If it is sensitive or confidential--do not put it into an email.   Works for everyone:  students, professors, Secretaries of State, wingnuts....

This particular form was initially the brainchild of the federal Office of Management and Budget, which intended it for use by all departments and agencies. Yet over the ensuing years, many federal agencies have since created their own unique and respective version of this ostensibly standard form, and they will not accept an SF-424 from an applicant which bears the mark of any other agency or department.

Further, a significant number of these same federal agencies are apparently unaware of the fact that we now have pdf files which are both individually fillable and savable to one's own hard drive.

And so these agencies' online SF-424s are available in print format only. It's as though they're operating under the assumption that everyone keeps a Smith-Corona or IBM Selectric typewriter handy in the corner of the office for just these sorts of such occasions. (Well, I'll admit that I do, but that's beside the point.)

It's not just the federal government that's guilty here. State and local governments across the country have also been slow to respond to or keep up with the advances in IT, particularly in the wake of cuts in departmental and agency allocations of funds due to the economic recession.

Taming this multi-headed hydra as a means to ensure general consistency of purpose throughout government will be a necessary task for public officials, but it will also be a relatively thankless one as well.

I accepted a voluntary appointment last year to a governor's task force that's presently reviewing the State of Hawaii's IT policy. And I must say, I'm amazed at how badly we managed to both underestimate the scope and breadth of this problem, and let it compound upon itself to the extent that we did.

I mean, we still have two major departments operating with '90s-era mainframes, including the department which handles the state payroll! When they need to procure parts for these now-obsolescent machines, the IT guys have to go on eBay &etc. to seek them. It's ridiculous.

Government IT issues across the country are presently a real mess, and it will require both a lot of personal effort and considerable amount of funding to get the systems modernized to contemporary standards.

The burden is on the person making the accusation--especially an inflammatory one like this.

So, please cease with your condescending remarks, because neither I nor anyone else here were born yesterday. Given what you've written about this subject and at least from my perspective, yours appears to be a somewhat inflated opinion of your own legal intellect, because you increasingly sound like some weasel who could be on the payroll of the Heritage Foundation.

As for myself, I worked for House leadership at a senior level in our state legislature for over a decade, and before that I was chief clerk of the Senate Judiciary Committee for three years. I'm not an attorney, but I like to believe that I generally know my way around because unlike you, while I didn't practice law, I actually wrote it.

As far as any "criminal investigation" is concerned, there is none at this time for the simple fact that the IG's referral to the Justice Dept. was not criminal in nature. Not all FBI inquiries necessarily involve criminal investigations and absent any evidence or public statement by Justice Dept. officials to the contrary in this case, you really need to stop presuming otherwise, at least here.

Hillary Clinton stepped down from her post as Secretary of State over two years ago. It's already been established that she was not in breach of any standing federal laws or regulations prohibiting her use of a private email account or server, because there were none in place at the time she held the office.

Further, it has also been established that Mrs. Clinton was the recipient of the emails in question, and was not their originator or disseminator. Still further, all of the emails presently in question apparently originated within the State Dept. itself. Finally, none of them were duly marked as either "Classified" or "Top Secret," either at the time they were initially written by department personnel, or when they were subsequently forwarded by senior officials to Madame Secretary.

So, since it's been established that Mrs. Clinton obviously had authorization to use private email in her conduct of State Dept. business, and since there's also no evidence that she knowingly emailed any classified information, I think we can safely conclude that:

• The present questions about the retroactive classification of content of these emails were likely triggered by the media's FOIA requests; and

• Such questions would have arisen naturally as a matter of course and protocol, regardless of whether or not Mrs. Clinton used a private server -- which, again, was not prohibited at the time by either law or regulation.

As BTD has already covered in detail in numerous posts at TL thus far, the Intelligence Community IG has insisted -- albeit questionably, in BTD's estimation -- that some of the material in these emails should now be considered retroactively as classified.

For its part, and as BTD also noted, the State Dept. obviously begs to differ with the IC's interpretations, as demonstrated by the fact that as of this writing, some of the emails in question are still online and available for public perusal at the department's website.

And that, in a relative nutshell, is the Great State Dept. Email Kerfuffle which is presently before us, at least as far as I understand it. Unlike you, I'm not speculating breathlessly and endlessly about either material content or personal motive, because there's no evidence to support any such suppositions as you've thus far posited.

Unlike you, I'm not impugning the integrity of anyone who may be involved, whether directly or tangentially, because I lack both the necessary professional standing and the requisite due cause to do so.

(As for your own integrity in these discussions of this particular matter, please be advised that you are rendering yourself an increasingly conspicuous and tempting target.)

And unlike you, I'm doing my level best here to not get way ahead of myself, and I won't say anything that can't otherwise be supported by any rational reading of the available evidence (or lack thereof, as the case may be) as it presently stands -- emphasis on the word "rational."

I further refuse to worry about anything over which I have no control. While I'm fairly confident in what this Justice Dept. inquiry will eventually conclude, I'm also content to let the chips fall where they may because I happen to believe in the rule of law.

I can't decide if you constantly miss these points on purpose, or if you just can't help yourself.

Go back to calling all Hispanics rapists.

The AP article linked, describes it, quoted below

Clinton also had access to a classified messaging system, but it's not widely used at the State Department. Most department officials in Washington and at embassies have on their desktops a classified network that goes up to "secret" level. A small number of State officials, including the secretary, can use a third system that goes up to "top secret" level in special secure rooms.

But even the middle-tier "secret" network is cumbersome for many in the agency, said officials who would not be quoted when discussing internal security policies. Only a few top officials in Washington are able to read classified emails outside the department's headquarters. Most ambassadors can't open their accounts from home. Officials in the field may have no access at all.

Lots of State Department information is meant for use, sharing and interaction with foreign officials, the vast majority of whom aren't authorized to receive classified U.S. material.

No violation for setting up a personal server.  No violation for receiving emails that are later determined to be classified.