John Lott's Website

Andy McCarthy: "Obama, Clinton and Biden ALL used secret, fake-name email accounts to hide their actions"

From McCarthy's piece at the New York Post:

. . . This is how the Obama administration rolled.

When high officials were involved in a dodgy activity they wanted to shield from public disclosure laws, they frequently used pseudonymous email accounts. . . .

[Obama] knew that she was using a non-government communications channel because, numerous times, she used it to correspond with him.

You were never supposed to know that because they concealed it on both ends.

Clinton used not only a non-government address but a non-secure, private domain that the FBI concluded could easily have been — and probably was — penetrated by hostile foreign intelligence services.

For his part, Obama used a pseudonymous email address.

Obviously, Obama and Clinton were not talking about the weather.

They were talking about sensitive matters that are presumptively classified.

Indeed, Clinton was on an official trip to Russia (which boasts one of the world’s most capable spying apparatuses) during some of this email correspondence with Obama.

If Clinton had been charged in the case, the fact that she was communicating with Obama and that he was using a fake address would have become central to the case.

That would have been profoundly embarrassing to Obama — and there was no way the Obama Justice Department was going to let that happen.

So the administration did three things.

First, the Obama White House argued that it was no big deal for high officials to use pseudonymous emails — in fact, it was standard practice.

Second, Obama made it publicly known in an April 2016 interview that he did not want Clinton to be indicted. . . .

Labels: HillaryClinton, JoeBiden, Obama, pseudonym2

Libertarian VP nominee Bill Weld:"Libertarian party pulls substantially more from Mr. Trump"

Libertarian VP nominee Bill Weld claims:"my belief is that the libertarian party pulls substantially more from Mr. Trump" @ 2:41 mark (video is available here).

I had heard that Weld has been raising money with this message as a way of getting those who want Hillary to win to donate money. Consistent with that, it also just so happens that the big dollars that the libertarians have been spending have apparently been on conservative talk radio.

The New York Times also has an op-ed saying that the Libertarians will tilt the election to Hillary Clinton.

With just a few days before Election Day and all eyes fixed on the two leading candidates, it’s easy to overlook a remarkable fact: The Libertarian candidate for president, Gary Johnson, may tilt the election for Hillary Clinton. . . .

As evidence, note that without the Libertarians and Green Party in the race, Trump is down by 1.8% as of Sunday, November 6th at Real Clear Politics. With the Libertarians and Green Party in the race, Trump is down 2.2%. Assuming that the Greens 1.8% are taken entirely from Hillary, to get a net loss of 0.4% from Trump you have to have 3.5% of the Libertarians vote come from Trump and 1.3% come from Hillary (73% of their vote from Trump and 27% from Hillary).

Labels: Donald Trump, HillaryClinton, libertarianism

If anyone else had done a fraction of the security violations that Hillary Clinton did, they would be in jail for a very long time

Here is a case of a sailor who took a photo of a nuclear sub for his personal use (no bad guys saw the picture). From Politico:

. . . Prosecutors allege that Petty Officer First Class Kristian Saucier used a cellphone camera to take photos in the classified engine room of the nuclear submarine where he worked as a mechanic, the USS Alexandria, then destroyed a laptop, camera and memory card after learning he was under investigation.

Last July, Saucier was indicted on one felony count of unlawful retention of national defense information and another felony count of obstruction of justice. He pleaded guilty Friday to the classified information charge, which is part of the Espionage Act, a prosecution spokesman confirmed. No charge of espionage was filed and no public suggestion has been made that he ever planned to disclose the photos to anyone outside the Navy.

The sailor now faces a maximum possible sentence of up to ten years in prison, but faced up to 30 years if found guilty on both charges. Federal guidelines discussed in court Friday appear to call for a sentence of about five to six-and-a-half years, although the defense has signaled it will seek a lighter sentence. . . .

“I just don’t think it’s fair,” said Gene Pitcher, a retired Navy sailor who served with Saucier aboard the Alexandria. “In reality, what [Hillary Clinton] did is so much worse than what Kris did. ... I think it’s just a blatant double standard.” . . .

Labels: HillaryClinton

Is Hillary Clinton's Gun Control Push Backfiring in New Hampshire?

Over the last month, a quarter of all of her campaign ads in New Hampshire have focused on gun control. In rural areas of Iowa, by contrast, she did not run a single ad related to gun control. In all of Iowa, just six percent of her ads discussed guns.

But even among Democrats in New Hampshire things are working out quite as well as Hillary might have hoped. From the Associated Press:

With each mass shooting in the United States in the past year, a debate raged about whether gun-control measures were overdue to make Americans safe.But not in New Hampshire.
The gun culture is alive and well here, and with a population overwhelmingly familiar with and comfortable with firearms, gun-control issues that have resonated across the nation barely register among voters getting ready for Tuesday's presidential primary.
"Most folks in New Hampshire, I don't want to call them pro-gun but they're comfortable with guns," said Wayne Lesperance, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. The state is legendary for its strong libertarian streak, famously boasting "Live Free or Die" on its license plates. . . .
Brita Tirrell, a New Hampshire native and 34-year-old nurse from Concord, doesn't own a gun and has no interest in them.
"Am I into violence? Nope. But am I opposed to people having them for their protection? No," she said. Asked where she ranks it in her thinking about the primary, she said, "It's at the bottom of the list." . . .

Labels: Hillary Clinton Gun Control, HillaryClinton

UPDATE: Incredible winning rate of Hillary Clinton's coin flips to break caucus ties, a fifty-fifty split would have had Sanders ahead

As about 12:21 AM CST, there had been six out of six coin flips that Clinton had won to break ties.

The odds of winning six out of six coin flips with a fair coin is only 1.7%. Using the latest number of delegates on Drudge shown above at 7:00 AM EST would still have Sanders ahead by one vote if the coin flips had gone 50-50. Sanders would still be slightly ahead by 698 to 697.

Counting the votes might be a little more complicated in Iowa. If each coin flip determines more than one of these 1,395 delegates, then Hillary would have had to win more than 50% of the coin flips to win the race.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reported that the Des Moines Register missed some cases.

The initial 6-for-6 report, from the Des Moines Register missed a few Sanders coin-toss wins. (There were a lot of coin tosses!) The ratio of Clinton to Sanders wins was closer to 50-50, which is what we'd expect. . . .

There might have been a total of 13 coin flips with Hillary Clinton winning 7 of the six.

Labels: Bernie Sanders, HillaryClinton

Is the media selectively using pictures to help Hillary Clinton by making her look much younger than she is? Hillary Clinton's stock pictures where she is pictured with other candidates look photoshopped to eliminate wrinkles

UPDATED Several Times Since first posted on January 28, 2016: Here are some screen shots from CNN and ABC of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders giving live speeches. I then used a computer program to estimate the ages of the candidates. The computer program provides fairly accurate estimates of their ages. Both pictures is be fairly accurate in estimating their ages.

The weird thing occurs when you look at the stock pictures that the different networks use for the candidates. Below are the pictures from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS News, ABC News, and NBC News. In virtually all of them it is clear that Hillary Clinton's picture has been photo shopped so that she has a plastic type look and she appears to be much younger than she is. Some of these pictures of Hillary Clinton are clearly airbrushed, particularly CNN and MSNBC. While Hillary Clinton's campaign might have provided some of the pictures, many are clearly taken from these news programs stock footage. But all the pictures of Hillary Clinton show her decades younger than her true age. By contrast, half of Bernie Sanders pictures indicate that he is older than 74. For Martin O'Malley, 3/4ths of his pictures show that he is older than his true age of 53.

Across the news show pictures shown below, Hillary Clinton's average estimated age is 38, about 30 years younger than her actual age. Even eliminating CNN's picture where she appears to be only 29 years old, the average for the other five news organizations puts her at 28 years younger than her actual age. The pictures used for the other candidates create an impression that the candidates are much closer to their actual ages. Bernie Sanders' average estimated age is 71.3, about 3 years younger than his actual age. Martin O'Malley's average estimated age is 58, five years older than his actual age.

To put it differently, if you relied on the stock photos provided by news organizations, Hillary is by far the youngest Democrat in the race, 20 years younger than O'Malley and 33 years younger than Sanders.

Even if wants to restrict the analysis to the polling type line up that I have for four of the news organizations, the results would have implied that Hillary Clinton was now 37.8 years younger than Sanders (Hillary Clinton estimated age of 39 and Bernie Sanders 76.8) and 20 years younger than O'Malley. So as to reduce arbitrariness and facilitate comparisons where pictures are picked for pure news shows, I have limited myself to still shots where at least two of the candidates are pictured next to each other.

Note that there are other oddities with these pictures. For example, for CBS compare the smiling Clinton to open mouthed Sanders or O'Malley. I have no idea whether this makes her look more sympathetic and friendly, but it is interesting just to note that almost all the other networks have pictures for these polling results of all the candidates smiling.

The point of the two pictures of Clinton at the top and the one at the bottom show that there are lots of stock pictures that the media could have picked that would have treated Clinton similar to her Democratic opponents.

More pictures from the AP on June 7th. This picture for Hillary is not as extreme as the ones shown above, but while the picture makes Hillary look younger than she is, the picture for Trump makes him look older. Just looking at these two pictures seems to me that the one for Hillary is much more positive and happy compared to the one for Trump.

Here are two pictures on June 7th from Fox News.

I have also examined some pictures of Carly Fiorina for a comparison and the computer accurately predicts her age.

ADDITIONAL PICTURES

Here are some additional pictures to help gauge the accuracy of the How-Old.net program as well provide additional information on how Hillary is treated. Megyn Kelly is 45, but she looks like she is 47. Lester Holt is 58, but he looks 55. Amazingly, at least to me, Megyn Kelly looks older than Hillary Clinton's still pictures used with the polling numbers.

Very damning: Hillary Clinton clearly knew that she was sending secret information via insecure emails and that she knew it was wrong

From Fox News:

In response to Clinton's request for a set of since-redacted talking points, Sullivan writes, "They say they've had issues sending secure fax. They're working on it." Clinton responds "If they can't, turn into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure."Ironically, an email thread from four months earlier shows Clinton saying she was "surprised" that a diplomatic oficer named John Godfrey used a personal email account to send a memo on Libya policy after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi. . . .

These two paragraphs are very damning. They show both that she knew she was telling people to send secret information in a way that wasn't secure, that her previous statements that the secret material wasn't labeled may have been because she thought she could hide that it was secret and protect her from liability (she is wrong legally even if she thought this excuse could confuse the issue), and finally that she called out others for doing what she was doing.

Labels: Hillary Clinton Mistakes, HillaryClinton

Democratic pundits are publicly turning against Hillary Clinton

It has taken some time, but you know Hillary is in trouble when even the most stalwart Democratic pundits are saying that she is not being honest.

-- Mark Shields tells Judy Woodruff on the PBS Newshour that Hillary should have turned over everything over at the very outset. Shields points out that the judge who reprimanded Hillary this past week was appointed by Bill Clinton.
-- Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post tells Hillary to "stop digging the hole."

you ought to stop — now! — with the unconvincing claim that you did nothing different from your predecessors as secretary of state. . . .
And wiping the server — you did work on Watergate for the House Judiciary Committee, didn’t you? . . .

-- A few days earlier, Eugene Robinson also at the Washington Post had a change of heart about Hillary's email problems. He had until that point been defending Hillary.

. . . It’s about basic respect — for us and for the truth.

Why, when she took office as secretary of state, did she decide to route official e-mails through a server in her suburban New York mansion? There is just one plausible explanation: She wanted control.

Clinton was no stranger to the rules of the federal government. . . .

Even if your name is Clinton, you have no right to unilaterally decide what is included and what is not.

So I wish Hillary Clinton would be respectful enough to say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” I wish she wouldn’t insult our intelligence by claiming she only did what other secretaries of state had done. None of her predecessors, after all, went to the trouble and expense of a private e-mail server. . . .

Labels: HillaryClinton

Hillary Clinton's nonexistent accomplishments in the US Senate

It has been hard for Hillary Clinton's supporters to identify anything that she accomplished while Secretary of State. Well, it should be just as hard for people to identify any real mark she made while in the US Senate. Fifteen of the twenty bills or resolutions she passed involved designating names for government buildings, honoring events, or congratulating people on their accomplishments (show in red). The five bills of more substance are marked in blue. Two of those five designated land in Puerto Rico as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. A third bill renewed a grant program "to develop coordinated respite care programs" -- a center to study elderly care. A fourth "authorize assistance for individuals with disabilities in foreign countries, includeng victims of landmines and other victims of civil strife and warfare, and for other purposes." A fifth was to extend unemployment insurance in 2001, but there was nothing unique about that bill and it appears as if it was a gift to her so that she could claim that she had something passed.

So after eight years in the Senate, Clinton's legislative accomplishments boil down to two relatively small grant programs.

Hillary Clinton's 20 resolutions and bills that were passed while she was in the US Senate.

S. 3625 (110th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 245 North Main Street in New City, New York, as the “Kenneth Peter Zebrowski Post Office Building”.