The Double Standard That Saved Hillary Plus, the tide of war isn’t receding as Obama prepares to leave office.By James Freeman
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-double-standard-that-saved-hillary-1476876488
The latest FBI document release reveals that Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy urged the FBI to downgrade from classified to unclassified a Benghazi-related email that had sat on Mrs. Clinton’s server. “At the time Mrs. Clinton was still insisting she’d never transmitted classified information,” notes a Journal editorial. “Mr. Kennedy proposed that rather than mark the email classified, he’d give it a special exemption from Freedom of Information Act requests, which would allow him ‘to archive the document in the basement of [State] never to be seen again.’”
Our columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. notes that “Hillary Clinton is her party’s nominee and on her way to the White House only because the Obama administration decided to waive the law on handling classified material—and the FBI went along—in order to assure that its designated heiress would succeed to the presidency.”
A separate editorial notes that the U.S. is engaged in five hot conflicts as Barack Obama prepares to leave office. “An eternal law of global affairs is that weakness invites aggression that can lead to war. The latest validation of this truth is that in the eighth year of the Obama Presidency the tide of war is building on multiple fronts and the U.S. can’t escape the consequences,” writes the editorial board.
The Journal’s Kate Bachelder Odell says that Nevada Republican Joe Heck could win the Senate seat of retiring Minority Leader Harry Reid. “Mr. Heck is a sharp and disciplined candidate, his opponent has no discernible ideas, and he’s running to expand the GOP’s appeal,” writes Ms. Odell.
As this year’s rough-and-tumble election campaign heads toward a conclusion, Craig Shirley and Frank Donatelli share an anecdote from America’s 40th president: “In 1987, when he was informed that Democratic presidential aspirant Gary Hart was accused of extramarital activities, President Ronald Reagan reportedly quipped, ‘Boys will be boys. But boys will not be president.’”
Marc Siegel, a professor at New York University Langone Medical Center, notes the temptation for reporters and even physicians to “make pseudo-psychiatric diagnoses” of presidential candidates. “Such assessments are so common in this election season that you would think the two candidates were as familiar to you as your own uncle or aunt. But the truth is, we don’t actually know them except through the fog of the media lens.”
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