The 2016 US Election (Part III)

[Ace Pace]

An actually sane statement, with only one factual mistake that jumps off the page.

The normal punishment, in this case, would include losing authority to handle classified information, and that too disqualifies Hillary Clinton from being President.

The only requirements to be a U.S. president are laid out in the constitution, which unsurprisingly does not mention classification as an issue.

[maraxus2]

"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."

I wonder what went down at the meeting between AG Lynch and Slick Willy.

Here’s why the FBI director is not recommending charges against Clinton
by Greg Sargent July 5, 2016 3 min read original

(Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
In his statement to the press today, FBI director James Comey laid out new details about Hillary Clinton’s email server arrangement. Among the most serious were these:

1) Of the emails Clinton turned over to the State department, “110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined” to “contain classified information at the time they were sent or received,” and eight of these “contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent.”

2) Clinton and her colleagues at the State Department were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” Seven of the email chains were classified as highly sensitive, and they “should have known that an unclassified system was no place” for them.

3) While only a “very small number” of the emails that contained classified info bore “markings indicating the presence of classified information,” nonetheless, “participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”

Yet Comey declared that he would not be recommending that the Department of Justice bring criminal charges. As Comey put it:

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

According to experts I spoke with today, the crux of the decision appears to turn on the question of whether there is evidence that the conduct outlined above rises to the level of “mishandling classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way.” That’s the phrase Comey used to describe what constitutes a felony violation of relevant statute.

The most obvious of Comey’s conclusions was that there was no evidence of intent to mishandle the information. But how is it possible that Comey determined that the above conduct also does not constitute “gross negligence,” even if it was not intentional?

Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Project, makes a key distinction, noting that investigators likely concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to get a conviction for gross negligence, aside from whatever they personally believed as to whether any such gross negligence did occur.

“Comey didn’t think the evidence would support a criminal prosecution,” Goitein tells me. “That’s what prosecutors base their decisions on — what the evidence shows, not what they personally think happened.”

This might explain why Comey carefully claimed in his statement that there is “evidence of potential violations of the statutes,” while also claiming that in spite of this, “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring this case. Note that in so doing, Comey explicitly said that one of the considerations concerned the “strength of the evidence.”

Comey also took care to note in his statement that unlike in Clinton’s case, previous cases prosecuted involved either intentional mishandling of classified info; levels of disclosure that allowed for an inference of willful mishandling; signs of disloyalty to the U.S.; or some combination of those.

“Hillary Clinton was never likely to be indicted, because no one has ever been prosecuted before in a situation similar to hers,” Matthew Miller, a former spokesman for the Justice Department, tells me. “There’s never been a case where someone has been prosecuted where either gross negligence or willful intent weren’t completely obvious.”

Take, for instance, the case of former General David Petraeus. Donald Trump, responding to Comey’s announcement, tweeted this today:


But as Michelle Lee has explained, Clinton’s case really is not like that of Petraeus. As part of his plea agreement, Petraeus admitted to mishandling information that he had known was highly classified; lied to the FBI during its investigation; and admitted to doing that, too. Petraeus acknowledged that these things were “knowing and deliberate.”

Meanwhile, as Josh Gerstein recently detailed for Politico, a number of other previous prosecutions in cases like these really did contain some of elements that Comey today said are not present in the case of Clinton.

Steven Aftergood, an expert on government secrecy, tells me that the question of whether a “threshold for culpable negligence” has been cleared is “a judgment that is made in part by prosecutors based on previous cases.”

Aftergood concluded: “The threshold for culpable negligence is evidently higher than what was met in this case.”

Link

[Wild Zontargs]

The only requirements to be a U.S. president are laid out in the constitution, which unsurprisingly does not mention classification as an issue.

Given his comment that

Our adversaries almost certainly have a blackmail file on Hillary Clinton, and this fact alone disqualifies her from service.

I suspect that "disqualifies" is meant in a moral sense, rather than a legal sense.

I appreciate the lack of tinfoil in the statement. His summary of the Clintons' recent behavior is concise, rather than the ravings of a conspiracy theorist.

[Ace Pace]

I appreciate the lack of tinfoil in the statement. His summary of the Clintons' recent behavior is concise, rather than the ravings of a conspiracy theorist.

Someone recently commented elsewhere that it's kinda funny how his Twitter stropped being a running stream of conscious the moment he got some serious staff online. This seems to continue the trend.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ah, I see the Donald is going through one of his occasional "trying to sound professional" phases.

I don't expect it to last.

As to the email thing- the FBI's announcement is pretty much what I expected at this point, and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they reached their conclusion that it doesn't warrant indictment fairly and impartially.

The catalog of all the mistakes Clinton made does not reflect well on her, of course, but I don't think it'll be enough to cost her the election either. Most of the people who will really care already don't like her. Under other circumstances, I might have said that it renders her unfit to be President, but when the only at all realistic alternative is You Know Who... yeah. And at least we don't have to deal with the clusterfuck of having an indicted nominee, or trying to replace her at the last minute.

I still wish that she'd never been the nominee, that we didn't have to run someone so ethically compromised, but as things stand, this is probably the best outcome politically that we could have reasonably hoped for.

So, as Bernie says, we're tired of hearing about the damn emails. Time to let it rest.

[Purple]

Can you be sure that they can be trusted? I mean, under any other circumstances sure. But can we really be sure that they didn't just take one look at Trump and say "lol nope" and than decide not to prosecute? What would you have done in their position?

[The Romulan Republic]

I think the FBI knows how controversial their conclusions will be, and probably went to great pains to avoid doing anything that would appear less than fully professional.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Can you be sure that they can be trusted? I mean, under any other circumstances sure. But can we really be sure that they didn't just take one look at Trump and say "lol nope" and than decide not to prosecute? What would you have done in their position?

If everyone breaks a law, then the problem is not with the people who break it. Every Secretary Of State since the advent of email has done the same thing for a reason. It even has a name "The Low Side".

They have to do things very quickly and often while on the move without access to a secured computer system. For instance, when the State Department secured veto power over CIA drone strikes, the CIA threw a temper tantrum and started giving State their target list a mere four hours prior to drone launch. This is not enough time to go through proper channels within the State Department to Hillary's desk. So in order to provide oversight to the CIA (to prevent them from rampaging all over Pakistan on their own lookout), the State Department underling who got he information had to use The Low Side just to do their job.

[Flagg]

Looks like she Trumped the justice system!

[Pelranius]

Given that Petraeus, who did much worse, only got a year or so of probation and a $50,000 (doubled to $100,000 by the judge's order) fine, a corresponding penalty in the legal system for Clinton would have probably been something like $10,000 and probably not even any probation*.

Given the optics, you'd have a hard time convincing any AUSA who isn't Stannis Baratheon or Samuel Vines to take on such a high profile case with relatively minor legal stakes but so politically turbocharged.

*I'm not a lawyer, so I'm just spitballing what the legal penalties would have been for Hillary if it went to trial/she pleaded it out like Petraeus.

[Patroklos]

If everyone breaks a law, then the problem is not with the people who break it. Every Secretary Of State since the advent of email has done the same thing for a reason. It even has a name "The Low Side".

1.) No Secretary of State has done the same thing. Clinton is alone in maintaining a personal outside server and lying about it. Of those that did use unsecured email they did so for a tiny fraction of the volume and used well defended public providers like Gmail.

2.) *Sigh* that is not what the "low side" is. The low side is still an official government IT service, just one that is for routine traffic instead of conidential traffic. It still follows all the logging, records keeping and non confidential security requirements required By by law. For obvious reasons the majority of government employees at any agency are not generating confidential communications most of the time so this is the working IT network for most.

They have to do things very quickly and often while on the move without access to a secured computer system. For instance, when the State Department secured veto power over CIA drone strikes, the CIA threw a temper tantrum and started giving State their target list a mere four hours prior to drone launch.

If you want the responsibility of having input on drone strikes they you put together an operations center to handle that. Somehow the DoD and CIA figured it out. And four hours in an absurd about of time for such a thing. If someone complains about that they are simply showing their ignoranance of how quickly such things happen.

This is not enough time to go through proper channels within the State Department to Hillary's desk. So in order to provide oversight to the CIA (to prevent them from rampaging all over Pakistan on their own lookout), the State
underling who got he information had to use The Low Side just to do their job.

Then change your procedures. If it's so hard why doesn't the SecDef and CIA Director have to constantly do the same? Also, if some emergency does require you to communicate in the open you are still required by regulation to report this. It's probably not hard to justify, but the security folks still need to know what has been potentially exposed.

And again, that's not what the low side is.

[Gandalf]

"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."

I wonder what went down at the meeting between AG Lynch and Slick Willy.

Perhaps the FBI dusted off the old "don't prosecute people in the executive branch" rule from the Bush days, when the bogeyman of criminalising politics was touted by angry conservatives to protect The Decider.

[Wild Zontargs]

Ouch. AP FACT CHECK: Clinton email claims collapse under FBI probe

WASHINGTON (AP) — Key assertions by Hillary Clinton in defense of her email practices have collapsed under FBI scrutiny.

The agency's yearlong investigation found that she did not, as she claimed, turn over all her work-related messages for release. It found that her private email server did carry classified emails, also contrary to her past statements. And it made clear that Clinton used many devices to send and receive email despite her statements that she set up her email system so that she only needed to carry one.

FBI Director James Comey's announcement Tuesday that he will not refer criminal charges to the Justice Department against Clinton spared her from prosecution and a devastating political predicament. But it left much of her account in tatters and may have aggravated questions of trust swirling around her Democratic presidential candidacy.

A look at Clinton's claims since questions about her email practices as secretary of state surfaced and how they compare with facts established in the FBI probe:


CLINTON: "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material." News conference, March 2015.

THE FACTS: Actually, the FBI identified at least 113 emails that passed through Clinton's server and contained materials that were classified at the time they were sent, including some that were Top Secret and referred to a highly classified special access program, Comey said.

Most of those emails — 110 of them — were included among 30,000 emails that Clinton returned to the State Department around the time her use of a private email server was discovered. The three others were recovered from a forensic analysis of Clinton's server. "Any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton's position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about the matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation," Comey said. Clinton and her aides "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," he said.

___

CLINTON: "I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified." NBC interview, July 2016.

THE FACTS: Clinton has separately clung to her rationale that there were no classification markings on her emails that would have warned her and others not to transmit the sensitive material. But the private system did, in fact, handle emails that bore markings indicating they contained classified information, Comey said.

He said the marked emails were "a very small number." But that's not the only standard for judging how officials handle sensitive material, he added. "Even if information is not marked classified in an email, participants who know, or should know, that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it."

___

CLINTON: "I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work related" to the State Department. News conference, March 2015.

THE FACTS: Not so, the FBI found.

Comey said that when his forensic team examined Clinton's server it found there were "several thousand work-related emails that were not in the group of 30,000" that had been returned by Clinton to the State Department.

___

CLINTON: "I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for personal emails instead of two." News conference, March 2015.

THE FACTS: This reasoning for using private email both for public business and private correspondence didn't hold up in the investigation. Clinton "used numerous mobile devices to view and send email" using her personal account, Comey said. He also said Clinton had used different servers.

___

CLINTON: "It was on property guarded by the Secret Service, and there were no security breaches. ... The use of that server, which started with my husband, certainly proved to be effective and secure." News conference, March 2015.

CLINTON campaign website: "There is no evidence there was ever a breach."

THE FACTS: The campaign website claimed "no evidence" of a breach, a less categorical statement than Clinton herself made last year, when she said there was no breach. The FBI did not uncover a breach but made clear that that possibility cannot be ruled out.

"We assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal email account," Comey said.

He said evidence would be hard to find because hackers are sophisticated and can cover their tracks. Comey said his investigators learned that Clinton's security lapses included using "her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries." Comey also noted that hackers breached the email accounts of several outsiders who messaged with Clinton.

Comey did not mention names, but a Romanian hacker who called himself Guccifer accessed and later leaked emails from Sidney Blumenthal, an outside adviser to Clinton who regularly communicated with her.

___

CLINTON: "I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department." News conference, March 2015.

THE FACTS: Comey did not address Clinton's reason for using a private server instead of a government one, but he highlighted the perils in routing sensitive information through a home server.

The FBI found that Clinton's personal server was "not even supported by full-time security staff like those found at agencies and departments of the United States government or even with a commercial email service like Gmail," the director said.

A May 2016 audit by the State Department inspector general found there was no evidence Clinton sought or received approval to operate a private server, and that she "had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business with their offices." Courts have frowned on such a practice.

In an unrelated case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Tuesday that the purpose of public records law is "hardly served" when a department head "can deprive the citizens of their right to know what his department is up to" by maintaining emails on a private system.

___

Associated Press writer Calvin Woodward contributed to this report.

EDITOR'S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by public officials

But wait, there's more! He Said/She Said: Hillary Clinton vs. James Comey on Her Email Practices

Here’s a comparison of statements Hillary Clinton or her campaign have made about her email practices while secretary of state and statements made by FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday:

* * * *

CLINTON: “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.” (Hillary Clinton, press conference, 3/10/15)

COMEY: “110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning [government] agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. … Separate from those, about 2,000 additional emails were up-classified to make them confidential. Those emails had not been classified at the time that they were sent or received… [Some] chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending emails about [top-secret-level] matters and receiving emails from others about the same matters.”

****

CLINTON: “I take classified information seriously.” (Hillary Clinton, CNN interview, 2/1/2016)

COMEY: “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of the classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

****

CLINTON: “Nothing I sent was marked classified or that I received was marked classified.” (Hillary Clinton, Democratic Presidential Town Hall on Fox News, 3/7/2016)

COMEY: “It’s also important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the emails here containing classified information bore markings that indicated the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked classified in an email, participants who know, or should know, that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”

****

CLINTON: “I have directed that all my emails on Clintonemail.com in my custody that were or potentially were federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done” (Hillary Clinton, sworn statement filed in U.S. District Court, 08/10/15)

COMNEY: “The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related emails that were not among the group of 30,000 emails returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014.”

****

CLINTON: Asked if she “wiped” the server, “What, like with a cloth or something? Well, no. I don’t know how it works digitally at all.” (Hillary Clinton, press conference, 8/18/2015)

COMEY: Clinton’s lawyers “cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.”

****

CLINTON: “The Secretary’s office was located in a secure area. Classified information was viewed in hard copy by Clinton while in the office. While on travel, the State Department had rigorous protocols for her and traveling staff to receive and transmit information of all types,” (HillaryClinton.com, “The Facts About Hillary Clinton’s Emails”)

COMEY: “She also used her personal email extensively while outside of the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.”

And the punchline: This fact-check has been updated to reflect a new Four Pinocchio rating, replacing the original Two Pinocchio rating, in light of new information.

A Clinton campaign official sent the following comment in response to Comey’s announcement: “We have not seen the emails the Director is referring to. We heard this for the first time when it was announced on TV, just like everyone else. The Secretary and campaign always have spoken to the best of our knowledge. And it was not just the campaign – but also the State Department, which also reviewed these emails – that had said none of these emails were marked classified. The bottom line is that career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the Department is appropriate. And that there was no intent to do anything wrong. That is the main takeaway here.”

Lie, lie, and lie some more. Admit nothing. If they can't prove you meant to fuck up, it doesn't count.

[Patroklos]

So when he says this...

COMEY: “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of the classified information,

Is he suggesting that Hillary triped and fell into a secret dedicated server room that materialized in her closet?

[The Romulan Republic]

It changes nothing. Clinton is a sleaze. We pretty much knew she was a sleaze (well, except for her die hard loyalists, anyway).

But realistically, it is now her or Trump. Even with this scandal, Trump's negatives far outweigh hers'. I wish she wasn't the nominee, but that ship has sailed, and without a felony indictment she's not going to face any substantial pressure to step down as nominee.

Its her or Trump. Thus, it must be her.

[Joun_Lord]

Why is it automatically her? Because honestly her and Trump aren't really any different beyond the fact she is a known quantity in politics and as such we are sure of her willingness to break laws and act like a massive sleaze. Trump is media blow hard who says shit to pander to morons.....I'm sorry, Republican voters but has not proven he will play fast and loose with rules of governance.......mostly because he hasn't held political office yet (and hopefully never shall God, Allah, the Force, the Swartz, and Eminem willing).

But beyond that they are much different. Both are corrupt assholes willing to shit on people. Both are whores willing to say whatever to win. Both think they are above the law.

For fucks sake Trump is fucking Hillary's friend. Donated to her Senatorial campaign, she had a front row seat at his wedding, held the same fucking views as she did on guns, abortion, and fuck knows what else.

Trump is a goddamn RINO cunt playing up the Conservative angle to either get himself elected because he couldn't run as Dem or to help his best buddy Hillary win the Presidency by looking so bad she looks almost.......almost good in comparison.

I don't know where I'm going with this other then trying to say Hillary being automatically the good choice is in my no doubt misinformed and incredibly angrish opinion incorrect. The choice is a turd and a turd in a toupee, neither is good or better, they are both identical pieces of shit. With probably pieces of corn sticking out because for some reason corn isn't digested or something.

[Gandalf]

How is Trump a RINO?

[The Romulan Republic]

Why is it automatically her? Because honestly her and Trump aren't really any different beyond the fact she is a known quantity in politics and as such we are sure of her willingness to break laws and act like a massive sleaze. Trump is media blow hard who says shit to pander to morons.....I'm sorry, Republican voters but has not proven he will play fast and loose with rules of governance.......mostly because he hasn't held political office yet (and hopefully never shall God, Allah, the Force, the Swartz, and Eminem willing).

"Both sides are the same" was always the vapid and dishonest cry of fringe extremists and those just trying to sound cynical and edgy, but its particularly false in this case.

Both are corrupt and dishonest, yes, but only one has actual governing experience and has actual held political office. And only one is campaigning on blatant bigotry, xenophobia, authoritarianism, and inciting violence.

And while Trump has never had a chance to show us how bad he would be in government, I'd rather take him at his word that he'd be a borderline despot than gamble that he won't be. Besides, he has shown his true narcissistic, dishonest, racist, misogynist character in plenty of other circumstances.

Clinton is a known quality, yes. And thus predictable. We know that she won't do anything too crazy, extremist, or destructive to the basic functioning of society. We cannot claim the same for Trump. But we can say he's an unapologetically bigoted, abusive, arrogant, and dishonest man.

Finally, even if Trump does nothing horrible when in office, the mere fact of his election would globally disgrace the United States, destabilize the global economy, provide a recruitment aid for terrorists, and potentially establish his brand of violent, bigoted, xenophobic pseudo-fascism as part of the mainstream. In other words, he can do literally nothing as President and still be a disaster just by being elected.

But beyond that they are much different. Both are corrupt assholes willing to shit on people. Both are whores willing to say whatever to win. Both think they are above the law.

And yet, they are so very, very different.

A couple common traits (corruption and dishonesty), to differing degrees and in different ways, do not make two people equivalent.

For fucks sake Trump is fucking Hillary's friend. Donated to her Senatorial campaign, she had a front row seat at his wedding, held the same fucking views as she did on guns, abortion, and fuck knows what else.

Yeah, I'll admit I'm not happy about that history, though I'm not sure they'd count as friends any more.

But I don't think Trump has any real cause or allegiance except himself.

Trump is a goddamn RINO cunt playing up the Conservative angle to either get himself elected because he couldn't run as Dem or to help his best buddy Hillary win the Presidency by looking so bad she looks almost.......almost good in comparison.

Trump may not be a sincere conservative, but his rhetoric, and the people its attracted and "inspired" (for lack of a better word) is simply the true face of the Republican Party revealed at last- a festering pit of violence, selfishness, bigotry, xenophobia, authoritarianism, and stupidity.

I don't know where I'm going with this other then trying to say Hillary being automatically the good choice is in my no doubt misinformed and incredibly angrish opinion incorrect. The choice is a turd and a turd in a toupee, neither is good or better, they are both identical pieces of shit. With probably pieces of corn sticking out because for some reason corn isn't digested or something.

You come so close to the truth, at times, and yet are almost categorically wrong in your conclusion.

[maraxus2]

Looks like the GOP's managed to shoot themselves in the foot in another statewide race in Colorado. And against the same candidate as last time no less!

Link

DENVER (AP) – Darryl Glenn, a tea-party favorite from the conservative stronghold of Colorado Springs, decisively won Colorado’s Republican U.S. Senate primary Tuesday and will face incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet in November.

Glenn beat four opponents in a race that focused on national security, jobs and Bennet’s support for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul and Iran nuclear weapons deal.

Glenn, an El Paso County commissioner and self-described Christian constitutionalist conservative, was the only candidate voted directly to the primary at the state GOP convention.

He won endorsements from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the tea party-aligned Senate Conservatives Fund, which poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into his campaign.

“What we found out during the campaign is that Coloradans care about the Iran deal, Obamacare and excessive regulations that are hurting working families. Michael Bennet has to account for it,” Glenn said after his win.

Seeking his second six-year term, Bennet was unopposed among Democrats.

Rick Palacio, the state’s Democratic chair, issued a statement saying “Glenn is too extreme for Colorado and will add to the dysfunction of Washington.”

Glenn’s victory capped a campaign that frustrated many Republican leaders and encapsulated GOP voters’ resentment toward Bennet’s close ties to Obama and partisan gridlock in Washington. It also sets up an uphill race against an incumbent who has raised millions of dollars and is running ads touting his work for Coloradans.

At the campaign’s start, Bennet was considered one of the nation’s most vulnerable Democratic senators up for election this year. He first was appointed to replace Ken Salazar when Salazar was named interior secretary. Bennet was the underdog before narrowly defeating tea party-backed Ken Buck in his first election in 2010.

GOP leaders criticized Bennet’s support for Obama’s deal to ease economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran’s promise not to pursue a nuclear weapon. Bennet also touted Obama’s health care overhaul, which has in part led to rapidly rising premiums and dwindling choices for many Coloradans.

Many voters are upset by Bennet’s support for Obama’s proposal to close Guantanamo Bay, fearing Colorado is a possible destination for the detention center’s terrorists.

But the Republican field exploded to 13 after U.S. Reps. Mike Coffman and Scott Tipton and George Brauchler, who prosecuted theater shooter James Holmes, declined to challenge Bennet. Ultimately, five candidates made the primary, none of them having held statewide office before.

Glenn defeated Robert Blaha, a Colorado Springs businessman; Jack Graham, a GOP newcomer and retired businessman from Fort Collins who appealed to the party’s moderates; former state Rep. Jon Keyser, a decorated combat veteran who focused nearly exclusively on national security; and former Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier.

A divisive race over, Bennet now has a challenger in an independent-minded state that replaced Democratic Sen. Mark Udall with then-GOP Rep. Cory Gardner just two years ago. He’ll now have to defend his voting record and address jobs, school choice, health insurance and the war on the Islamic State group, all issues central to Coloradans.

Primary day also featured a Denver campaign stop by Hillary Clinton, who responded to a House Benghazi committee report Tuesday into the 2012 attack that killed four U.S. citizens. Clinton said it “found nothing – nothing” different from previous investigations. The committee produced no new allegations against Clinton.

snip nonsense

That might be the hardest try I've ever seen.

[Grumman]

Clinton is a known quality, yes. And thus predictable. We know that she won't do anything too crazy, extremist, or destructive to the basic functioning of society. We cannot claim the same for Trump. But we can say he's an unapologetically bigoted, abusive, arrogant, and dishonest man.

Yes, we know Clinton. We know she voted for the Patriot Act. We know she voted for the Iraq War, and against the mitigating amendments that would have protected against the bullshit lies used to justify it. We know she wants to deny you your constitutional rights without due process. We know she's arrogant enough to ignore the experts to do an end-run around the FOIA and put top secret information on her own private server, and then lie about doing so.

"...But Trump!" is not an excuse. Clinton is plainly unfit to be President. That Trump is also plainly unfit to be President does not make Clinton any less shit, it means that you need to find one of the other 149,999,998 eligible candidates who is actually deserving of our trust.

[Gaidin]

If only he ran a good campaign.

[maraxus2]

Yes, we know Clinton. We know she voted for the Patriot Act. We know she voted for the Iraq War, and against the mitigating amendments that would have protected against the bullshit lies used to justify it. We know she wants to deny you your constitutional rights without due process. We know she's arrogant enough to ignore the experts to do an end-run around the FOIA and put top secret information on her own private server, and then lie about doing so.

"...But Trump!" is not an excuse. Clinton is plainly unfit to be President. That Trump is also plainly unfit to be President does not make Clinton any less shit, it means that you need to find one of the other 149,999,998 eligible candidates who is actually deserving of our trust.

It's a bit late in the day for a new candidate. If you want to go and waste your vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, that's your prerogative. Maybe you could write yourself in, since you'd be reasonably confident that you represent your own views?

And you're right, "But Trump!" is definitely not an excuse; it's a valid reason for voting against him. He's an existential threat to millions of people in this Country, and a dangerous enemy to far more.

[Elheru Aran]

And you're right, "But Trump!" is definitely not an excuse; it's a valid reason for voting against him. He's an existential threat to millions of people in this Country, and a dangerous enemy to far more.

Yeah.

I mean, for all the hyperbole about how Trump is teh worst ever... There's an underlying point there that is quite true: in many ways, he is genuinely one of the worst candidates for President that either one of the major races have ever produced. I wouldn't go as far as him being an existential threat... but he's pretty bad.

This election is a choice between a bologna sandwich and a shit sandwich. Neither will kill you, but while bologna isn't that great, at least it's not shit.

[Borgholio]

bologna isn't that great,

Silence, heathen. Fried bologna sandwich is the ultimate foodgasm.

[Wild Zontargs]

I think this bologna is off...



Glad I don't have to eat either one. Can you guys try to keep the resulting vomit and diarrhea on your side of the border? No? Fuck.