I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.
Tom Lehrer
Image of the Day
Guest Post Comment: CNN: Regardless, Tech Co. saying emails still recoverable just ensures that this Hillary Clinton server story will keep going "on and on and on"
What the story says is that there were 2 servers--the original home server while Clinton was Secretary of State and administered by a State staffer paid by the Clintons and the second one which was administered by the Denver group after Clinton left office in 2013. The Denver group migrated emails from the original server to one of theirs. I think most people are looking at the second server, not the original one. Apparently after the emails were migrated from the original server, they were deleted from the original server, and the company secured the original server somewhere. This is the server the story is talking about; it's not a sure thing depending on the nature of deletion and the lower reliability of storage over time.
As a professional DBA, I obsess over backups and have routinely cloned/restored databases from backups. At home, I routinely back up my emails and have restored them after system failures or migrations (to new PC's). Backups are routinely done on the federal level (at least in my experiences having worked on federal contracts at multiple agencies). There are a number of things I haven't seen discussed, at least in news accounts to date. I do not see how even a mom and pop shop wouldn't have done backups as a matter of diligence. I'm sure Hillary Clinton or her lawyers knew she couldn't delete government emails given the Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act without providing the government unfettered access to all the emails and independently decide which emails were government; Hillary deciding which emails are relevant is self-serving.
Now I don't know the agreement between the IT company and Clinton; I don't know if the company's employees had active clearance status, I don't know what the nature of their backup and/or archival schedule is, if they recycled backup media, etc. But Hillary and her lawyers would know better than to delete 30,000 emails without a full backup: this is something we always do before something like a software upgrade or other major event, and any IT professional would have told them that. Not to mention the implications of a WikiLeaks publishing unacknowledged emails to Clinton's account from hackers or other anonymous source.
What makes all of this astounding is that Hillary Clinton pursued this even after the Sarah Palin kerfuffle in 2008, where she was criticized for doing official Alaska state business out of her Yahoo account (not to mention it being hacked). Nevertheless, Gmail and a number of email clients allow for forwarding emails while retaining the original,so there were technical solutions to Clinton's desire for convenience without compromising federal records standards. Notice this still doesn't protect the security of sensitive or classified emails that are forwarded. There are also tools for password-protecting email accounts, automatic purging and/or encrypting emails. I suspect, though, that Clinton's email practices were amateurish in nature.
Reagan Speaks on Immigration
Facebook Corner
(this is a follow-up exchange from yesterday's relevant FB Corner Libertarian Catholic post)
How was she obstructing the law, when there is no law requiring that she approve marriage licenses?
Idiot troll. This is from the Kentudky document on the Duties of Elected County Officials:
"The county clerk issues marriage licenses (KRS 402.080) and files and records all marriage certificates (KRS 402.220 and 402.230). Military discharges may also be recorded in the county clerk’s office (KRS 422.090). On or before the 10th day of each month, the county clerk reports to the state registrar of vital statistics all marriage licenses issued and all marriage certificates returned (KRS 213.116). Each county clerk must furnish each applicant for a marriage license with a copy of a marriage manual to be prepared and printed by the Human Resources Coordinating Commission of Kentucky (KRS 402.270). "
This is from Kentucky statute:
"522.020 Official misconduct in the first degree.
(1) A public servant is guilty of official misconduct in the first degree when, with intent to obtain or confer a benefit or to injure another person or to deprive another person
of a benefit, he knowingly:
(a) Commits an act relating to his office which constitutes an unauthorized exercise of his official functions; or
(b) Refrains from performing a duty imposed upon him by law or clearly inherent in the nature of his office; or
(c) Violates any statute or lawfully adopted rule or regulation relating to his office.
(2) Official misconduct in the first degree is a Class A misdemeanor. Effective: January 1, 1975
History: Created 1974 Ky. Acts ch. 406, sec. 187, effective January 1, 1975"
Kim Davis, by refusing to process marriage licenses from everyone in the county (not just gays, although that would be enough has been in blatant violation of section (b) of the status, and this is not a matter of dispute but of the facts.
I could go into at least a couple of counts in federal statute as well, The conspiracy to obstruct the law comes into play if and when she refused her 6 clerks, 5 of whom were ready and empowered under Kentucky law to sign official documents to comply with revised marriage law. I think if she violates the current arrangement by the judge for deputy clerks to do the gay marriage, she will be charged on the state and/or federal level, not to mention another spell in jail for contempt of court.
I really do not respond to idiot trolls in general, but I decided to make an example of you.
Ronald, I'm not sure how much legal knowledge you have so I'll keep my response laymen. Perhaps you can identify the mandate in the corresponding penal codes that states something to the effect of "the county clerk must approve all license requests that fit within the parameters of the corresponding definition of marriage" however I could not find such.
One could argue, though, that by refusing to perform "a duty imposed upon him (her in this case)...clearly inherent in the nature of his office", which marriage licenses would likely fall under, she would likely be guilty of official misconduct in the first degree, that is, unless she has a valid reason as to not perform such a duty.
And of course, federal law (there are a few but namely the Civil Rights Act 1964, Title VII) grants public officials the right to maintain their deeply held religious beliefs and to retain their right to refrain from engaging in any activity they feel would violate this belief. While the employer does have the right to contest one's ability to refrain from doing what should be a normal duty, the employer (government) must first, make accommodations for the employee (which the state of KY did not do) and/or present a "narrow and compelling interest" in which she should be forced to violate her religious beliefs. This would be quite difficult in Davis' case as the law allows her deputy clerks to issue licenses, as well as the fact that there are numerous other counties where one can get a license as well. She is not the sole provider of state issued licenses.
Besides, if you have been following this case, you should know that her recent stint in jail was due to a contempt of court charge (levied by a judge acting outside of his authority in demanding she violate her deeply held religious beliefs without due process of law, a power no judge has in this country), not official misconduct.
I'm not exactly sure what motivated the last response, because my comments above are fully consistent with his--except for the ludicrous last paragraph.(I have also written on this topic in many forums and threads in which I've discussed in detail everything you mentioned (see my personal blog)). I never said or implied that the contempt of court charge was in reference to a state lawsuit; it was a federal court. The judge, in fact, summoned the 6 clerks, 5 of who said they were willing to sign the paperwork, something explicitly allowed under state statute that I have cited elsewhere.
The fact is that she is in violation of both state law and federal law. As a lawyer you didn't do your due diligence. The governor and AG of the state had directed Davis to do her duty or resign. Davis was arguing that the governor was acting outside his authority (to me, that's an issue for the state vs. federal courts), and she wanted SCOTUS to stay the judge's order to issue gay marriage paperwork on the grounds Kentucky law had not protected RFRA accommodation to county clerks; she lost. One of the Rowan County gay couples had sued in federal court. She has not been charged yet by a US Attorney, but there are at least a couple of charges that could be filed. Under Obergefell, her conduct puts Kentucky in violation of the 14th Amendment. The ACLU filed suit; now Davis, to avoid appearance of discrimination, refused to process ALL marriage paperwork, including straight couples. This is the reason she's been threatened with a misdemeanor charge. (From what I understand, the AG has deferred on filing charges since the judge is handling the situation).
The fact that Kentucky law explicitly allows deputy clerks to sign off on marriage paperwork and the fact that Davis was actively opposed to their doing so really exposes the cynical nature of Davis trying to impede the law vs. some fictional religious conscience matter; she's had a built-in accommodation. That is why she was sent to jail for contempt.
As for the asinine final paragraph: I know the scenario better than you do. I don't think I would have put her in jail, because I think it just made her a sympathetic figure, and there's nothing honorable she's doing in a public capacity. Yes, her lawyers are appealing the judge's decision, but it won't go anywhere. No, I'm calling the RFRA defense bogus because for one thing signing off on paperwork is not matter of a religious conscience; she's imposing her religious views on others, and her position is one of a state monopoly.
PS. Kentucky passed RFRA in 2013. Federal law, including federal RFRA, has limited applicability on states. In addition to the nonsense in the last paragraph, your argument that you couldn't read a mandate in Kentucky clerk duties is absolute bullshit. Of course, it's a mandate. That's what the misdemeanor charge is all about; for Davis to accept some qualified paperwork but not others is a blatant violation of equal protection. For couples in Rowan County to be denied marriage paperwork but not in other counties, is a violation of equal protection.
(FEE). Every argument for immigration restrictions into the United States as a whole applies with equal validity for immigration controls between states, counties, cities, and even towns. And yet we do not have such controls. Why does it work so well? Because freedom works.
The reason it matters is because private property owners are not choosing to bring these immigrants in. The government is importing immigrants by the thousands, who possess cultures that are completely different from our American culture. That's the problem. We absolutely need to preserve our culture until complete and unfettered liberty is achieved. Otherwise our culture will slowly be disintegrated and replaced with inferior ones. We also need to stop allowing these immigrants to come in so long as the welfare state is existent, because "free" stuff is a huge incentive for them to come to America and eat up tax dollars. Private property and voluntary agreements ought to be what determines immigration policy. Government immigration policies are artificial and impose multiculturalism on us.
This is anti-liberty morally corrupt xenophobic claptrap. This is the same propaganda bullshit reasoning that (beyond the racist restrictions on Asians) resulted in overhauling our traditional open immigration laws starting in the WWI era. Open immigration is win-win to the economy; and there were no public welfare programs as nineteenth-century immigrants (including entrepreneurs) helped build the world's greatest economy with less than 5% of the world's population. Retard trolls ignore the number of unauthorized immigrants have gone down by 1M since 2007, that authorized immigrants are ineligible for welfare state benefits for 5 years (and unauthorized are flatly ineligible), that younger, healthier immigrants actually help support the aging American welfare state (shoring up entitlements by up to 3/4$1T dollars). Milron Friedman, who these retards love to misquote, strongly favored unrestricted Mexican immigration. The fact is there were no immigration quotas on the Western Hemisphere until 1965, and the "illegal" immigration problem has to do with the 1964 expiration of the Bracero (guest worker) program, urged by the corrupt unions and xenophobes. Under the Bracero problem, immigration arrests fell by almost 95%
Political Cartoon
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists
Lionel Richie, "My Love"
