On Monday, The New York Times reported that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton never -- not once -- used her official State Department email address for her official communications. Instead, she utilized a private email account, effectively protecting her emails from public scrutiny. The Washington Post then broke the news that Hillary had registered her email address the same day her confirmation hearings for secretary of state began. In other words, Hillary knew she would be secretary of state conducting official business, and coincidentally opened a private email account at the same time to guard her from Freedom of Information Act requests.
Sure, Hillary Clinton has a nasty history with crucial documents going missing -- she is the only first lady in American history fingerprinted by the FBI, and the FBI found missing documents with her fingerprints on them in the White House personal quarters. But the media SuperFriends quickly activated to protect Hillary. Glenn Thrush of Politico tweeted that Hillary must have relied on incompetent staffers and lawyers. Ron Fournier of National Journal tut-tutted that this made her "no better" than Republicans. Of course, the media also ignored Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman handing millions to the Clinton charity just before Hillary's big run.
Clinton is hardly the first Obama administration official to utilize a private email account to shield herself. Lisa Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency used a private email address under the name "Richard Windsor" to conduct official business. According to Vice News' Jason Leopold, the Department of Defense told him that they would not release any emails from former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, since "SecDef does not maintain an official email account." Other Obama administration officials using unofficial email accounts include former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Donald Berwick, the former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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Welcome to the most transparent administration in American history, where the Federal Communications Commission can regulate the Internet and keep those regulations secret before a vote, where top government officials can deliberately hide their emails from the public, but where your health records, income and emails are all government business.
The public and private spheres have now been completely reversed. The federal government can punish its own employees for enforcing federal immigration law; if you oppose this, you are a racist, but if you hire an illegal immigrant, you will be fined or imprisoned. The feds can monitor your electronic metadata, but they can hide their own correspondence from records requests. After all, they are our betters, and we must kneel before Zod.
What possible violations of the Constitutional system will Americans actually fight? The list of possibilities grows short. Reports emerged this week suggesting that President Obama will consider banning bullets by executive order, effectively castrating the Second Amendment by fiat. Shrug. The Obama White House announced this week that Obama was "very interested" in unilaterally raising taxes. Shrug.
Democracies die not with a whimper or a bang but with a shrug. When we don't care enough about the system to stop its breakdown -- when we're happy with our dictators so long as we agree with them -- the constitutional order collapses. But so what? By electing Hillary Clinton the presidency, we'll strike a blow against non-existent generalized sexism in American society. And that's far more important than having an answerable, accountable government.
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