What Is Allowed Versus What Is Wise

Talk to the hand.
(AP photo)

Let’s say it’s time to sell your home. Maybe you have an addition to the family and need the extra space, or perhaps retirement is coming and it’s time to downsize into something more manageable. Let’s also say that you have one of those sensible home owners’ associations which doesn’t do much but make sure everyone’s lawn is mowed and trashcans are pulled in at night.

Obviously you’re going to want to maximize your home’s resale value, so let’s say that you paint it Halloween orange with fuchsia trim, knock out all the windows, and hang a sign on the door saying “Squatters Welcome!”

Under the lax rules of your HOA, that would certainly be allowed — but would it be wise?

With that firmly in mind, let us see what Queen Hillary is up to today:

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she does not need to apologize for using a private email account and server while at the State Department because “what I did was allowed.”

In an interview with The Associated Press during a Labor Day campaign swing through Iowa, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination also said the lingering questions about her email practices while serving as President Barack Obama’s first secretary of state have not damaged her campaign.

“Not at all. It’s a distraction, certainly,” Clinton said. “But it hasn’t in any way affected the plan for our campaign, the efforts we’re making to organize here in Iowa and elsewhere in the country. And I still feel very confident about the organization and the message that my campaign is putting out.”

There may be some small scandal in what the State Department allows its employees to get away with, email-wise — if what Queen Hillary claims is true, is true. But, just like welcoming squatters in with the potential buyers of your house, just how wise was Clinton to set up a private email server with lax security? What was she thinking, commingling her private correspondence about wedding cakes with classified intel about North Korea’s nuclear program? What kind of judgement did she show by deleting 32,000 emails away from public scrutiny? Whom did she trust to see those classified emails, and did they themselves possess the necessary clearances? How, exactly, did classified emails get moved from the classified system and onto her private server? And who did the moving?

All of which begs our penultimate question: Which of the previous items — if any — are allowed?

And our final question: Is a person who chooses what is allowed before what is wise, for no reason other than her own personal “convenience,” really the kind of person Americans want as their President?

Stay tuned.