Good for the Goose

Yesterday I explained that, with the discovery of marked-classified material on her private server,  Hillary Clinton had blown her last possible defense against indictment.  The indictment would be for failure to carry out her obligation to protect national security information, and she lost her last defense short of Barack Obama yanking strings in the background to prevent her indictment.

One day prior, though, she made a typically yawn-worthy speech, this time discussing the rights of people under Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation, in this case whether people on a watch list (the famous '"no-fly list") can exercise Constitutional rights.  In this case, it was the Second Amendment, but it pretty much doesn't matter.

"If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn't be able to go buy a gun, no questions asked," she said in the speech.

I happened to see a clip of that, and my hypocrisy meter pegged to the extreme right, which in itself was rather ironic.

Hillary Clinton may or may not own a firearm, but she certainly is surrounded by a lot of people who have them handy.  But I digress mightily.

I'd love to have her go through the legal machinations by which she got to that statement she made and the intended point.  Now, I don't actually disagree with the basic point.  I'm not a fan of allowing watched terrorists to pass through firearm purchase checks without all kinds of red flags flying through the air.

I support the process by which those on the no-fly list are flagged in a firearm-purchase scenario, so long as there are ample protections in place so that if someone is flagged, they have a very speedy capability to appeal their presence on the list to the FBI, and have a "resolution" within seven days

Now that list has over a half-million names on it, and we're all aware that there have been plenty of situations where a person with the same name as someone on the list has been flagged (famously Ted Kennedy, who matched a "T. Kennedy" on the lesser, "extra-search" part of the list and couldn't immediately board a flight he'd been taking for years).

So -- that "resolution in seven days" is either that the individual is told that they're on the list, why they are and how to appeal it (and there must be such a process), or they are removed from the list and able to fly and do all the things people can do.

If they are, say, a name duplication of an actual terrorist who needs to be on the list, then the FBI needs to create a paired "safe exclusion" list with the Social Security numbers and/or picture IDs of cleared, non-terrorist individuals who duplicate a name on the list.  If someone is flagged, the person checking can turn right to the "safe" list and look for confirming IDs.

But back to Hillary.  "If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn't be able to go buy a gun, no questions asked."  OK, let's go with that, she said it.  If you are free to take otherwise Constitutional rights from people because they're simply on an FBI watch list, then we should be all over taking rights from people more aggressively being pursued by the FBI -- like, say, a criminal investigation -- right?

I certainly think one logically leads to the other.  Hillary Clinton is so seriously the topic of a criminal investigation by the FBI that some 50 special agents are hard at work finalizing the case against her -- a case that, somewhere along the line, Barack Obama is going to have to allow an indictment on, or jam politics into the Justice Department and watch 50 dedicated FBI agents resign in protest.

If someone is on an FBI watch list, but the case is not strong enough to have an investigation in progress on them, let alone to be picked up and arrested, and you can still clip their rights, then certainly someone under criminal investigation should not be allowed to run for president of the United States.

And I agree up and down the line.  If you're on a terror watch list or no-fly list, then you shouldn't be allowed to buy firearms as long as your due process to appeal that, is honored and honored quickly.  And if you are in a higher situation of presumed risk, as in "under an ongoing criminal investigation for exposing classified and national security information and for subverting the Freedom of Information Act", then your rights should be suspended far beyond that.

I don't care if Hillary buys a firearm, although I suspect Bill might be a little twitchy if he did.  But I for darn sure don't believe that she should be running for president while under an FBI criminal investigation.

Hopefully the rest of the country agrees, even before she goes to prison.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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