Rant #1,395: It's "Personal"

Let me tell you, the emerging controversy over Hillary Clinton's emails, and whether what she claimed were personal emails really were that personal, has gone from a tempest in a teapot to something potentially as big as the Teapot Dome Scandal of years and years ago.

I personally did not think that this would get that big or mean much of anything that she used her personal email address for her electronic correspondence while she was secretary of state, but now, the whole thing has exploded.

Yesterday, I put my take on this whole thing on Facebook in two separate messages, and I stand by what I said then, to now, although something important happened in the interim.

Read on:

"I honestly don't know what to make of this. As we all know, nothing is really deleted on a computer, so I guess they will have to go for her hard drive if they really want to look into this and find if she deleted anything that would hamper national security. If she did, she can kiss whatever aspirations she has goodbye. Funny, the Clintons always seem to skirt the law, and they do it with the general public's approval, which is bewildering.

She is telling some white lies here, though. Just because the basic theme of an email is, let's say, her daughter's wedding, like any other letter, multiple topics can be talked about. What happens if on the email that she talks about, let's say, her daughter's wedding dress, she also tells her personal secretary to set up a meeting with so and so to discuss such and such thing. Don't think this can't happen, because we have all talked about more than one topic in an email. What I am trying to get to is that an email that she thinks is "personal" might not be as personal as she thinks it is. Through Freedom of Information, I am sure some outfit can get the whole thing, and see if what she considers to be 'personal' really is as personal as she thinks it is."

What happened in the interim is that the Associated Press filed a lawsuit yesterday afternoon against the State Department to force the release of email correspondence from Clinton's tenure.This legal action came after repeated requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) had gone unfilled, and evidently, the AP was onto something five years ago, when they made the first of such requests, and they even made a similar request in the summer of 2013.

I suggested that a FOIA be filed on this situation in other emails on the Internet pertaining to this case, not knowing that the AP had already done that.

A FOIA is easy to file, and I have done them many, many times as part of my work routine.

In fact, anyone, any citizen of the United States, can file a FOIA if they deem it necessary.

And if there is anything sensitive in these documents, they will be blacked out, so Clinton really has nothing to worry about regarding any sensitive information that she has deemed personal ... unless she has something to hide, which, with her constant denials and refusal to hand over deleted emails, is becoming increasingly evident.

Also, this situation may really trip the line over what is private and what is personal and what we, as citizens of this country, need to know, as it involves her regular email account, and her home computer.

Yet, in other even more ornery cases, home computers are confiscated by the police as evidence. I am not likening the Clinton situation to the type I am going to bring up now, but those individuals that the police believe to be child pornographers always have their computers confiscated and their hard drives put under scrutiny for heinous emails and photos. Again, I am not likening this situation with Hillary Clinton to that those horrible situations, but if they can have their computers confiscated and examined, why can't Mrs. Clinton?

Again, if she is telling the truth, and she purged what she says are "personal" emails about everyday things like her yoga classes and her daughter's wedding, that is fine and good, and she has nothing to worry about.

But if there are more than "personal" emails in what she purged, then the public needs to know about it, and she might not be the one to determine whether something is "personal" versus vital.

Let's see where this takes us, because I believe a chink in her armor may have just been exposed.