John Poet
John Poet's JournalTwo Names The Press Omits From Email Coverage: Colin Powell And Jeb Bush
From Media Matters (a more balanced representation than some other links posted around here):
By omitting important information and context from the Hillary Clinton email story, are reporters and pundits guilty of trying to make the episode more interesting and more nefarious than it actually is?
As the press demands answers regarding which private emails Clinton handed over to the State Department and which ones she withheld because she deemed them to be personal in nature, many journalists fail to include relevant information about prominent Republicans who have engaged in similar use of private email accounts while in office, specifically former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
By omitting references to Powell and Bush and how they handled private emails while in office, the press robs news consumers of key information. It's also material that deflates the overheated suspicions of a wide-ranging Clinton cover-up.
Appearing on ABCs This Week on Sunday, Powell was asked how he responded to the State Department request last year that all former secretaries hand over emails from their time in office. Powell confirmed that he had used private email while secretary but that he didn't hand over any emails to the State Department because his private emails were all gone.
"I don't have any to turn over," he explained. "I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files." Powell's revelation is important because it puts into perspective the email protocol of a former secretary of state. By his own account, Powell's emails, unlike Clinton's, include his regular communications with foreign dignitaries. What was he emailing them in the lead-up to the war in Iraq? We'll never know.
To date however, both the New York Times and the Washington Post have largely downplayed references to the fact that Powell's private, secretary of state emails are all gone.
Why is Powell relevant to Clinton? Because after she took questions from the reporters yesterday about the email saga, the press focused in on the fact in reviewing her private emails, Clinton found roughly 60,000 messages. She handed over 30,000 to the State Department and determined the other 30,000 were personal in nature and disgarded them.
Read more:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/03/11/two-names-the-press-omits-from-email-coverage-c/202847
Let's ABOLISH the Selective Service!
It's past time to ABOLISH the Selective Service, and draft registration!
This is a money-wasting cold-war boondoggle that we don't need. Hell, I hear their damned radio ads every day on AM radio whilst spying on the rightwing talkingheads, "sign up for selective service, it's the law, we own your ass, but won't tell you how much money we are wasting on these radio advertisements every damn day".
(I voted "other" in the poll).
It's only likely use would be to draft a huge number of bodies to send to some foreign war, and we don't need to send those kinds of numbers anywhere, EVER. Having it available is just too tempting for some future imperialist despot to be able to speed up some future draft.
Even fighting on two different fields (Iraq and Afghanistan), the volunteer armed forces were able to handle them both.
If we were truly threatened on our home soil, the volunteer concept would be more than adequate-- even 9-11 caused a big spike in recruitment.
Besides that, there are so many guns held by civilians here, we ought to feel safe enough without it, shouldn't we? Anyone would be very foolish to try to invade us. It would be like walking into TEN Iraqs.
It's pointless, other than serving to enable some future, unnecessary military adventure. Who the hell are we going to invade that would require massive numbers of cannon fodder? North Korea? Iran? Ukraine?
Conservatives ought to support abolition-- after all, their idol Ronald Reagan promised to do so in 1980-- before he not only flip-flopped and kept it, but started prosecuting registration resisters... All their more libertarian types ought to support abolishing it. It's a money-waster, and anti-liberty.
This "tool" ought to be taken out of the hands of some future despot.
I don't really need to NAME NAMES, here, do I?! 
Jeb Bush Evading Contribution Limits, Exploits "Non-candidate" status
'Ol Jeb seems to be killing off whatever is left of law-and-order regarding presidential campaign finance, by keeping himself in non-candidate "exploratory" status while they try to raise that hundred million dollars by the end of this month, a previously stated goal... even though everyone knows he's running, he is retaining "non-candidate" status for an extended period of time to evade limits on the amounts of individual contributions to his committee!
If he can do this and get away with it, then everyone else will have to do the same to remain competitive, and the laws become a joke (but that's kind of the Bush way, isn't it? "The laws are meant for other people, Standard operating procedure"
(from article)
"As Jeb Bush continues a torrid fundraising schedule across the country, he is pushing new boundaries of campaign finance law, exploiting his status as a non-candidate to avoid contribution limits and amass a cash pile already in the tens of millions"
"Watchdog groups are alarmed, saying Bush’s actions are highly questionable, if not a direct violation of law, and could lead others to do the same, threatening to upend what is left of campaign finance law."
Read more:
http://saynotojeb.com/jeb-bush-exploits-campaign-finance/
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Member since: Tue Mar 25, 2014, 03:39 PM
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