Hillary Clinton is running all right — for president and from allegations. Serious ones, if the Inspector General’s report is any indication. The former First Lady, who has years of practice dodging scandal, is desperate to do so here, now that the Intelligence Community is confirming what most people suspected: Clinton, as Secretary of State, didn’t just break protocol — she risked American lives — storing top secret information on her private server. The bombshell, which broke this week, suggests that Clinton’s emails didn’t just contain classified subjects — but highly classified ones.

“Several dozen” messages have been found, officials say, blowing the lid off a distraction the Clintons thought they’d contained. That sense of security evaporated — along with the Americans’, who are learning that their highest diplomatic official was putting human assets in jeopardy by ignoring the rules on “special access programs” (or SAP). Former CIA agent Charles Faddis told Fox News that SAP is considered the “crown jewel of the American intelligence community.” It is, as another put it, “the most sensitive of the sensitive.” “If this information’s compromised,” Faddis went on, we’re “going to suffer very serious national security damage. People are going to die, quite frankly.”

Apparently, State Department officials knew this and pushed back on Clinton’s plans to use a personal account for classified work — something she’s consistently denied. For the Democratic frontrunner, the revelations come at a most inconvenient time. Officials are already investigating the secretary for other misdeeds, including possible “public corruption” with the family’s foundation during her time at the State Department. Together, the scandals will not be so easy dodge. But that hasn’t stopped the Clintons from trying. Already, the campaign is dismissing the report as some “interagency dispute,” a response so ridiculous that even government officials are surprised.

As former NSA analyst John Schindler pointed out, “normals go to prison for this” — which is ironic, considering that this week, Hillary suggested “no individual [is] too big to go to jail.” Surely, Clinton hopes to be proven wrong now, as clouds gather over her already checkered record. Like so many in this administration, she has proven to be no respecter of the rules or the law. And of course, had this been a Republican, it would have spelled curtains for any candidate’s campaign.

Look at General David Petraeus. The president’s team has gone after the former Army leader with a vengeance, hoping now to strip him of as many as two stars in his retirement — after he was already fined $100,000 and put on probation for sharing classified information. He confessed and submitted to punishment. Even now, the administration isn’t satisfied, hoping to dole out even harsher penalties against a man who, apart from some very disappointing lapses in personal and moral judgment, served his country 37 years. Hillary Clinton is implicated in what many consider to be a far more severe crime, and suddenly it’s the GOP’s fault? Where’s the indignation we saw with Petraeus? It must have vanished in the fog of lawless and chronic cronyism.

Originally published here.

America: Here Today, Gone to Borrow!

A lot must have changed since last Tuesday, when the president declared, “The United States of America, right now has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.” That was hardly the picture painted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) [Tuesday] in one of its bleakest projections about the federal debt in years. The only thing the president seems to be right about is that “the economy has been changing in profound ways.”

But not for the better. For the first time in more than a half-decade, the U.S. deficit is expected to rise by a half-trillion dollars — more than quadruple last year’s spike. Thanks to the back-breakers of ObamaCare (which was supposed to decrease the deficit, remember?), Medicare, and Medicaid spending are skyrocketing. With increases to already ballooning programs, America’s spending spree shows no sign of stopping. “Suppose that year after year,” Stephen Landsburg once wrote, “you spend more than you earn. Which of the following could be paths back to fiscal sanity for your household? A) Spend less. B) Earn more. C) Stop at the ATM more often so you’ll have more cash in your pocket. Do we all understand why C is a really bad answer?”

Apparently, Congress doesn’t. Instead of trimming costs, we’re borrowing more! And as a result, the federal deficit is set to jump a whopping 24 percent. If a family did that, the bank would foreclose. But, as Americans have learned, the federal government plays by far different rules. “This report makes it abundantly clear that the era of declining deficits is over,” said the head of the bipartisan Campaign to Fix the Debt. After “a series of huge and irresponsible unpaid-for tax cuts and spending increases last year, deficits, and the national debt are rising much higher and much faster than expected.” Now, experts complain, the “new IOUs get thrown on top of the old pile.”

There had been some hope that the deficit would continue its slow and gradual decline. But the omnibus package rushed down the chimney in December — and the president’s refusal to repeal several of the big-ticket items in ObamaCare — helped blow those hopes to bits. Interestingly, not many candidates have been talking about the debt. Let’s hope that changes soon because the numbers show we’re on an unsustainable path of spending.

Originally published here.