election

Third party spam filtering service had access to Clinton’s emails

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Third party spam filtering service had access to Clinton’s emails

If you haven’t seen this yet, more proof that using private email servers for classified State Department emails is a really bad idea.

This system has serious security implications. Email to McAfee’s servers might be encrypted and email out of McAfee might be encrypted, but while it’s at McAfee any employee who has access to the filtering system can tap and read any email going to that domain. So – for example – if I’m a Russian spy, ISIS, North Korea, or Fox News, or a 14 year old hacker, all I have to do is bribe someone at McAfee or hack their work login, and they get to read all the email of the Secretary of State. WooHoo!

And – this is one of many reasons they have a rule at the State Department that you have to use their servers.

The fundamental difference between Scott Walker and Chris Christie

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While talking about why Republicans love Scott Walker, Taegan Goddard gets it exactly right:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s ® appeal to Republicans is that he’s been able to win without caving to Democrats.

I think that’s really unfortunate. Walker, through a mix of luck and bad moves from the Democrats, did manage to pass his agenda without the help of the Democrats. But that’s everything that’s wrong with American politics right now. Walker is going to need broad appeal, because that kind of maneuvering won’t work at the national level.

Chris Christie, of course, is the anti-Scott Walker in this respect. Tom Moran’s recent piece on Christie is particularly illuminating. While Christie also is proud of never compromising ideals, he’s quite willing to work across the aisle. This is particularly important if you believe that the Republicans should stop branding themselves as the Party of No.

Don’t do it, Mr. Romney

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Don’t do it, Mr. Romney

Peggy Noonan on two key reasons why Romney shouldn’t run:

  1. He’s a poor campaigner
  2. He doesn’t have an overarching philosophy

I think both of these are spot on, and the first flows from the second. Romney would be the perfect COO of the government – he’d be ridiculously good at cutting waste and streamlining, well, everything. That being said, he’s always let his opponents define him (e.g. he was caricatured as the guy who hated the rich, even though he gave millions away to charity), and that’s because he never had any philosophy to define himself.

I always got the impression he was a really bright guy who looked at the government and said, “I can do what they do better.” That’s great, but it’s not enough to be elected president. He’s an operations guy, not a strategy guy.