Game of Thrones *Major Spoiler*

Does Hillary Clinton face a different standard for honesty?

Source: Washington Post, Janell Ross

Some "highlights" from the article, featuring 2 experts, Kelly Dittmar and Julie Dolan (qualifications at link).


Gender-related issues?

DOLAN: Absolutely. Her candidacy raises questions as to whether any woman can be president of the United States, whether female presidential candidates can ever overcome voter stereotypes and media narratives that question women’s suitability for the White House.

Clinton is the most experienced candidate in the field, but campaign rivals Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are leveling attacks against her that she’s not qualified for the job. In doing so, they're playing into a longstanding narrative that women lack what it takes to succeed in the male-dominated world of politics. The fact that two less-experienced male candidates are leveling this attack against her is telling. Neither Trump nor Sanders feel compelled to shore up their own credentials or justify their own relative lack of experience because they don’t need to; they benefit from a gendered double standard where men are automatically presumed qualified for public office and women are not.

DOLAN: They care, but it's not typically at the top of the list of desired character traits. In voting for the president, voters tend to prioritize masculine traits (toughness, decisiveness) over feminine traits (empathy, honesty). Because honesty is considered a feminine trait, it carries less sway with voters than do other competing traits.

DITTMAR: Research on gender stereotypes has shown that women are often perceived as more honest than their male counterparts. For example, a 2014 Pew poll found that 34 percent of respondents believe that women in high-level political offices are better than men at being honest and ethical, while just 3 percent see men as better on the same traits.

DOLAN: Voters typically draw on gender stereotypes in evaluating political candidates and tend to punish candidates who diverge from gender expectations. Because the generic female candidate is presumed more honest than the generic male candidate, voters judge a female candidate more harshly if she appears to violate the expectation of honesty. For male candidates, dishonesty is problematic but the critique is muted because generic male candidates are presumed to be somewhat less honest from the start.

DITTMAR: ...Trump's "Crooked Hillary” moniker indicates that he will work to ensure that Clinton’s dishonesty is front and center in voters’ minds, contributing to these negative effects and deflecting attention from his own problems with truthfulness. Still, if voter surveys are any indicator, it’s likely that other considerations will matter more to voters’ decision-making in November. That may be why Clinton has focused more on Trump’s lack of qualifications to be president, emphasizing the risk of having him in the Oval Office.

Hillary needs 73 delegates to get to 2,383 - Victory!

Feds fight to prevent Clinton deposition in email case

Hillary Clinton’s Emails Are a Threat to Life as We Know it

If the past two days have taught us anything, it is that Hillary Clinton‘s use of a personal email server during her tenure at the State Department is a threat to the American way, and even to all human life on Earth. The media’s sirens-a-blaring reaction to the State Department Office of the Inspector General’s report on email practices would lead any rational observer to conclude that the only crime greater than using personal email to conduct State business is the crime of ever believing a word that Hillary Clinton says.

Page 37 of the report does say that “OIG found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server,” but then again, Secretary Clinton isn’t saying that she requested or obtained guidance or approval. She’s saying it was “allowed,” an assertion that is backed up by many instances in the report which recognize that personal email use, while generally discouraged, is permitted, as per a 2009 regulation which states “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,” and which is repeatedly cited in the report.

As the OIG report also states on page 5, it wasn’t until after Hillary Clinton left the State Department that personal email use was prohibited, and even then, not completely.

This didn’t quite work out because, as the unreported main focus of the report makes clear, the State Department system is a hot-assed mess. If it weren’t, then none of this would be happening, because they’d be able to sort and retrieve emails the way any Gmail user can. But since I’m a reasonable person who doesn’t hate Hillary Clinton and isn’t trying to justify swallowing a year-and-a-half worth of Republican leaks like some kind of journalistic Linda Lovelace, it makes sense to me that a person would think “Hey, if I send an email to someone with a dot-gov email address, they’ll be able to find it if they need it.”

A Democratic perspective on Hillary's emails

The conclusion of the OIG report.

CONCLUSION
Longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State. OIG recognizes that technology and Department policy have evolved considerably since Secretary Albright’s tenure began in 1997. Nevertheless, the Department generally and the Office of the Secretary in particular have been slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications, particularly as those risks pertain to its most senior leadership. OIG expects that its recommendations will move the Department steps closer to meaningfully addressing these risks.

RECOMMENDATIONS
To ensure compliance with Federal and Department requirements regarding records preservation and use of non-Departmental systems, OIG has issued the following recommendations to the Bureau of Administration, the Office of the Secretary, the Bureau of Information Resources Management, the Bureau of Human Resources, and the Department’s Transparency Coordinator. Their complete responses can be found in Appendix B. The Department also provided technical comments that OIG incorporated as appropriate into this report.

OIG Reply: OIG considers the recommendation resolved.

Doesn't matter which party wins?

Between 100,000 and 240,000 women of reproductive age in Texas have attempted self-induced abortions as access to abortion clinics throughout the state becomes more restrictive, according to a study by the University of Texas at Austin's Texas Policy Evaluation Project, known as TxPEP.

Texas is seeing a rise in black market sales of misoprostol, which terminates pregnancy and makes it look as though it was a miscarriage. Miso has long since been popular in regions like Latin America, where abortion access is both extremely difficult and risky.

"It was like we were back in the days of the Wild West, like we have to figure this out by ourselves and just grit our teeth and get through it," a 23-year-old musician who wanted to remain anonymous told Reuters. She, herself, had a self-induced abortion in 2014.

The rise in self-induced abortions correlates with Texas HB2, the state's 2013 omnibus bill on reproductive health, which relates "to the regulation of abortion procedures, providers, and facilities; providing penalties." Critics have argued the bill is unconstitutional and the contentious case has advanced to the Supreme Court where arguments were heard in March.

The rest at: https://mic.com/articles/144421/restrictive-reproductive-laws-in-texas-have-resulted-in-as-many-as-240-000-diy-abortions#.jKhOf9by6

Delegate math: How Clinton wraps up nomination by June 7

Source: AP, Hope Yen

Looking to Harry Truman to Understand Hillary Clinton

Source: New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait