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> The only relevant question is, "are emails 'records'?"

I don't know, I see other relevant questions. For instance, nothing in the quoted law says anything about how they shall "make and preserve" the records, only what purposes those records must be adequate to serve. So, using private email alone doesn't seem to be a violation, it seems to be something that might be the starting point for an inquiry as to whether she made and preserved "ontaining adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities", but it doesn't alone provide an answer to that question whether or not you consider emails as records.

Undoubtedly emails are records. This has been established in previous scandals from both parties that failed to retain them as required.

In the corporate world, if there were a legal requirement for compliance, the auditor would verify that all work email is going over work servers, and then review the policies in place on those servers. You could technically let a special employee run their own server, but then that server would need to be audited, and the policies in place there reviewed. "Nah, you can trust Joe" wouldn't cut it.

Otherwise the entire point of compliance laws just goes out the window.

> In the corporate world, if there were a legal requirement for compliance, the auditor would verify that all work email is going over work servers

Legal compliance audits that I have been involved in tend to go beyond what is unquestionably prohibited by the law and also seek to identify and eliminate activities which might arguably violate the law (and thus create legal risk) including, but not limited to, those which violate organizations internal guidelines which are based on the applicable law but whose requirements may be (generally, should be) more strict than the law itself.

There are three different, but related, categories into which this might fall, in decreasing order of breadth:

1) Behavior that would be of concern to a compliance audit focused on the law in question,

2) Behavior that would violate administration guidance related to achieving compliance with the law in question,

3) Behavior that actually violates the law in question.

You are arguing, and I agree, that it is #1. There are reports that administration sources have indicated that it is #2 (I see no reason to doubt them, though I haven't seen the actual guidance, so I don't have an informed opinion.)

Neither of those, however, is the same thing as it being #3.

As to #3, quoting from the article, as of 2009 (emphasis mine):

> 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 record-keeping system.

How did they ensure this? As a few news stories, including the linked article, have reported, they would have been immune from FOIA requests.

Here's another from http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-used-p...

> The fact that Clinton’s emails were not a part of official State Department records until recently means many of them would not have been located in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, subpoenas or other document searches conducted over the past six years

> How did they ensure this?

Yes, that's exactly the question this raises.

> As a few news stories, including the linked article, have reported, they would have been immune from FOIA requests.

They would not have been immune. They may have been overlooked in the course of handling such requests, although assuming anyone in the State Department offices responsible for conducting document searches in response to FOIA requests (or subpoenas, etc.) was aware of the practice, they quite probably wouldn't have been, there just would have been an extra step involved in handling the requests.

Per WH policy...

"Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to have operated in violation of what the White House said Tuesday was “very specific guidance” that members of the Obama administration use government e-mail accounts to carry out official business."

In the corporate world, the generally accepted internal policy is that email is not a system of record, and that when documents (including the email itself) are sent or received via email, those must be exported separately and saved in whatever is the system of record. This, of course, flies contrary to the trends in e-discovery from a prosecutorial point of view, but it does make sense.

In the corporate world, the generally accepted internal policy is that email is not a system of record

Saying "email is not a system of record" is lot like saying "RAID is not a backup". Just because you don't use reliable a long term storage medium doesn't mean you don't have and use those records.

It doesn't even fly contrary to e-discovery, it's just a difference in multiple contextual definitions of "record."

That's more like saying "RAM is not durable storage, everything must be saved to disk for durability." It doesn't mean it's OK to run the office solely in RAM, it means the opposite.

That can't be the only law that applies. Information derived from classified documents, that should be highly secured, is very likely to have moved through these unofficial channels.

Palin used her yahoo account for state business. She did violate state law. I'm not familiar with the others, but the issue isn't so cut and dry.

I forgot which Cabinet post Palin was appointed to, can you refresh my memory?

It doesn't matter. Moral relativism is the name of the game. It would be interesting if the anti-Palin crowd would spend some time looking into all of the criminality from members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Have a look at this list of the most corrupt politicians in the US; then perhaps we can talk about Palin using yahoo. http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judic...

The fact is this, Palin matters because she's not a Democrat. Democrats have Stockholm Syndrome. When a Republican is corrupt, much of the time, they resign. When a Democrat is corrupt, they get reelected. Re: Marion Berry, Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel, Chris Dodd. Tom Delay was another bad one, however he was actually charged with a crime and he resigned.

Palin is nothing more than a proxy to rationalize bad behavior.

Democrats most definitely don't have a monopoly on corruption; however how Democrat voters deal with the corruption is markedly telling.

"Tom Delay was another bad one, however he was actually charged with a crime and he resigned."

And was then vindicated in the courts.

Texas has a weird arrangement where the very Blue Austin area prosecutor has a remit for political corruption in the entire state. The same officer recently indicted (now former) Governor Perry for threatening a veto, a rather unique take on a constitutionally enshrined executive action.

Why exactly would Clinton go to the trouble to set up a mail server? Did state.gov run out of email addresses? Given the Clinton history of obfuscation and secrecy, Clinton's intent was far from innocent. She went out of her way to do this. The question is why? Pointing a finger at Palin is silly. Palin didn't hire some mystery person to hide Cabinet level communicatiins from public scrutiny. Palin wouldn't be smart enough to have that sort of intent. The Clinton apologists are beyond help. Clinton could shoot a puppy on live TV at while at a Papal audience and someone would sputter that Palin once hunted moose. Remember this is the same Hillary Clinton that said she came under sniper fire during a Balkans visit. Brian Williams was crucified for the exact same chicanery and Hillary is being seriously considered as presidential material? The double standard is astounding. Brian Williams can't read the news but Hillary can run the country? Is half of America just brainwashed? Does the entire Democratic party have not a single trustworthy candidate that Clinton is the default? Even Elizabeth Warren lied about her being a Native American. Is there anyone else? I can deal with honest policy disagreements between Republicans and Democrats, but I can't abide politicians like Clinton that have made a career from deception. I am certainly no Obama fan, but I am glad he beat Hillary. She's pathological. America can do much better. We can dump all of the Karl Rove Republicans and the Clintonistas and our government would be a much better place. I have no use for the lot of them.

Sarah Palin isn't as dumb as you think. She's got more political smarts than you have book smarts.