I was pretty clear about what Comey should have done: deliver the report and then let prosecutors do what prosecutors do. I'll point out again, prosecutors are held to a higher ethical standard with the public statements, so if anything at all were to be said, particularly as an expression of prosecutorial discretion, it should have come from DOJ. There were two problems here: first, that public comment on prosecutorial discretion was put in the hands of law enforcement; and, second, the text of the statement itself. Your question ("Should he just have had a one sentence statement: "The FBI has determined that there's not enough evidence to present to the DOJ/AG for potential prosecution?") is flawed in one significant way, and it illustrates the issue pretty well. Your statement is pretty benign, his wasn't. He didn't say, "there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute." Matter of fact, he said just the opposite. He said "statutes were probably violated, but no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges." That's different than saying there wasn't enough evidence. How about hearing a "reasonable prosecutor" tell us what does and doesn't get prosecuted, and why?! That's a much better result and would give us more confidence in the system. But Comey went much further, by telling us how reckless Hillary and her minions were with classified information, itemizing over a hundred instances of sending and receiving classified information, and then judging both the weight of the evidence and, impliedly, the policy behind protecting classified documents. It's because he chose to make a statement and chose to do it in that fashion, I can think of one HUGE friggin reason why a reasonable prosecutor SHOULD want to prosecute in this instance: because the FBI just made an affirmative statement that being "reckless" with classified material is a matter of degree and sometimes it will be overlooked. What a horrible, horrible precedent to publicly announce. And, after all, that's my issue: that it actually erodes public confidence when law enforcement gets in the business public commentary.
So now shortly after the Comey press conference Obama and Hillary get off air force one and do a joint rally. Just terrible optics all around here.
yeah, I get it. Except, in this case, it doesn't lead to more transparency, it leads to less. Any time you take something like criminal prosecution and spin it in new and unique ways, it's bad for everyone and leads people to doubt the natural order of things. Here, I understand the why-part: if James Comey issues a report that cites violation of statute and DOJ decides to NOT prosecute, the world will want to know why this case is special. But that's a career prosecutor's job - to explain in a statement, something like, "We've never prosecuted anyone for unintentional mishandling of classified information, particularly where there is no evidence that it was conveyed to someone without proper clearance" (or whatever). That would give both sides far more reason to believe that this was a proper and thoughtful result.
well it does look fishy but I always thought this email server thing as a bit of a reach in the first place. Private servers are usually more secure.
Except her opponent is a walking example of reckless endangerment every minute of every day and every time he opens his mouth. As we sit here today, I certainly would welcome a primary do over with some different candidates (not Sanders), but we are where we are and Trump just is not fit to be President for innumerable reasons. A Trump presidency would be an epic disaster. Epppppppppiiiiiiiiiiiiccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc!!!!! Like nothing this country has seen.
Neither Stein nor Johnson has a snowball's chance in hell of winning. You might as well write in Mickey Mouse. As much as you might not like it, this is still a two party system and either Trump or Clinton will be the next President. Of course , if you want to vote for either over Trump, I strongly encourage you to do so.
This line of thinking is the problem. If every person who was unhappy with both of the two main candidates would just vote for one of the third party candidates, I think we'd see that they actually could win. Unfortunately, it's been ingrained into everyone that the third party candidates have no shot. There are more independent voters in this country today than either of the main parties.
No third party presidential candidate has won a state since 1948 and that won't likely change this year.
At the moment, as the two major party nominees in waiting, they are the only options. Even two-term Teddy Roosevelt couldn't get elected as a third-party candidate in 1912. Nobody who is running in 2016 is going to pull off the trick. The only way one of those two is not President in 2017 is if one of the two main parties decides to pull off a coup and over-ride the will of it's voters. The Democrats are actually in a better position to do that at the moment because Hillary did not win a majority of the delegates in the primary season due to such a large percentage of the delegates being supers. The Democrats could nominate somebody else without taking a single delegate pledged to her via primary from her. If they nominated Sanders they'd still be within the constraints of the primary system they set up. The GOP would have to take pledged delegates from Trump on the first ballot to avoid nominating him.
This is true but as you said "Independent" is not a party and so the fact that there are more unaligned voters than Democrats or Republicans doesn't mean anything. Many of the independent voters are left of the Democrats or right of the Republicans. Many of them are actually in the middle between the parties but probably not more than 20% of the total electorate fits in that category. I know at least one independent voter who is both left of the Democrats and right of the Republicans depending on the issue at hand. I'm guessing we're talking a large percentage of the electorate that fits in that category, maybe 10% of the total. Look at Rand Paul. He's anti-Death Penalty and anti-Abortion also. That puts him in an extreme position in each party on at least one issue and he's a mainstream "Independent". Look at Bernie Sanders. He's anti-Gun Control and anti-Death Penalty. Again, he is against the vast majority of voters in each party on at least one issue.
Are you celebrating the fact that Hillary was grossly negligent with national security or that she's getting away with it?
Anyone who thinks there was nothing amiss because she effectively got off is either being purposefully naive or only reads headlines at this point. The way Comey basically added to the smoke cloud but said there was no fire is pretty weird. Sort of reminds me of Pats fans when the headlines said that Tom's suspension was overturned last year. They never looked at why it was overturned.
I'm not pissed about it no... Conservatives OTOH, have their panties all in a bunch over it as they see yet another chance at bagging a Clinton go down in flames. Maybe one day Conservatives will get their quarry as they've been hunting Clintons since 1996. Maybe Herr Trump will have to go with another catch phrase besides "crooked Hillary" since she hasn't been charged with a crime. What's mind boggling to me is the lack of concern over Trump's hidden tax records from Conservatives considering the IRS greenlighted the release of those returns months ago.. Oh well, anything goes as long as you can bag a Clinton and keep the shining light off Trump at the same time.. Now about that Star of David thing...Perhaps shutting down Trump's Twitter account might not be a bad idea after all..
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about that vast Pro-Clinton conspiracy that stretches all the way from the WH to the FBI to the AG to the media.. Amazing how much raw naked power the Clintons have and how they use it to maintain their iron grip on everything..
