CLIMATE CHANGE - It's Happening, It's Now

"‘It’s happening, it’s now,’ says U.S. government report on climate change" PBS NewsHour 11/23/2018

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SUMMARY:  On Friday, the federal government released its most dramatic report yet on the effects of climate change.  According to scientists, the country is already experiencing serious consequences from rising global temperatures, including more frequent and severe storms, fires and flooding.  John Yang talks to Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

YOU'VE GOT MAIL - Secretary Hillery Clinton's eMail (again, and again, and again....)

COMMENT:  If you think ANY administrator, private company or government, keeps day-to-day tabs on policies that MAY effect them, you are delusional.

I would EXPECT that Secretary Clinton would have continued with the same policies regarding email as her predecessor, email policy was NOT her focus.

This is brought to you by the:  "Smear Hillary Clinton" campaign.

"Why Clinton's private email use is deemed more serious than predecessors'" PBS NewsHour 5/25/2016

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SUMMARY:  The State Department's report condemning Hillary Clinton has brought the debate over her conduct as Secretary of State back to the forefront of the political landscape, and throws the race for the White House into uncharted territory.  Judy Woodruff talks to Rosalind Helderman of The Washington Post about the details of the report and why Clinton's violations are worse than her predecessors'.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  We take a closer look now at the State Department's inspector general report on Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server.

Rosalind Helderman of The Washington Post has been covering this ongoing story.

Welcome back to the program, Roz Helderman.

So, first, tell us, what would you say the main findings of this report are?

ROSALIND HELDERMAN, The Washington Post:  So, this was a report that looked at e-mail use by the past five secretaries of state, and it concluded that there have been systemic problems in how the State Department has gone about preserving public records over the course of the tenures of multiple secretaries of state.

However, it was particularly critical of Hillary Clinton and her use of private e-mail.  It said, for instance, that, that use did, in fact, violate department policies that were put in place to ensure compliance with the Federal Records Act, public records laws.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And does it say that the rules, the guidelines were clear, should have been clear to Secretary Clinton and the people around her?

ROSALIND HELDERMAN:  One of the big takeaways of the report was that the guidelines had been not as clear as they should be going back over a number of years, and that in fact the guidelines and training on those guidelines have not kept up with the way that e-mail has changed the way that we communicate.

That said, the report does specifically say that the warnings about the risks of using private e-mail for public business and the discouragement from doing so have become much more numerous and pointed and descriptive while Secretary Clinton was in office.

And so, whereas her predecessor, Secretary Colin Powell was also criticized by the report for using private e-mail, the dangers of doing so might, perhaps, have been more clear to Secretary Clinton.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Well, I guess what I'm what I'm trying to get at is, is there any doubt that the people around Secretary Clinton — and I guess there's no way to know what she knew — but is there any doubt that the people around her knew that they were in violation of a set of guidelines?

ROSALIND HELDERMAN:  They have said that they didn't know that they were in violation.

And one interesting thing is, she and her aides have said that she wants to cooperate with all these inquiries, but, in fact, she didn't sit with an interview with the State Department's Inspector General, and a number of the top aides didn't respond to questionnaires, which makes it harder a little bit to know what they had in their minds while they were doing this.