I’ve been meaning to write this post for a couple of days now, but haven’t had the heart. Frankly, I am really sick of having to make the same point about the Clintons over and over again—they never learn, and will never change—knowing that so many people will just immediately turn off their brains and run for the rationalizations dispensary any time dishonesty, hypocrisy, deceit or misconduct by one of them is uncovered.

This happens, you see, because the Clinton are perhaps the most prominent among a particular harmful species of individual in our culture, the ethics corrupter. Ethics corrupters are popular, powerful, successful and famous people who, because they are popular, powerful, successful and famous, many citizens conclude that they must also be good and wise, and therefor trustworthy. Since they are (many believe) good and wise, what they choose to do must also be good, and when they are accused of doing wrong, even when the evidence is unavoidable that they have done wrong, there can be only two explanations to those vulnerable to correuption. The first is that the evidence, no matter how strong, cannot be believed, and those wielding it are in fact enemies of right, good, honesty and fairness. The second is that if these good and wise people did it, then what they did cannot be wrong, or can be justified, usually by “the ends justify the means.”

Thus by gaining the trust and admiration of good people, usually through clever use of dishonesty, deception and manipulation, ethics corrupters set their admirers and supporters up to have their own values weakened or destroyed. Richard Nixon caused honest people to defend the covering up of crimes. Charlie Rangel caused people with integrity to support accepting bribes. Bill Clinton made feminists excuse exactly the kind of sexual harassment they persuaded Clinton to sign a law prohibiting, and inspired lawyers to excuse perjury because “everybody lies about sex.” Lance Armstrong made parents who once taught their children not to cheat to defend cheating, because he had a foundation with a noble cause. Brian Williams and Bill O’Reilly made TV viewers excuse lying by journalists.

Ethics corrupters make their supporters worse parents, friends, employees, employers and human beings; in turn, those corrupted supporters make society less ethical and more cynical as well. These are genuine cultural polluters; indeed, they are cultural pollution.

Hillary Clinton is an ethics corrupter, and the response to the revelations of her use of exclusively personal e-mails proves it beyond the shadow of a doubt.

There is no benign interpretation of her conduct regarding her State Department e-mails. It was not a mistake; one cannot claim that it was accidental. Since it was intentional, there must have been a purpose, and the only conceivable purposes are unethical ones. According to the 2009 National Archives and Records Administration regulations in effect when Clinton took office, “Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.”  With a private e-mail account and only using that for official correspondence, Clinton did not have a system that ensured such preservation. She, not the system, determined what would be preserved. Anything not preserved or left on her private account would not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Is there any explanation for having a private account only, an justification that is simultaneously responsible, plausible and does not suggest that Clinton wanted to control which of her communications could come before the public and the press?

No.

Moreover, the government takes extraordinary measures to make sure government accounts are secure from hackers, foreign governments, terrorists and Edward Snowden, and even those, as we know, are sometimes inadequate. Private accounts are forbidden for workplace use by lawyer, accountants, business executives and every competent profession and company, because individuals cannot be trusted to protect their communications consistently and reliably. A lawyer—Clinton, you will recall, is a lawyer (unlike her husband, who had to surrender his license because he was too unethical to remain one), and as legal ethics expert Stephen Gillers pointed out last week, if the State Department had been Clinton’s client, she would have been in violation of the legal ethics rules. So what she did was not only wrong, it was dumb and reckless….and you know what? She knows it is—and did it anyway.

Finally, because the conduct was suspicious—we know it is suspicious because so many journalists, analysts, commentators, government employees and citizens are suspicious of it—it raised the appearance of impropriety. The law governing the ethics of government officials, including Congress, judges, and appointees, directs that they must avoid the appearance of impropriety. Clinton did not avoid the appearance of impropriety. She encouraged it.

We therefore begin with the fact that Clinton’s initial official response to the New York Times story reporting her improper e-mail system—“Both the letter and spirit of the rules permitted State Department officials to use non-government e-mail, as long as appropriate records were preserved”—is deceitful nonsense. Since there is no way to determine that “appropriate records were preserved” when the official communications are only on a private server, this means, “no law is broken if everything is turned over, even though this practice makes it impossible to know if everything is turned over.” A classic Clintonism, right out of the “I did not have sex with that woman” playbook.

As for the “spirit” of the rules, the State Department discouraged employees from using private e-mail for government business at least three times while Clinton was at State. In a cable to embassies in 2011 and two sections of its manual for employees, the department directed that the use of private e-mail accounts be limited.  An internal report from August 2012 criticized the ambassador to Kenya for using a non-government e-mail account, and his violation of both the policy and its spirit—exactly as Clinton did—led to his dismissal. From the report:

“He ordered a commercial Internet connection installed in his embassy office bathroom so he could work there on a laptop not connected to the Department email system. He drafted and distributed a mission policy authorizing himself and other mission personnel to use commercial email for daily communication of official government business. During the inspection, the Ambassador continued to use commercial email for official government business. The Department email system provides automatic security, record-keeping, and backup functions as required. The Ambassador’s requirements for use of commercial email in the office and his flouting of direct instructions to adhere to Department policy have placed the information management staff in a conundrum: balancing the desire to be responsive to their mission leader and the need to adhere to Department regulations and government information security standards.”

Meanwhile, the White House, while choosing its words carefully to protect the President’s party’s frontrunner, can only do so much. “The president has a very firm policy that e-mails should be kept on government systems,” senior adviser Valerie Jarrett told Bloomberg. “We believe in transparency and we believe public records, that they need to be captured.” Jarrett then said that she couldn’t say whether Clinton ever sent an e-mail to the White House. [That kind of response is why I’m sick of dealing with the endless deceit and smoke surrounding the Clintons, and Obama as well.

So when paid Clinton spinner Lanny Davis (and whatever other paid liars the Clinton camp puts on TV) says, as he did on MSNBC, “The fact is she did nothing wrong. Hillary Clinton did nothing wrong. Hillary Clinton did nothing wrong as long as they’re preserved and there’s nothing to hide,” recognize this for the lie that it is. “As long as they’re preserved and there’s nothing to hide” is the key. Since Clinton did not follow her own departments policies, there is no way to be certain that her e-mails are” preserved and there’s nothing to hide.”  The policies exist so such uncertainty will not exist. Clinton’s conduct undermined the purpose and functioning of that policy, and that’s wrong. Thus she did do something wrong…very wrong, in fact. Depending on what e-mails she destroyed, perhaps very wrong, even criminal.

I hope the Clintons pay you a ton, Lanny.

Lanny’s not corrupted by the Clintons, however. He’s corrupt already, like Valerie Jarrett. Let’s look at some others that desperate loyalty to Hillary has corrupted, like CNN journalist Gloria Borger. She is so polluted by spending too much time in the muck that she can’t even see that this is not a “brouhaha,” but serious, signature significance evidnece that the Democrats have a Presidential; candidate in the wings who thinks she is above the law and cannot be trusted. What is Borger’s advice to Democrats? Embrace the corruption:

“The truth is simple: Your job is to defend Hillary Clinton, not to bury her. Yes, it can be hard. Even annoying. But think about it this way: If you don’t, her problems become your own.”

Gee, that’s funny, I would have flunked that test:

“You have just discovered that the individual you have planned on presenting to the American people as the next leader of the free world and the successor to the legacies of Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt is a liar, secretive, a scofflaw, and quite possibly everything her political foes have been saying she was, and thus is completely untrustworthy. What is the right thing to do?”

The correct answer, according to Borger: Cover up for her. Muddy the waters, Attack the messengers. Confuse the public.

I bet there was once a time, before Hillary, when Gloria was rooting for Woodward and Bernstein in “All the President’s Men.” Now, it’s clear, she has adopted the reasoning of Nixon’s defenders, at least when Nixon is female, a Democrat, and named “Clinton.” Behold, the power of the ethics corrupter!

The frightening thing—I would think specially frightening if you are a Democrat and want to belong to a party you aren’t  ashamed of—much of the media just assumes that Democrats will be taking Borger’s corrupt advice, meaning that the party itself is in the process of being corrupted by a Clinton—again. Megan McCardle writes:

“Democrats will …devote their time to coming up with excuses for her behavior, or reasons that it’s really not a big deal that the secretary of state structured her communications to avoid leaving a checkable record. They have to, because jettisoning Hillary Clinton at this point would almost certainly mean losing the race in 2016. She has drawn in all the donor funds and media attention that would normally have been spread among several candidates. There is no one ready to step into that vacuum, and it is already too late to start grooming someone new.”

They don’t have to be corrupt. They could choose to honor their party, the nation and the intelligence of the voters. Seriously–a major party really reasons that it is better to nominate an untrustworthy, incompetent, arrogant, reckless and secretive liar than to hustle to find a candidate who is, like, worthy of the office? How can anyone trust any candidate nominated by any party that reasons like this? Isn’t the obvious, ethical thing to do in this situation to announce that…

“Mrs. Clinton’s disturbing conduct regarding her official communications, intentionally skirting her own agency’s policies, endangering security and undermining public confidence, combined with the recent revelations that her foundation has allowed and is allowing contribution from foreign governments, must disqualify her from consideration as a Presidential candidate”?

It does, you know. If they don’t know, then that is the mark corrupted leadership, and a corrupt party.

You can spot the corrupt among journalists, officials, Clinton toadies like Davis ,and your friends. They are going to adopt one of these invalid rationalizations —the numbers reference the Ethics Alarms Rationalizations  List:

1. “Everybody does it,” (#1) “They’re just as bad,” (#2) “Why pick on her?” (#39)

The favorite focus of this line of defense is the fact that former Secretary of State Colin Powell used both a government account and a private one while leading the State Department during George W. Bush’s first term. But that was over a decade ago before e-mail became the standard communication it is; the regulations were different, and, frankly, people trust Colin Powell more than Hillary, for good reason. Defenders cite Republicans like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Scott Walker, all of whom have various issues with their e-mail, but none were involved in foreign affairs and high security matters, none of whom were intentionally violating their own governments explicit policies, and most of all, so what? The fact that some Republicans may have been trying to cover up their words and deed doesn’t make what Hillary did acceptable.

2. “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” (#33)

When you are dealing with the security of the nation and the trustworthiness of leadership, there is no small stuff. Anyway, this is a deceptive excuse that erects a straw man: transparency isn’t trivial, especially when inveterate deceivers like the Clinton are involved.

3. “No laws were broken” ( #5)

That’s really not the issue. The conduct was reckless and unethical, as I explained above. The corrupted will argue that Hillary’s private account had no impact on official record-keeping because any email she sent or received to anyone else in the government would have been preserved on that employee’s end. Funny: I don’r recall the policy being, “make sure one of the State employees in an e-mail exchange always have a government account.” And how do we know that she wasn’t communicating with others who had personal accounts, on their personal accounts? We don’t.  Huma Abedin, Hillary’s top aide, had her own clintonemail.com address, for example. What about emails Clinton exchanged with foreign leaders or private individuals outside the U.S. government relating to government business? This argument is so dishonest that it screams coverup, or perhaps, “I’m so gullible anything Hillary says is aces with me!”

4. “She’s too important to get upset about things like this” (#11, The King’s Pass, and #13, the Saint’s Excuse)

…and maybe from now on, “Gloria Borger’s Deception,” combining them.