The fact that Hillary Clinton is a serial liar and is preparing to deceive her way to the Presidency of the United States is of utmost importance to the nation. This is a fact, by the way. So far, the news media has allowed the usual Clinton strategy of obfuscating, denying, confusing and blurring instances of their misconduct, as well as distracting attention with new scandals involving them (like this one), succeed as it has in the past. This must stop. Contrary to the Clinton Credo, character matters, and the greater the power a leader has, the more it matters. A leader who engages in blatant lying has no respect for those she leads, and cannot be trusted. Those who cannot be trusted should not lead. The news media has an obligation to let us know who cannot be trusted.

It is as simple as that.

We watched that classic Clinton strategy in action when two inspector generals announced that they were calling upon the Justice Department to investigate Hillary’s alleged mishandling of classified Sate Department materials via her private server, in violation of government policies, her own department’s policies, and responsible stewardship and principles of cyber security. Immediately, Clinton began muddying the water and boring the public by launching a dispute over whether or not it was a “criminal” investigation, using undue influence to get the New York Times to change its story, and suddenly making the controversy about the messenger rather than its message.

Oh, the Clintons are good at this, no doubt about that.

Now here is another example in the same controversy.  Though Clinton has insisted that there was nothing classified on her email system and that any dispute is just a technical dispute “between agencies” 41 of the messages turned over to State by Clinton were recently given classified status by the State Department. Clinton’s word-parsing defense has been that she did not send or receive any material marked classified, but as law professor Jonathan Turley explained succinctly (he has been in the classified loop in the past), virtually anything coming out of the office of the Secretary of State would be automatically considered classified as a matter of course until it was reviewed and determined not to be classified. Clinton’s denials are based on typical deceit designed to fool the uninformed: her exchanges on her illicit private e-mail server weren’t classified because they were made on her illicit private e-mail server!

(Meanwhile, there are all those other e-mails Hillary had destroyed before the State Department could review them and after she knew that they would be subpoenaed.  Who else has them? Never mind: we trust Hillary’s judgment, right?)

Writes Turley in his latest post on this topic (like me, the usually liberal George Washington University law professor professor seems to be especially offended by Clinton’s dishonesty, recklessness and smug denials ):

The defense is that this material was not technically classified at the time that it was sent. Thus it was not “classified” information. The problem is that it was not reviewed and classified because it was kept out of the State Department system. Moreover, most high-level communications are treated as classified and only individually marked as classified when there is a request for disclosure. You do not generate material as the Secretary of State and assume that it is unclassified. You are supposed to assume and treat it as presumptively classified. Otherwise, there would be massive exposure of classified material and willful blindness as to the implications of the actions of persons disregarding precautions. For example, there is not a person standing next to the President with a classification stamp in the Oval Office. However, those communications are deemed as presumptively classified and are not disclosed absent review. Under the same logic, the President could use a personal email system because his text messages by definition are not marked as classified. This is the whole reason that Clinton and others were told to use the protected email system run by the State Department. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to secure such systems.

Clinton portrayed the dispute as entirely removed from her controversial decision to use a personal server — a move that gave her total control of the server and ultimately allowed her staff to delete thousands of emails before turning over emails to the State Department: “They can fight over it or argue over it. That’s up to them. I can tell you what the facts are.” The second installment of emails from Hillary Clinton’s private home-brew server were found to contain classified material, though it appears to have been classified at the lowest level of “confidential.” As Secretary of State, she was one of the very top targets for foreign surveillance and yet refused to use the State Department system designed to protect such messages despite their importance to the United States. For example, one message reportedly concerned information then-Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman wanted Clinton to have before she took a phone call with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Then Turley falls into the media’s habit of noting that this controversy might be contributing to Hillary’s nosedive in the polls. To hell with the polls; to hell with the political implications, to hell with fake “both sides” cable interviews with a rabid GOP attack dog facing off with Lanny Davis or another Clinton paid spinner. All of it is according to plan; all of it eventually plays into the Clintons’ hands by making it seem like this is “just politics,” nothing substantive.

What the public needs to know is this: Hillary represented her use of the private server as unremarkable, responsible, and a trumped up scandal by Republicans, and that was a lie. It is a lie that she has been telling for many months now. The lie has been exposed, and by her own former department.

Say so.

No more spin, so more weasel words. Even Turley says that Clinton’s explanation “is less than compelling.” Oh for the love of God, professor, say what you mean. Say what your own columns are really saying but that you won’t make clear. She’s lying. There is nothing unethical or unmannerly in calling liars what they are. The reluctance of members of the public, collegial politicians with skeletons in their own closets and cowardly and biased pundits and reporters to speak what is true, clearly and unequivocally—Bill Clinton is  sexual predator and a phony feminist, for instance—allows skilled manipulators like the Clintons to flourish, grab power, and corrupt the nation.

All that is needed to stop them is the truth, and it is the news media’s duty to supply it.