers seem to be in control and all the mainstream media seems uninterested in actually finding the truth and printing it. The latest headlines:

Jonathan Allen at Reuters: Exclusive: Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest.

For months, the U.S. State Department has stood behind its former boss Hillary Clinton as she has repeatedly said she did not send or receive classified information on her unsecured, private email account, a practice the government forbids.

While the department is now stamping a few dozen of the publicly released emails as “Classified,” it stresses this is not evidence of rule-breaking. Those stamps are new, it says, and do not mean the information was classified when Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election, first sent or received it.

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.

In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department’s own “Classified” stamps now identify as so-called ‘foreign government information.’ The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts.

This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be “presumed” classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters.

“It’s born classified,” said J. William Leonard, a former director of the U.S. government’s Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). Leonard was director of ISOO, part of the White House’s National Archives and Records Administration, from 2002 until 2008, and worked for both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

I couldn’t find any specifics in this story about what kinds of material might actually appear in these emails. We are just supposed to trust Reuters’ opinion, I guess.

Newsstand, Ken Keeley

Then there’s this from Media Matters: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Corrects Rep. Issa’s Claim That 300 Clinton Emails Contain Classified Information.

REP. DARRELL ISSA: The one thing that we now know is that, as they said, about 300 separate emails, maybe more, contain classified information.

[…]

ISSA: It’s not an accident to have 300 emails become retroactively, if you will, determined to be classified.

[…]

WOLF BLITZER: Well my understanding is those 300 emails they are looking at now, that they haven’t definitively ruled it was classified information. They’re going over it right now. There seems to be a dispute going on between the State Department and other agencies of the U.S. government what should have been classified, even if it had not been classified at the time. Is that your understanding as well?

ISSA: Well it is, but I’ll give you a little piece of history, during my chairmanship, it was amazing how the State Department classified the mAlost mundane information even when publicly available. In this case it appears as though State would like to say these things were not particularly classified. Well the CIA, and NSA, and other clandestine agencies appear to be appalled that very sensitive information was sent out on her non-government server in an unclassified format.

Are these the same emails Jonathan Allen wrote about? Who knows? I’m not sure if Hillary can end this story no matter what she does. We just have to hope that when the election takes place more than a year from now, it will be forgotten.

One more from Media Matters: NPR Story On Clinton Emails Does Not Disclose Sources’ Right-Wing Ties.

An NPR article on the government inquiry into classified emails cited two former government officials to criticize Hillary Clinton’s handling of her private email server when she was secretary of state. However, the article did not disclose that the former officials have conservative ties, with one of them advising GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush.

In the August 19 article, NPR extensively quoted Ron Hosko, who was identified only as previously leading “the FBI’s criminal investigative division.” Hosko suggested that emails which were sent to Clinton — and which have since been retroactively classified in an interagency dispute over classification levels — might represent “serious breaches of national security”:

“I think that the FBI will be moving with all deliberate speed to determine whether there were serious breaches of national security here,” said Ron Hosko, who used to lead the FBI’s criminal investigative division.

He said agents will direct their questions not just at Clinton, but also her close associates at the State Department and beyond.

“I would want to know how did this occur to begin with, who knew, who approved,” Hosko said.

NPR did not mention that Hosko is currently the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF), a right-wing non-profit that claims to defend police officers fighting criminal charges, but which has come under scrutiny for financial ties to other conservative groups, such as the Federalist Society and the American Spectator. The chairman of LELDF is Alfred Regnery, the former president of conservative publisher Regnery Publishing, whileboard members include Ken Cuccinelli, the former Republican nominee for governor of Virginia; J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican politician and senior fellow at the Family Research Council; and Edwin Meese III, a former Reagan administration official who reportedly helped orchestrate the devastating 2013 government shutdown.

Nice.

Newsstand, Sol Robbins

As everyone knows by now, I am interested in crime stories and criminal psychology. As such, I was sadden to learn of the passing of prolific true crime writer Ann Rule in late July. I don’t know how I missed the story until now.

From the LA Times: Ann Rule dies at 83; true-crime writer penned account of Ted Bundy.

Rule, who gained national prominence for her book on Bundy, “The Stranger Beside Me,” died Sunday at Highline Medical Center in Burien, Wash., according to Scott Thompson, a spokesman for CHI Franciscan Health. Rule suffered from congestive heart failure and other health problems, said her daughter, Leslie Rule.

A former police officer, Rule was virtually unknown in the publishing world in 1974, when she began researching a series of murders in the Seattle area. She later learned they had been committed by one of her close friends, Bundy. Rule published “The Stranger Beside Me” in 1980.

The book made her career, ultimately selling more than 2 million copies. Rule eventually penned dozens of true-crime works.

Rule actually began her writing career by publishing short crime stories in detective magazines in order ot support her family. She met Ted Bundy when they both worked the late night shift at a suicide hotline in Seattle. She began investigating the murders taking place in the area and even discussed her research with Bundy. Only later did she begin to suspect that he was actually the killer.

Rule was initially bothered by the idea of “making a living off of other people’s tragedies,” she once told The Times.

“I thought: ‘Oh my God, I’m making a living from somebody else’s tragedy. Can I do this?’“ Rule told The Times in 1998.

The question haunted her so much that she turned to a psychiatrist, who told her that many people — including police officers, morticians and lawyers — face the same ethical dilemma. The doctor emphasized to her that what mattered was her feelings toward the victims.

“I really care about the people I’m writing about,” said Rule, whose accounts focused as much on the anguish of the victims and their families as on the depravity of the killers. “I finally came to the knowledge I’m doing what I probably was meant to do in life.”

More stories, links only: 

WaPo: Inside the GOP field’s new strategies to ride out the Trump tornado.

TPM: Trump Goes Off At ABC Reporter Over Questions On Term ‘Anchor Babies’.

Buzzfeed: Trump: “A Lot” Of “Gang Members” In Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago Are “Illegal Immigrants.”

The Atlantic: A Trump-Inspired Hate Crime in Boston.

The Hill: Budowsky: Hillary vs. media malpractice.

Amanda Marcotte: Why Can’t All Ashley Madison Hacking Victims Be Josh Duggar?

Reuters: Black teen killed by St. Louis police shot in back: autopsy.

What else is happening?