A sailor in the U.S. Navy is facing prison for using his phone to take pictures inside a nuclear submarine. He claims that he just wanted to share the photos with his family and that he deserves leniency. His lawyer is citing Hillary Clinton as a defense.
Politico reports:
Citing Clinton, sailor seeks leniency in submarine photos case
A Navy sailor facing the possibility of years in prison for taking a handful of classified photos inside a nuclear submarine is making a bid for leniency by citing the decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton over classified information authorities say was found in her private email account.
Petty Officer First Class Kristian Saucier, 29, is set to be sentenced Friday on a single felony charge of retaining national defense information without permission. In May, Saucier pleaded guilty in federal court in Bridgeport, Conn., admitting that while working on the U.S.S. Alexandria in 2009 he took and kept six photos showing parts of the sub’s propulsion system he knew to be classified.
The defense and prosecutors agree that sentencing guidelines in the case call for a prison term of 63 to 78 months, but defense attorney Derrick Hogan cited the treatment of Clinton as he argued in a filing last week that Saucier should get probation instead.
“Democratic Presidential Candidate and former Secretary of State Hilary [sic] Clinton…has come under scrutiny for engaging in acts similar to Mr. Saucier,” Hogan wrote. He noted that FBI Director James Comey said 110 emails in 52 email chains in Clinton’s account contained information deemed classified at the time, including eight chains with “top secret” information and 36 with “secret” information.
Greta Van Susteren spoke to a former prosecutor who thinks Saucier will get probation because the presiding judge has a history of sympathy in this area and was appointed by… Bill Clinton.
This isn’t the first case of its kind. Back in July, a Marine who was punished harshly after admitting he mishandled classified information, demanded the same treatment Hillary got.
Zero Hedge reported at the time:
The Blowback Begins: Marine Demands Same Treatment As Hillary
The FBI’s decision to recommend that no charges be brought against Hillary Clinton has been labeled a double standard of epic proportions, and now the decision will trigger further unintended consequences.
A Marine Corps officer who has been locked in a legal battle with his service after self-reporting that he improperly disseminated classified information now intends to demand the same treatment that Hillary received.
Maj. Jason Brezler sent a classified message using an unclassified Yahoo email account to warn fellow Marines in southern Afghanistan about a potentially corrupt Afghan police chief. A servant of that police chief killed three Marines and severely wounded a fourth 17 days later, on August 10, 2012, opening fire with a Kalashnikov rifle in an insider attack WaPo reports.
Brezler, who is still in the reserves and who works full time for the New York City Fire Department, was not charged criminally in the case, but he was issued a potentially career ending fitness (fit to continue serving) report after self-reporting that he sent the classified email to Afghanistan. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) even wrote then-Commandant Gen. James F. Amos about the case in August 2013 and asked whether it was necessary to be so harsh on someone who had warned fellow Marines of a potential threat in combat.
Who can blame these men for citing Hillary Clinton in their defense? They risked their lives to defend America. When has Hillary done that?
Cases like these highlight the growing feeling among many Americans that there are two sets of rules in this country and that some people are above the law if they have the right connections.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Well, I suppose if he is a registered Democrat voter…
Even better! All he needs to do is donate to the Clinton Foundation and problem solved. Right?!
Excuse me, I have to go throw up my breakfast, lunch, and dinner because this is a triple puke.
Let’s reverse this. So you think Clinton did wrong and deserves to be punished, but she wasn’t you are OK with others doing wrong and not being punished. You can’t have it both ways.
BTW, he did it in 2009. He didn’t know about Clinton. But if you really want to set a precedent because you are bitter and Trump is going to lose, you can try.
Trump is getting his 1st security briefing in the next couple of days. Want to bet on how long he keeps his mouth shut? Over and under is set at a week.
This isn’t about trump. It’s not even about hillary anymore. It’s about the damage Comey did to the rule of law when he let her skate.
No, I want to have it ONE way: Anyone and EVERYONE who breaks the law, gets prosecuted. However, if we won’t prosecute everyone who is self-evidently GUILTY, as Hilary is, then we shouldn’t prosecute anyone, take the law off the books, and fire every bureaucrat supposedly hired to enforce it.Then cut out the budget.
“Let’s reverse this. So you think Clinton did wrong and deserves to be punished, but she wasn’t you are OK with others doing wrong and not being punished. You can’t have it both ways.”
What’s the matter with you? Apparently you don’t have the brains God gave a goose.
Actually I suspect it’s just that you’re incapable of being honest. Because any honest person would recognize this sailor is being punished. Unlike Hillary Clinton he will never ever get a security clearance again, which will impact his earning potential as already having a security is a valuable commodity if applying for a job with government contractors. Actually no contractor will hire him now. He has a felony conviction that will follow him around for the rest of his life. He will almost certainly be administratively separated from the Navy under other than honorable (OTH) conditions (I can’t see him getting a general discharge with that felony conviction for abuse of a position of trust). Which means he will forfeit any benefits he may have otherwise have qualified for such as the GI bill or VA loans and many employers won’t hire people who have been involuntarily separated from the service and their discharge is characterized as OTH.
He was convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. 793 (e). The government never argued he had intent. He simply was convicted of unauthorized retention. Comey made a big deal about how he couldn’t recommend even charging Clinton unless he could prove intent. As a matter of fact as he was moving the goalposts he argued to recommend prosecution he would have to be able to argue that Clinton had intent to harm the United States or aid a foreign power.
The government never accused this sailor of having any such intent.
Moreover, the law clearly says that anyone convicted of violating this statute “[s]hall be fined under this title OR imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
Since you seem incapable of reading and comprehending capitalized he “or” between fined and imprisoned to make it more obvious to you. There is no requirement for the judge to impose a prison sentence at all. A judge could simply impose a fine. Although he will be fined and sentenced to prison. But there’s no reason the judge couldn’t suspend the sentence and place him on probation as his attorney is arguing. That’s the sentence Clinton crime family associate Sandy Berger received. And if past performance is a guide the sailor will also be sentenced to a few hundred hours of community service.
Even if he gets probation he is still being punished. He’ll be under court ordered supervision, may still go to prison if he violates the terms of his probation, he’ll be fined, he’ll have to perform community service, he’ll have difficulty finding a job or an apartment, perhaps for the rest of his life, due to his felony conviction and OTH separation from the Navy. It’s sheer lunacy to argue that he isn’t being punished.
Moreover he’s a much lesser threat to national security than Hillary Clinton. The six pictures he took with his cell phone were all classified CONFIDENTIAL/RESTRICTED. And he’ll never ever have access to classified information again. Clinton had eight emails classified TS/SCI, 36 classified SECRET, and eight classified CONFIDENTIAL. And neither she nor her inner circle of accomplices haven’t even lost their tickets.
Isn’t that how your kind feeds their children?
I hate to say this, largely because my basic sympathies lie with the service personnel, but…
you don’t deal with this by making our security laws MORE lax. Not in the statutes, and not in their enforcement. They are already a little too porous, IMNHO.
And people in the uniformed services know the rules and when they break them. The great majority are careful, honorable people, and they simply won’t break the rules.
The photos he took were classified CONFIDENTIAL. I had a TS/SCI clearance and spent 20 years working in a classified environment. I’ve never seen anyone go to prison for even deliberately mishandling such a small amount of CONFIDENTIAL material.
FBI Director James Comey said the following in his press briefing r.e. Hillary Clinton on 5 July:
“…To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”
We had a petty officer who was a malcontent and general PITA when I did my first cruise. Apparently he had just barely graduated from college but his G.P.A. was too low to be accepted as an officer and consequently he was bitter and angry at life. He had a pattern of misconduct due to his attitude and we took appropriate action. Naturally nothing was ever his fault so clearly we were unfairly mistreating him, just because we enjoyed it. He called his congressman to complain. Even his congressman wasn’t buying his act, as he said the sailor sounded like a malingerer (he was). But when a congresscritter makes an inquiry on behalf one of his constituents we in the service had to investigate the complaint and reply within a certain amount of time.
In the course of our investigation one thing led to another and we discovered he had a stack of CONFIDENTIAL documents in his locker. He was gathering “evidence” against us. We handled it administratively. We immediately suspended his clearance, it was later permanently revoked, and we involuntarily separated him under other than honorable conditions. Not even he went to prison, and he had more classified than this MM1.
As John R. Schindler, among other things a former NSA intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer who has been much in demand on TV due the Clinton email scandal, put it in one of his op-eds:
http://observer.com/2016/06/the-coming-constitutional-crisis-over-hillary-clintons-emailgate/
“…In reality, nobody goes to jail for mishandling classified information at the Confidential level…”
So, why is the DoJ trying to put this sailor in prison? Perhaps if he had a massive amount of CONFIDENTIAL in his possession, but six pictures is not a massive amount. This should have been handled administratively, and if you link to the politico article other sailors who committed similar acts onboard the USS Alexandria went to Captain’s Mast. The worst they suffered was reduction in rank and loss of pay. This sailor has no prior convictions and has a good service record (the sailor I referred to earlier DID NOT have a good record and a pattern of misconduct is sufficient to warrant involuntary administrative separation). He is still on active duty, so I don’t see why this saw the inside of a federal court room. Forget the Clinton travesty of justice, although she really does belong in prison. Both General Petraeus and Sandy Berger retained, removed, and/or destroyed much more classified material and it was more potentially damaging to national security than CONFIDENTIAL material. And they plead guilty to misdemeanors, and were sentenced to probation, fines, and community service.
This sailor never should have been charged, but once the DoJ made the insane design to charge him they never should have charged him with a felony. He shouldn’t spend a day in prison.
The first test is to determine whether he is a member of the ruling class. If yes, then intent is the standard and he is not guilty by definition. If he is not in the ruling class (he is not), then he will be judged on the basis of the evidence and the law. He does not qualify for the Hillary defense. In Utopia (as promised by Obama in 2007) we have classes of people with different rules. Who knew?
BTW, how is that Utopia working out in Chicago, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and other Democrat plantations…I mean paradises?
Trump is part of the ruling class. Trump almost certainly didn’t pay any income tax in the last 20 years. So are going to bitch about him not releasing his income tax returns, or is this really about something else? This is no off topic because you are comment on the privileges of the ruling class – something that has existed as long as we have had organized societies. The only real attempt at fixing the privileges of the ruling class was communist. We all know how that worked out.
Yes, Clinton has joined the ruling class – Now what?
You’re not and you won’t be no matter who is elected (even if it had be Bernie Sanders). So what?
I don’t know who put them on ‘plantations’, but George W. Bush was president from 2001-2009 and had a Republican Congress for SIX of those years. Yet, when he left, the economy was in worst shape than at any time since the Great Depression. Do you really think Trump is going to fix the plantations? Do you care if he fixes them? Please!
“The only real attempt at fixing the privileges of the ruling class was communist.”
No. Communism has a ruling class as a necessary element. The US Constitution was designed to eliminate a ruling class. There have been some weaknesses in it but overall, it is the best attempt at removing a ruling class in the history of the planet. Slavery was a compromise with evil that was fixed at a later date at a high cost of many lives. Post slavery policies of the Democrats are effectively similar to their modern policies — keep the blacks dependent.
The cities I cited are all run by Democrats — for decades. The Democrats have promised Utopia for these cities for my entire life yet their ignorance, corruption, and outright lies have destroyed formerly great cities. The Democrats want dependent voters, not self sufficient free people.
Why don’t you write a book titled “History for Simpletons”?
In theory, Communism was a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. But that was not the point. The point was that Trump is part of the ruling class.
“The US Constitution was designed to eliminate a ruling class.” Where does it say that? There is no hereditary aristocracy, but was written by a ruling class. It wasn’t the first and whether it was best is an opinion. Which non-ruling class members had a say? Senators weren’t even directly elected until 1913.
Yeah, except for slavery – that little detail – and women.
Why all about cities, anyway? What the h-ll does this have to do with a sailor who distributed classified photos? NOTHING
Are you even capable of arguing honestly? Do you have to keep making things up?
“What the h-ll does this have to do with a sailor who distributed classified photos?”
The government never accused him of having any intent to distribute classified photos. He was indicted and convicted only for unlawfully retaining those photos.
“Petty Officer First Class Kristian Saucier, 29, is set to be sentenced Friday on a single felony charge of retaining national defense information without permission.”
The government never accused him of distributing or intending to distribute those photos because there was no evidence he had any intent to do so. But I see that doesn’t stop you from fabricating the charge against him.
“The government never accused him of having any intent to distribute classified photos.” He took a plea. You have no idea what they threatened to charge him with. He took the pictures in 2009. How did the Navy know about the photos if he didn’t show them to anybody?
BTW, Clinton has a separate system for handling classified documents. It was maintained by an aide. The emails you people are enumerating were classified retroactively.
TX-rifraph
ORD is asking you to write a book for him.
Aw, you got me. I guess the title should have been ‘History According to Simpletons’. But I made the suggestion because I thought he was qualified to write the book for obvious reasons.
We already have history books by and for simpletons.
They were written by Marxist history professor Howard Zinn. You seem to be familiar with them, OnlyRightDissentAllowed.
@Arminius You discerned that I am a Marxist? Can you point to one comment that lends credence to that? I am probably closest to a libertarian, but I think they Libertarians can get doctrinaire.
OnlyRightDissentAllowed, I know the feds never intended to indict Saucier for distributing or intending to distribute the photos, as they had no evidence that was the case, because I read the indictment and government’s sentencing memorandum, genius. On the other hand, unlike you, I therefore know what other potential crimes they were threatening to charge him with. He took the plea to take obstruction of justice charge off the table, and possibly a charge of making false statements. But he was never going to be charged with distributing the pictures. Again you are simply making that up out of thin air.
But the bottom line is this case against Saucier never should have become a criminal matter. Those famous security and administrative sanctions Comey deceptively talked about as if they would have been sufficient to address Clinton’s multiple felonies? No, Hillary needed to be charged and it would have been a slam dunk conviction on all counts.
Naturally those charges should have been multiple counts of violating 18 U.S.C.(f), which pace Comey many reasonable prosecutors would have filed (and any reasonably competent prosecutor could have convicted her under paragraph (e) as he provided ample evidence that the compromise was not do to gross negligence but was knowing and willful). Clinton mishandled TOP SECRET codeword information and people can, should, and most definitely do go to prison for that. If he had done his job he would have put national security concerns front and center. It’s not really his job to make a recommendation as the decision to move forward with the case or not belongs to the prosecutor. If he felt like making a recommendation it should have been to prosecute, or he could have just shut up and presented the results of his investigation without comment as is usually the case. Lnstead, in the eyes of many current and former agents, he disgraced the bureau by making what was clearly a political recommendation.
The charges also should have included multiple counts of violating 44 U.S. Code § 3106 – Unlawful removal, destruction of records. Comey testified that despite Clinton’s and her attorneys’ attempts to wipe her computer the FBI was able to reconstruct enough email fragments to know there were several thousand work related emails that she hadn’t returned. And she removed and destroyed them. A slam dunk conviction if there ever was one.
And I haven’t seen this discussed but Clinton also clearly violated 18 U.S. Code § 1519 – Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy.
“Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”
As the DoJ prosecution manual notes, it’s much easier to get a conviction under section 1519 than other federal obstruction statutes. The burden of proof is lighter and because it covers “any matters” or “’in relation to or contemplation of’ any matters.” Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State until 1 February 2013. Yet two FOIA requests for Benghazi-related emails (including Clinton’s) and other relevant documents had been filed months earlier. Judicial Watch filed their request nearly three months prior to her departure in November. Sharyl Atkisson, then a CBS investigative journalist, filed her request in early December prior to the 10th of the month. At that point it was illegal for Hillary Clinton to delete a single email including any of the 30k she claimed were personal. But of course she didn’t delete those for nearly two years after she left the job; sometime between October 2014 when the State Department sent her a letter asking for all work related emails on her private server and 5 December 2014 when she delivered all of her “work related” emails.
A clear violation of this law as it is illegal to “impede, obstruct, or influence” the “proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States.” “Any matter” which falls under the “proper administration…within the jurisdiction of any department or agency” most definitely includes timely compliance with meeting FOIA requests. Which the State Department could not do as they didn’t possess any of the responsive Clinton emails. They were all “concealed and covered-up” in the basement of Clinton’s house in Chappaqua on a private email server.
Also, she had testified in both chambers of Congress during her last couple of weeks as Secretary of State about Benghazi. Clearly she was aware Congress was investigating and had requested all relevant documents. It also then became illegal for Clinton to delete any email that may be subject to a subpoena. The reason the feds like section 1519 is because it makes anticipatory obstruction illegal. The courts have held that all the prosecutors have to prove is there was “a relationship in time, causation, or logic” to a possible future investigation or proceeding and that the records destruction has a “natural and probable effect of interfering with the due administration of justice.” Other federal obstruction laws require a certain knowledge or suspicion that an investigation is pending or imminent. Not section 1519. It criminalizes the destruction of records, which Hillary clearly did, even if the individual doesn’t know when or even if those records will ever be subpoenaed. All the prosecutor has to prove is the purpose was to make an investigator’s job harder if not impossible, should that potential future investigator ever arrive. And since we have enough public statements and email discussions that Clinton avoided using if at all possible because it creates a paper trail that investigators can find, hence her insistence on using private server exclusively and her refusal to use an State Department accounts whether classified or unclassified, this would have been another open and shut case. And could still be, as I don’t believe Obama or his sycophantic advisers have a sufficient handle on all the statutes he’d have to pardon Hillary for violating should she not be elected.
But security and administrative would have been sufficient to address Saucier’s misdeeds. Again, nobody goes to prison for mishandling CONFIDENTIAL information. For mishandling CONFIDENTIAL loss of his security clearance and perhaps his career would have been more than sufficient. And if you read the background information you’d know that his shipmates who also took pictures in classified areas didn’t even get that. But that would require reading and comprehending, and that clearly isn’t your strong suit.
P.S. Another thing you’re wrong about. I didn’t include the several thousand emails that were subsequently classified in my tally. Just the emails that contained information that was classified at the time Clinton and her cronies were endangering national security.
OnlyRightDissentAllowed, I said Zinn was a Marxist. He described himself as “something of a Marxist.” Then I said you seem to be familiar with his work. It takes something of a paranoiac to go from that to me calling you a Marxist. It’s certainly not rational to think that.
Do you actually think that the only people who know who Zinn was and are familiar with his work are Marxists? I’m very familiar with the Quran. I’ve read it cover to cover. I’ve also read much of the Sunnah literature. More than most, and some of the Shia texts.
That doesn’t make me a Muslim.
If Trump hasn’t paid any income tax in the last 20 years (and experts have commented that that’s a virtual impossibility) it’s because he hires smart tax attorneys who know how to take advantage of the law in order to avoid (not evade, there’s a huge legal difference) taxes. That’s called working within the law. Hillary has been caught working outside it (FBI Director Comey admitted as much), and that makes her an outlaw.
I can’t understand you types who can look at Trump and have to imagine terrible things about him, while you look at Hillary and can’t see the terrible things she’s done.
Hillary is only outside the law when she is charged, tried and convicted. Duh!
I don’t know what ‘experts’ said it is impossible, because it is possible. I assume they are the same ‘experts’ that claim Trump can’t issue his returns because they are being audited. Which he can. Do those experts know that the IRS can only audit the last 3 years and that anything much older than that would have been settled or gone to court unless there is a question of fraud. I know specifically because my dad was a tax attorney. We discussed this stuff over the dinner table all my childhood. I wasn’t remotely interested in following him, but I know.
There is one other reason. I KNOW someone who is a real estate developer and has had tax loss carry-forwards for the 20 years I have known him. It is mos def not impossible.
If you don’t care that Trump pays no taxes, didn’t serve in the military and insults a Gold Star Family while claiming he served because he ran a business – OK. They say everyone is entitled to his own opinions.
Time to chisel off the Engraving on the Supreme Court Building that says “EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW”. And replace it with “MONEY TALKS”.
You are first figuring that out? When is the last time a rich man got executed?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2382307/Douglas-Feldman-dies-Texas-financial-analyst-turned-road-rage-killer-dies-snoring-tells-carried-death-sentence-victims.html
“A former financial analyst declared proudly that he ‘personally carried out (the) executions’ of two truckers in Dallas 15 years ago just minutes before he died snoring on Wednesday evening following a lethal injection.
Douglas Feldman, 55, was executed for the road-rage shooting deaths of Robert Everett, 36, of Marshfield, Montana, and Nicholas Valesquez, 62, of Irving…”
He was a successful financial analyst. He was wealthy, and he was executed in July 2013.
I won’t hold my breath for you to break character and ever actually know what you’re talking about.
Why, because you can name one out of 1500? Durst may finally get his just deserts, too. But those cases hardly refute the argument that the rich receive a gentler form of justice.
The argument was that Hillary got a special treatment because she is part of the ruling class. Are you really trying to argue that Trump isn’t part of the ruling class? When you prove that one ………………..
Facts are hard for you, aren’t they, OnlyRightDissentAllowed? Socioeconomic status (usually defined as a combination of education, income, and occupation) and to some extent age are the best predictors of potential violent criminal behavior.
http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/Does_age.pdf
“Abstract
High criminal arrest and homicide mortality levels among young people are often attributed to biological and developmental flaws innate to adolescence. A special data
run by the California Criminal Justice Statistics Center detailing arrests by offense, age, and race/ethnicity for 2006 provides new opportunities to examine the relationship
between demographic and socioeconomic factors and crime outcomes by age. Preliminary rate and bivariate regression analyses find that poverty is more concentrated in younger than older ages, low poverty status is strongly connected to
higher levels of criminal arrest and homicide for every age, and poverty level is a significantly larger predictor of arrest and homicide risk than is age. The conclusion that
higher rates of crime and murder among young ages, like high rates among African Americans, relate more to low socioeconomic status than to innate characteristics adhering to age challenges prevailing notions of the ‘crime proneness’ of adolescents.”
I am not going to let you off the hook and let you pretend you were talking about crime in general. You were speaking specifically about capital murder.
“When is the last time a rich man got executed?”
Feldman had graduated Magna cum Laude from Southern Methodist University, went on to successful career as a financial analyst with Merrill Lynch, consequently was quite well off, and was 40 years old when he got himself committed the murders that put him in that execution chamber. In short, it isn’t that well educated, wealthy people entering middle age like Feldman have the money to get away with capital murder. It’s that well educated, wealthy people entering middle age rarely commit capital murder. In fact, they rarely commit violent crimes in general compared members to other age and socioeconomic groups.
That’s why they are rarely executed. Because they commit capital murder at a comparatively low rate than those other demographic and socioeconomic groups. Imagine that! One surefire way to avoid being on death row is to not commit murder.
As far as Trump goes, if you have ever read any of my comments about him you’d know I’ve always said that he is no “outsider.” He is as establishment as one can get without actually holding the elected office. I consider Trump and Clinton to be very much the same. They’re both on-the-take New York liberal Democrats. The only difference is she sells access, and he buys access.
@Arminius 1 in 1500 is still an interesting statistic – especially when there have been notorious cases where the accused had money and resources and beat the rap. There have also been 156 people without resources who were convicted and sentenced to death – and later exonerated. Those 156 were not part of the ruling class.
I agree with you about Trump and Clinton. It comes down to the Supreme Court, doesn’t it? Trump promised to appoint Justices like Scalia. Did you know that Scalia dissented in 2009 on a death penalty appeal with the following comments included: “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent” “”Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged ‘actual innocence’ is constitutionally cognizable.”
Personally I thought Scalia was quite the character and super smart. I would pick him for a my debate team, but anyone like him does not belong on the Supreme Court. Ditto for ‘originalists’ until we develop a time machine and go back and ask them.
Perfectly good Civil Wars have started over less than this travesty.
What did you think Trump meant when he said that ‘you 2nd Amendment people might be able to solve this’?
Imagine how great morale will be when Hillary is CINC. If this guy petitions for clemency, how will she respond. What a mess.
Shillary will have no problem throwing the book at this man, should he sue for clemency. Corruption does not imply freedom from hypocrisy.
Besides, the Navy man is just one of the little people. He is of no use to Her Royal Highness.
Take a look at her monogrammed bath towels – “HRC”.
Make that “Her Royal Clintonness”.
Didn’t Comey say something about others who do the same thing as she did may be prosecuted . i do not remember the exact words.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.
FBI Director James B. Comey
The sailor is legally hosed. He used his unsecure phone to take photos of a classified location. He *knew* beyond a doubt the action was illegal and had no bearing on his job, but did it anyway. (come to think of it, that’s the perfect Clinton)
The Marine has a chance of getting out of this with only bruised knuckles, as he claims to be acting in a way to preserve the lives of his fellow Marines. He will probably never serve again, but he has the possibility of getting “Leave before we push you out.”
I’m always reminded of Mayor Daley’s words and opinions on the legality of allowing guns in Chicago and how it will be like the “Wild West”. I assume that he was referring to the “shoot-out” type of lawlessness but really, this type of lawless behavior that is allowed for the rulers is much worse and the body counts are more difficult to quantify. We do know though that:
“Tin soldiers and Clinton coming, we’re finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Benghazi.”
I would upvote this a hundred times just for the rewrite of that song! Yours, or did you see it elsewhere?
Not sure I completely follow you irv. It is just a play on the words of Neil Young’s tune which was written for the stinkin’ hippies. Now, how ironically hypocritical that the stinkin’ hippies don’t give a sh*t that one of their own is politically responsible for the deaths of four innocents in Benghazi.
This reminds me that it is often stated that the Founders never imagined such weapons as we have today in the hands of civilians. Granting that, it is likewise true that they never imagined such weapons in the possession of government. Millions of such weapons in the hands of careless, reckless, and immature people can do quite a bit of damage, but the mayhem they would be capable of is not systematic. Government abuse of arms, OTOH, can be systematic, institutionalized, and conducted on an industrial scale (as the 20th Century so clearly showed).
I believe Mrs. Clinton was wrong and that her handling of classified information placed Americans and American assets in grave danger (to quote Col. Jessup, “is there any other kind”). I believe Sec. Clinton intentionally subverted FOIA laws and violated ethical disclosure rules by not informing the State Dept. she had Mr. Patrglino, a political appointee, on private financial retainer.
However the Navy Petty Officer was wrong. He took a photographic device into a secured area and used it. Regardless of others behaviors and the consequences (or lack of) one ought not act unethical or illegal and then say, “yeah but”. It doesn’t matter who else put their hand in the cookie jar, it you did it you’re wrong.
It’s utterly wrong what he did. But how can we ask government workers to not act like head government workers Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?
We can’t.
We can demand that they behave in an ethical manner. The problems will come when juries begin to refuse to convict them.
It’s called “leadership by example.” However, the principle, as generally stated, presumes that the”example” is a good one.
The Clintons > Law
Obama Administration > Law
You & Me < Law
The situations are hardly comparable.
This goof “just wanted to share the photos with his family”; a frivolous reason for breaching security.
Hillary did it to protect her criminal activities and obscure the trail of corruption and incompetence which follows wherever she goes. And that’s not frivolous. It’s criminal, but not frivolous.
Criminal activity in service of a higher cause. In Hillary’s mind, a cause doesn’t get any higher than her own aggrandizement.
Cases like these highlight the growing feeling among many Americans … that some people are above the law if they have the right connections ….
Um, in the immortal words of the band Boston, I’d say it’s “more than a feeling” … much more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm_-sW4Vktw