Columbia University, Dean Of Journalism School, and The Note In The Bedroom

[From article]
In the current issue of the New Yorker, Steve Coll, Dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, has a brief piece on Hillary Clinton’s private email problems. He traces the current scandal to…Rush Limbaugh!
[. . .]
Hillary Clinton, in her memoir “Living History,” recounts her struggle to defend her privacy while residing in the White House. Some of her stories have a gothic tone. After Bill Clinton’s first inauguration, Harry and Linda Thomason, friends from Hollywood, found a jocular note under a pillow in the Lincoln Bedroom. It was from Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host. How did the note get there?
[. . .]


Steve Coll, Dean, Columbia Journalism School

Was Rush George H.W. Bush’s last Lincoln Bedroom guest? Did he really leave a note? Or did the White House staff already detest the Clintons so much that someone left the note as a joke? I don’t know. Perhaps Rush can tell us. But the real question is, what on God’s green Earth does this have to do with Hillary Clinton’s decision to conduct official State Department business on an unsecured, off-the-books server? Mr. Coll thinks it is a matter of privacy, explained by Rush’s “haunting” of the White House:
[. . .]
See, here’s the thing: privacy was never the question. No one cares if Hillary uses a private email system to schedule her yoga lessons and plan her daughter’s wedding. On the contrary: that is what everyone does, and it would be inappropriate to use the official (and relatively secure) State Department system for this purpose.
Rather, the issue is that Hillary chose to carry on her official State Department correspondence, in which she had no legitimate expectation of privacy, through the home server that housed information on yoga lessons. Hillary is in trouble because 1) her decision to circumvent the State Department computer system for substantially all of her official communications unquestionably violated State Department policy, and 2) if she had classified information on her home server–as she evidently did–she is in violation of federal criminal statutes.
[. . .]



You might think that this is a trivial deconstruction of an unusually stupid magazine article, and you would probably be right. But note: Steve Coll currently is the dean of what used to be regarded as America’s foremost school of journalism. It may still be, for all I know. Not only that, Coll was the managing editor of the Washington Post from 1998 to 2005, has won a Pulitzer prize, has authored numerous prize-winning books and has served as president of the New America Foundation. He is a model of contemporary liberalism, and he apparently doesn’t understand that Hillary’s use of a private email system for official correspondence has nothing to do with privacy. Let alone with Rush Limbaugh’s haunting the White House. Sadly, this is the state of today’s dominant, Democratic Party news media.
[. . .]


Rush Limbaugh, Lives Rent Free in the Minds of Many

[Limbaugh replies]
Here it is 2015 and there’s a story in the New Yorker about her e-mail server, and she remembers something that happened in 1993 that’s at the top of her mind. This is why I say I live rent free in these people’s heads.
[. . .]
There were things happening in the White House she wasn’t controlling, things happening in the White House she didn’t know, and if it was that easy, if it was that easy to get that close to her, like a note under the pillow in the Lincoln Bedroom and suspiciously out of place furniture, why, I need my own e-mail server. I mean, that’s the thinking.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/09/hillarys-email-scandal-rush-limbaugh-made-her-do-it.php

POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 1, 2015

BY JOHN HINDERAKER
HILLARY’S EMAIL SCANDAL? RUSH LIMBAUGH MADE HER DO IT!