"They should ask [Hillary], 'Was it a good idea to invade Libya? Did that make us less safe? Did it make it more chaotic? Did it allow radical Islam and ISIS to grow stronger?'"

Said Rand Paul, as part of his answer to this week's Question of the Week on this morning's "Meet the Press":

CHUCK TODD: Are you satisfied after Governor Bush's sort of fourth answer on this, saying that he wouldn't have gone into the war in Iraq, knowing what we know now?...

SENATOR RAND PAUL: Well, I think it's an important question and I don't think it's a historical  anecdote. I don't think it's something that's a hypothetical question. I think it's a recurring question in the Middle East. Is it a good idea to topple secular dictators? And what happens when we do? I think when Hussein was toppled, we got chaos. We still have chaos in-- in Iraq. I think it emboldened Iran. I think-- we now have the rise of radical Islam in Iraq as well. But I think the same question, to be fair, ought to be asked of Hillary Clinton, if she ever takes questions. They should ask her, "Was it a good idea to invade Libya? Did that make us less safe? Did it make it more chaotic? Did it allow radical Islam and ISIS to grow stronger?" So I think the war in Iraq is a good question and still a current question, but so is the question of, "Should we have gone into Libya?"

"While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server..."

"... it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department."

Hillary will hold a brief press conference today.

Link.

UPDATE, 1:43 CT: The news media are waiting for Hillary to show up. Here's a live feed. Hillary is late, and there are hundreds of reporters, so of course, they're all filling the air space with lots of talk about Hillary and her emails.

UPDATE, 1:50: What's up with all the flags in front of Picasso's Guernica? Bad visual jumble, but the setup for Hillary's speaking is to the side of that, with a neutral backdrop.

UPDATE, 2:01: Hillary tries to focus the press onto the Iran letter, then turns to the email controversy. 1. She "opted for convenience." 2. "The vast majority of" her work email went to work email addresses and were therefore preserved. 3. She has provided the State Department with all her emails "that could possibly be work related." She seems to be conceding that she has destroyed her personal email. (How are we to know what she shunted into that category?) 4. There's a fourth point, something about wanting things to become public.

UPDATE, 2:05: The first question is from a Turkish reporter, asking why she didn't use 2 different devices... and also whether she's getting attacked because she's female.

UPDATE, 2:07: Andrea Mitchell asks how she decided which emails were public and why people should accept her being arbiter of what was public. Hillary says she's "very confident of the process that we conducted" and that Americans will be satisfied because they'll see the email that is going to be released. These are nonanswers, of course. The questions make the point and hang there.

UPDATE, 2:09: Hillary is asked if she will say that she made a mistake and, if so, what she's learned from that mistake. She says even if she'd had 2 devices to keep work and personal separate, people could still question her decisions what to put on the personal device. There is no real concession of a mistake. "The server will remain private."

UPDATE, 2:12: A questioner raises the oddness of having her own server. Hillary says it was set up for Bill Clinton's office, which made it secure in a way that other private servers might not be. "I feel that I've take unprecedented steps."

UPDATE, 2:14: How do we know you didn't delete work emails? "I went above and beyond what I was requested to do... and people will judge for themselves." (I'll have to finish this later... I've got to run to class.)

UPDATE, 7:12: I'm back. I've watched to the end. There wasn't much more beyond what I'd already described, and it's really too boring to belabor. Maybe tomorrow morning, I'll make some distanced observations. For now, I'm done with this.

"So, it's strange credibility to believe that if you're on your way to Libya to discuss Libyan policy that there's not a single document that has been turned over to Congress."

On "Face the Nation" today, Bob Schieffer, interviewed Congressman Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the committee investigating the Hillary e-mail controversy. This is what I found most striking:
Click for more �

"A week before becoming secretary of state, Hillary Clinton set up a private e-mail system that gave her a high level of control over communications, including the ability to erase messages completely..."

"... according to security experts who have examined Internet records," Bloomberg reports.

Matt Drudge really wants us to talk about how cool Martin O'Malley is.

This trio of images has been up at Drudge for so long that I feel like it won't go away until we talk about it. So here it is:



Have at it.

1. What's that Obama hand signal?

The �hook �em Horns� sign is not to be confused with the shaka sign � another hand gesture frequently used by Obama. That�s when surfers and, especially, people from Hawaii extend their thumb and smallest finger as a way to say �hang loose.�

2. Remember when Hillary banged her head and had to wear sunglasses? Then she looked at her phone and it made her seem like someone annoying from L.A. 

3. Why is Martin O'Malley showing his arms while playing guitar? "Your basic semi-pro, rebel song-singing, reel and jig-playing Celtic rock band, it�s the sort of act that has more enthusiasm than skill, more heart than polish�O�Malley � looking quite buff, thanks to a sleeveless T-shirt that showed off his muscular arms�"

4. The 3 images together? Is it a coolness contest? A youth comparison? A specific argument against Old Lady Clinton?

"There is that side of Mrs. Clinton where the entitlement is so strong she just can't resist it."

"As an attorney, Mrs. Clinton should have known better than to try and game it by using a personal email account from which to conduct State Dept. business. It wasn't smart from a security point of view and it is against the rules not only in government, but throughout all industries. Why did she decide to do business off of the government's servers? Why does she get to decide what records the government now gets? The inherent wrong in that decision should have been apparent to her from the start. That is wasn't, or that she ignored it, makes her unfit. What other rules would Mrs. Clinton decide to override? What gives her the right to set her own rules?"

That's a comment at the NYT article titled "Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules."