Is it Obama vs. Hillary AGAIN?

Many more of Hillary's emails have been deemed classified by the State Department. I'd like to say that this news is driving the right-wingers batshit crazy, but I can't. They were that way to begin with.

You have to read well past the headlines to discover the key point: None of these emails were classified at the time. Since we can't see the documents in question, we have no way to determine whether the texts are being over-classified. I feel quite certain that they are.

Many on the right (and some on the left) have compared Hillary's email debacle to the case against General David Petraeus. Anne Tompkins, one of the prosecutors in that case, pooh-poohs any claim of similarity:

As the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, I oversaw the prosecution of Gen. Petraeus, and I can say, based on the known facts, this comparison has no merit. The key element that distinguishes Secretary Clinton’s email retention practices from Petraeus’ sharing of classified information is that Petraeus knowingly engaged in unlawful conduct, and that was the basis of his criminal liability.

The facts of Petraeus’ case are a matter of public record. During his tenure as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, Petraeus recorded handwritten notes in personal journals, including information he knew was classified at the very highest levels.

These journals contained top secret and even more sensitive “code word” national defense information, including the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities, diplomatic discussions, and quotes and deliberative discussions from National Security Council meetings, including discussions with the president of the United States.

When questioned by the FBI, Petraeus lied to agents in responding that he had neither improperly stored nor improperly provided classified information to his biographer.

Hillary is guilty of none of these things.

Indeed, the State Department has confirmed that none of the information that has surfaced on Clinton’s server thus far was classified at the time it was sent or received. Additionally, the Justice Department indicated that its inquiry is not a criminal one and that Clinton is not the subject of the inquiry.

Fox News (of all venues!) just published an interesting take on all of this by Paul Goldman. His piece more-or-less admits that the charges against Hillary are mostly hooey. But in today's political world, mere reality doesn't matter:

The point being: After all that has transpired to date, perception may have already become reality to most Americans, indeed most commentators, not to mention defenders and detractors, on both sides. Or put another way: Another batch of emails isn’t going to change the bottom line.

The drop in Clinton’s support from 69 percent among Democrats nationally when she announced in April to now only 45 percent in one recent poll surely has some cause and effect relationship to the email issue.

Here's a worrying possibility: What if Hillary is being undermined by the Obama administration?

This theory would explain a lot.

After all, Obama is the person ultimately in charge of the State Department, which suddenly deemed 150 emails on that server to be classified. A mere two days ago, those very same missives were thought to be non-sensitive. The State Department took this step knowing full well that misleading headlines would convey the impression that the emails were classified at the time.

Obama favors Biden. That much is clear.

Added note: There are smears and then there are smears. This piece in Forbes (by one Paul Coyer) achieves full-body smeargasm. Example:

Hillary’s comments at her Friday press conference just repeated the behavioral patterns that the Clintons have long been known for – a non-apology apology and carefully parsed denials that do nothing to dispel the broadly-held view that this scandal is merely further evidence, if any were needed after nearly a quarter century of seeing Hillary’s pattern of behavior in public life, that Hillary (like her husband) has a pronounced penchant for dishonesty and dislikes playing by everyone else’s rules.

It is highly unlikely that Hillary’s use of private email servers (and her private email account had no encryption at all for the first few months of her tenure as Secretary of State) were not penetrated by foreign intelligence, particularly the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians, all of whom would see such a target as high priority, and that such emails did not provide such hostile foreign powers a critically useful insight into foreign and national security policy decision-making at the highest levels of the Obama Administration.

The combination of the intelligence gleaned from Edward Snowden and from Hillary’s emails are likely to have contributed to Putin’s aggressive course of action in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

This inside knowledge told the Kremlin that the Administration was not likely to take forceful actions that would raise the costs to Moscow of such actions to unacceptable levels, but would be limit its response primarily to economic sanctions. Putin, who has a long-term horizon, has calculated that the Russian economy (and his regime’s stability) can withstand these sanctions, no matter what the short to medium term consequences on the economy.

And the intelligence coup to Moscow provided by Hillary’s emails says nothing of what the benefit may have been to other American opponents, including Tehran as it prepared for the critical nuclear negotiations with the Obama Administration, and Beijing as it made decisions regarding how far to go in attempting to coercively alter the status quo in the South China Sea. It is a certainty that America’s opponents knew far more about the Obama Administration’s attitudes and decision-making processes and about what Hillary and Mr. Obama were doing than did the American people or the Congress.

"It is a certainty..." Oh, for chrissakes...

None of the emails were classified at the time. Nothing indicates that any of this material was discussed. Nothing indicates that Russia or China or Tehran considered Hillary's email server to be of great importance. (Perhaps needless to add, nothing links the Ed Snowden revelations to any of Putin's actions vis-a-vis Ukraine. Snowden's material was entirely about the NSA.) This Forbes piece is the kind of over-the-top propaganda that even the John Birchers would have considered crude and bombastic.

This nonsense is illustrated with an ominous photo of Huma Abedin. Apparently, we're supposed to think that she is some sort of Mata Hari employed by the dreaded Russia/Chinese/Iranian conspiracy.