LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Clinton's questionable integrity may be a deal breaker

I’ve been facing a real dilemma in the forthcoming presidential election because I don’t like either of the major party candidates and I don’t want to toss out my vote by voting for some other party. I reckon some folks would have me vote for former Secretary of State Clinton just because she’s female; as if every woman out there will base her vote on gender alone. I figured the campaign process would sort things out for me, but here it was almost five months from Election Day, and still, both Trump and Clinton appear equally unsuitable. Then, I watched Director of the FBI Comey testifying before a congressional committee as to why Clinton was not charged with criminal misconduct. Naturally, this committee’s mandate was popular enough to draw the attention of the nightly news, so, some people saw what some editor somewhere thought was theatrical enough to broadcast. They missed so much of the best material. Essentially, what was rendered from the query by both the committee and the director was this: Secretary Clinton is too easily addled to figure out how to use the government’s electronic transmission system, and so forgetful as to not recall the training she received in the handling of classified materials. In other words, despite her high-flung education, she’s not as sharp as the thousands of high school graduates that join the armed services annually and receive and abide by the same exact training (wherein they are taught how to judge if something not thus identified is possibly classifiable). Believe me, I am being kind to Secretary Clinton, even as the director appears to be, in that Comey went on to say they could not prove “intent.” Just “intent”; there were no other adverbs added to this remark. One question put forth to him that had no firm, ready answer was whether or not it was possible that Secretary Clinton acted as she did in order to closet information from Congress. I think everyone would like to know the answer to that one. It is obvious, to the point of tedium, that if it were some ordinary civil servant or military member that did what Clinton did, they would have been flayed and hung out to dry. I guarantee you they would have lost their position and probably would face charges. Whether or not they would beat them by pleading stupidity is something else again. Apparently, Director Comey had no memory of anyone who had recently been charged for a similar blunder, and that speaks volumes. I should feel comfortable voting Secretary Clinton into this nation’s highest office? Ah, this is the question the Republicans want you to ask yourselves At some point, the question was put forth as to whether or not any of the transmissions had made it into the hands of this nation’s adversaries. I believe the director replied “probably.” I had cookies in the oven, so, I had to stop watching the testimony, but I do recall one female inquirer asking if Clinton’s legal team had access to the questionable e-mails. The director responded that they did. She asked if the legal team had had the same training as Clinton. The director responded that they did not. She then remarked that Congress had been told all the 30,000-some-odd e-mails had been destroyed by the legal team. The director replied that they said they had. She then asked what guarantee he had that all the e-mails had been destroyed. Comey replied that he could not say. This is very untidy at best. One of my sisters remarked to me that the Republicans were making mountains out of molehills over these e-mails. I told her that she was very wrong and that, as a hobbyist futurist, I believed, should Hillary Clinton become president, there was a high probability that one of those e-mails is ultimately going to surface and likely be linked to a huge scandal. Perhaps I read too many John Grisham novels. Then again, why risk it when times are such that we do not need a populace questioning the integrity of its leadership more than we already do?

Carol Hotte Felton