Answering the Clinton smears

I don't know what you think of James Carville, and I don't care: In this case, petty ad hominem attacks simply will not do. In the video embedded above, Carville quickly sets the record straight on The Clinton Foundation.

The Foundation is a charity -- a fact which many ideologues and CDS sufferers want you to forget. This charity has has done a lot of good work, and has saved many lives.

The Foundation is not a Clinton family slush fund, even though so many people (on the right and the left) have pretended otherwise.

The attacks on this charity resemble the 2004 attacks on John Kerry's war record: In both cases, the strategy involves an assault on a candidate's greatest strength. In both cases, small people with no morals have tossed mud at their betters.

I'd like those smear merchants to explain just how it is that they know more about the Foundation than Charity Watch does.

The emails. Here's another instance where some of you may be chomping at the bit to launch a petty ad hominem attacks on a famous writer. If you try to do so, you are simply dodging the issue. At the other end of that link, John Dean mounts a superb, detailed, scholarly response to the nonsense we've all heard about Hillary Clinton's emails.

None of those emails were marked in the header as classified, although a very few contained paragraphs that contained a (c) for "confidential" -- the very lowest classification rating. (Confidential documents can be sent through the mail.) Hillary Clinton did not send those emails, and she could have no way of knowing what was in those emails when they showed up in her inbox.

I've read elsewhere that the few emails bearing these markings were later determined to be marked (c) in error; for example, one had to do with the inauguration of the President of Malawi, a public fact -- hardly a state secret. None of these passages were of any significance. Most of the emails which went through that server were piffle -- links to internet news stories, things of that sort.

Dean masterfully destroys all of the other arguments that Clinton somehow committed perjury.

He also demolishes the myth that FBI Director James Comey was part of some imaginary pro-Clinton conspiracy. In fact, Comey (a Republican) seems to have deliberately tried to create a murkier picture than the evidence warranted.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort was working very closely in Ukraine with someone who, in all likelihood, was a Russian intelligence officer.

At the time, the connection was deemed unimportant — Mr Kilimnik was valued for his “excellent English”, these people say.

Today, with Mr Kilimnik still close to Mr Manafort, according to people who know both men, the links have taken on new significance. As Russian president Vladimir Putin likes to joke, there is no such thing as a former intelligence officer.

Manafort is still linked to the campaign. Moreover, he has long been the business partner of Roger Stone, one of Trump's oldest and closest associates. Let that scenario sink in: A man closely tied to a likely KGB officer was running the campaign of the Republican presidential candidate.

And we're supposed to think that Hillary is the one who poses a threat to American security?

Powell. You may have read (or seen on teevee) that Colin Powell now denies giving Hillary Clinton advice about setting up her own email server. In fact, he did just that -- and admitted so himself, just a couple of months ago.

Joe Conason will tell the story in his forthcoming book. The conversation in question occurred during a meeting between Hillary Clinton, newly appointed as Secretary of State, and all living previous holders of that title, both Republican and Democrat. Only the most inane conspiracy buff could claim that Conason concocted this story: The witnesses are many, and they are of differing political persuasions.