Political prisoner hit with another Kafkaesque charge for writing NYT piece about harsh repression by U.S. ally Bahrain; Salon, 9/6/16

Ben Norton, Salon; Political prisoner hit with another Kafkaesque charge for writing NYT piece about harsh repression by U.S. ally Bahrain:

"A prominent human rights activist who already faced up to 15 years in prison for Twitter posts has now been hit with another charge after writing publicly about his Kafkaesque case.

Detained Bahraini activist Nabeel Rajab published an op-ed in The New York Times on Sunday titled “Letter from a Bahraini Jail” (a play on Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail”)...

The U.S. State Department has publicly called on Bahrain to release Rajab. It also said it has “raised concerns with the government of Bahrain, particularly on this case.” But Rajab argues the U.S. is not doing enough."

Former Bush ethics lawyer backs Clinton, warns on foundation; Politico, 8/31/16

Nick Gass, Politico; Former Bush ethics lawyer backs Clinton, warns on foundation:

"Hillary Clinton is the "only qualified candidate in the race and she should become president," President George W. Bush's former chief White House ethics lawyer wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday, while calling on the Democratic nominee to do more to assuage the fears and suspicions about the looming presence of the Clinton Foundation as an influence on policy.

"There is little if any evidence that federal ethics laws were broken by Mrs. Clinton or anyone working for her at the State Department in their dealings with the foundation," wrote Richard W. Painter, currently a law professor at the University of Minnesota. "Unfortunately, the foundation is still fuel for Mrs. Clinton’s persistent critics."

Pointing out that Clinton's critics have yet to find proof of any violations of statutes or ethics regulations, Painter acknowledged that there was likely favoritism but concluded that no laws had been broken."

A porous ethical wall between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department; Washington Post, 8/14/16

Editorial Board, Washington Post; A porous ethical wall between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department:

"Though it is an exaggeration to claim that Ms. Clinton ran her agency as a pay-to-play operation, the latest unearthed emails from the Clinton State Department nevertheless reveal that the ethical wall she was supposed to have built between herself and her family’s organization was not impermeable enough...

Offering access, even just for sharing information, is providing a favor...

As political scandals go, this is middling, at best.

But it suggests that some donors to the Clinton Foundation may have seen their gifts as means to buy access — and it points to much bigger potential problems. Should Ms. Clinton win in November, she will bring to the Oval Office a web of connections and potential conflicts of interest, developed over decades in private, public and, in the case of her family’s philanthropic work, quasi-public activities. As secretary, she pledged to keep her official world and her family’s foundation separate, and she failed to keep them separate enough. Such sloppiness would not be acceptable in the White House."

Ethicists: Clinton team violated ‘spirit’ of pledge; Politico, 8/11/16

Katy O'Donnell, Politico; Ethicists: Clinton team violated ‘spirit’ of pledge:

"Ethicists tended to agree that while there may be no evidence of a deliberate violation of Clinton’s pledge, the emails underscored the blurry lines between the globe-spanning charity and Clinton’s work as the nation’s top diplomat.

“The Clinton Foundation was taking money from anybody who would give it, and the biggest contributions were from people who had business before the State Department,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen.

“They didn’t follow the pledge. … I don’t think anyone in the foundation sought to deliberately violate the pledge, I just don’t think they cared about it,” he added."

Hillary Clinton Tries to Quell Controversy Over Private Email; New York Times, 3/10/15

Amy Chozick and Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times; Hillary Clinton Tries to Quell Controversy Over Private Email:

"“I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two,” she explained. She asked, in effect, that voters trust that she was disclosing more of them than she needed to — and even to credit her with an unusual degree of transparency.

Mrs. Clinton said she turned over some 30,490 emails to the State Department in December, nearly two years after leaving office. But she said she had deleted nearly 32,000 others.

Her confirmation that she and her aides had chosen which emails to make available to the State Department raised new concerns about Mrs. Clinton’s power to decide which records of her tenure as secretary would be available to congressional investigators, to journalists filing Freedom of Information Act requests, and to history."