So, Iowa is over, the Clinton/Sanders tug-of-war came down to a rather unlikely series of coin flips, and we all sail on to the rest of the primary season.

At the same time, not a day seems to go by when we don’t learn that the manner in which Mrs. Clinton did email while she was at State is worse than we thought.  The latest revelation is that several of her emails contained information from Special Access Program level categories.  This is the kind of classification you put on things like “We have a guy in the Chinese Politburo.  No, not on the staff, I mean actually in the Politburo.”  Needless to say, they’re highly classified for a reason.

OK, let’s be blunt.  When information like that is compromised, people die.  It usually starts with the source and his family.  From there, it may be anyone who had contact with them, including our own agents who had to gather the data.  Eventually, the decisions and plans that would have been made on the now-lost data will be less grounded in reality, so people’s jobs (if it’s a technological or economic source) or lives (if it’s a political or military source) can be lost.

Got that?  When people have to break out extra words to put a proper classification on something, the chance that something bad will happen if it gets out go up.

Reports are that the FBI is investigating Mrs. Clinton and her staff, and they may be making quite a case against her.  Even if they don’t find a smoking gun that gets somebody on their staff to start singing so as to not spend a couple decades in federal prison, she may be in a bit of legal trouble.

So, what happens if the FBI finishes its investigation, and concludes that Mrs. Clinton, either through design or negligence, allowed highly classified material to slip outside of controlled pathways? (Heaven forfend that they find evidence of Mrs. Clinton and her staff trying to destroy evidence or conspiring to thwart a federal investigation.)

I see a few scenarios:

1. The Obama Justice Department decides it doesn’t want to be splashed with that particular flavor of bovine waste, so they sit on the investigation until next January.  By then, either Mrs. Clinton will be the president-elect or Mr. Obama can issue her a Ford/Nixon style pardon.  If she’s the president-elect, then the next Attorney General will make it all go away.  If she’s pardoned, she’ll write a book about it.
   • Alternate – The Attorney General buries the report, but the FBI leaks it at a rather inopportune moment for the administration and Mrs. Clinton.  This may or may not have a significant impact on the election.
2. Mr. Sanders pulls a rabbit out of the hat and gets the nomination.  Mrs. Clinton is indicted a few days after the general election so that the President can point to applying justice fairly without directly impacting the Democrats’ chances in November.
3. Vice-President Biden changes his mind about wanting to be president, or the White House decides that they’d rather have Sanders go up against the Republican nominee.  Around about the time that the primaries get done, the Attorney General presents the FBI’s findings to a grand jury and gets an indictment.  Mrs. Clinton either drops out of the race (unlikely) or the DNC disqualifies her and forces her out of the race (more likely).  I imagine that this would cause all of Mrs. Clinton’s delegates to go into a big pile marked “Unclaimed,” because she sure as hell isn’t going to throw them behind Sanders or Biden if she’s staring at a trial brought about by Mr. Obama.  The floor vote at a brokered Democrat national convention would be epic to behold as Sanders and whoever tries to step into the void rip into each other over the carcass of the Clinton candidacy.

So, which one do I see as likely, assuming that the FBI gives the Attorney General something that could be brought to a grand jury?  Cynical old me thinks that option #1 is most likely.    If Clinton wins the election, then she is in the clear.  If she loses and Obama pardons her, the Republicans will have just one more thing to ding him with (who cares?) and the Democrats will love him for helping a fellow Democrat out against those nasty law and order types.

But, to be perfectly honest, I kind of want to see option #3.  I love a good political dog fight, and it would make for awesome blog fodder.

Either way, I’m laying in an emergency supply of popcorn to watch this unfold.

Interesting.

The United Nations wants the United States to hold some sort of truth commission to air out the grievances of Americans with relatively recent ancestors of African descent over slavery, Jim Crow, and other issues. This is supposed to be a move toward a more open discussion of the problems of race in our country and will also include discussions of such things as reparations to the descendants of slaves.

Well, I’m a little short at the moment. Will they take the blood of our ancestors who fought in the Civil War for the North as a down payment? Can we count the money spent on social programs that have benefited the descendants of slaves?

Look, jackholes, we acknowledged that slavery was an abomination 150 years ago, after over half a century of arguing about it. We got rid of legalized overt discrimination based on race half a century ago, and have exercised the power of the courts and legislature to fight it whenever and wherever we have found it. Every generation of Americans since then is a little better at letting race go as an issue between human beings.

It took 400 years to get to where we were in 1968, and it’s going to take a little time to unwind that particular knot from hell.

But apparently we’re not moving fast enough.

Michael Brown was reminiscent of black men being lynched? Are you bloody kidding me? A thug who holds up a store, struggles with a police officer for his gun, and then gets shot is compared to innocent men who were rounded up and killed without doing a damn thing? Really?

Look for this to be waved around in the next few months. “The rest of the world, who created the slave trade, killed millions of Africans while they were raping and pillaging sub-Saharan Africa up until the 1950’s, and have rarely, if ever, been honest about it or made reparations, wants us to fess up and admit that bad things happened in our history and within our borders!  Vote for me and you’ll get your share of the goodies!”

Yeah, spare me the drama.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for work, because somebody has to pay the taxes that make sure that the U.N. can pay for things like this.

So, tomorrow, the good people of Iowa will go to their caucuseseses, thus officially starting the slightly less silly political season in the United States by browbeating their neighbors and family into a bad decision in a high school gymnasium.

On one side, we have Comrade Greeting Card, who promises free admission to the bread lines for those who have a party membership card.   He is opposed by the Wicked Witch of Benghazi, who promises to provide federal subsidies for the bill she plans to send our families for the bullets it takes to execute us.

On the other side, we have a multi-faceted goat rope.  The front runner appears to be the fuzzy brain parasite that feeds from what used to be a liberal Manhattanite real estate mogul.  Hot on his trail is the product of a wild weekend between Richard Nixon and Patty Duke in Calgary.  Behind them is a collection of, well, a bunch of misfits, and I don’t mean the lovable kind.

Really, America?  Is this the best we can do?

Somebody wake me up in June when all of this is done.