Put a Little 'C' On It

Whenever I hear ex-President Bill Clinton speaking I see in my mind's eye Mister Haney, that lovable barnyard con man from the Golden Age of TV sitcoms. The same wheedling tone, and something about the way he tilts his head and glances sideways at his mark.

He was in full form yesterday, selling Mister Douglas a cow he didn't want accusing FBI Director Comey of selling "the biggest load of bull I ever heard" when he testified before Congress that Hillary Clinton had received emails on her private server that were marked as classified national security information.

But what's the big deal about that?

"The State Department typically puts a little 'C' on it, to discourage people from discussing it in public ... does that sound threatening to the national security to you?"

As Mister Haney might say, let me put that another way: it sounds to me like the State Department was following the rules for marking classified information, and the little "C" for CONFIDENTIAL is the particular marking that "shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security," as it says in this Executive Order from Barack Obama.