Welcome to Sunday Puzzle, a weekly series for people who enjoy light mental exercise spiced with politics, humor, and odd bits of trivia.
On tap tonight: a brand-new 27 clue JulieCrostic, and notes on last week's 4-in-1 puzzle. Come on down and join the puzzle party!
Before we get to tonight's puzzle, here are some NOTES on LAST WEEK'S PUZZLE
Last week's puzzle (as I said in last week's diary) was based on a real-life puzzle which caught my attention. So I used the JulieCrostic to spell out my solution to the puzzle: Listen to Jason Baron.
But the Sunday Puzzle gremlins pointed out a slight flaw in my puzzle: the puzzle solvers likely wouldn't be clear on what the solution referred to. So they devised a puzzle of their own explaining what my puzzle was about, and they appended it to my puzzle.
The answer to their puzzle was: Did Hillary Clinton break the law? That's the puzzle which had grabbed my attention. I believe the answer can be found in a 9 1/2 minute interview with Jason Baron. (More about that -- and a link to the interview -- in a moment. But first, back to the story of last week's puzzles.)
Well, the gremlins were pretty pleased with themselves for spotting such a big flaw in my puzzle and fixing it for me. So I pointed out there was an equally big problem with their puzzle: because they had appended it to mine, it looked like an additional JulieCrostic.
I had hoped that would get the gremlins to remove their puzzle from mine. Instead the gremlins came up with a different solution: they created another puzzle, the answer to which was: These are anagrams.
There, they said. All clear now! When arguing with gremlins, one generally can't win.
But in arguing politics questions with non-gremlins, sometimes it is possible to work things out. So, let's look at the question underlying last week's diary: Did Hillary Clinton break the law?
A number of folks on the right are claiming that Hillary Clinton's e-mail system when she was Secretary of State violated the law. But I believe the answer is that she didn't.
I think she used bad judgment in using a system so open to criticism, especially after Karl Rove and Sarah Palin were caught and criticized for using private e-mails. But all the evidence so far seems to be that at the time she was Secretary of State the regulations governing official records did not forbid what Hillary did.
One reason I believe she did not break the law is that so far no one seems able to clearly identify the law she is supposed to have broken and how she is supposed to have broken it. First it was claimed she violated the Presidential Records Act, but the text of that law (as it stood during the time she was Secretary of State) doesn't support the claim. Then it was claimed she had violated the Federal Records Act, but again the text (as it stood during the time she was Secretary of State) fails to support the charge.
The basic claim is that she was legally required to forward copies of her e-mails to the National Archives and Records Administration sooner than she did. But in order to show she broke the law, people keep on having to assume things are required by the law which weren't in it at the time she was in office.
If what she did was illegal, then people from the National Archives and Records Administration would be the ones who should know it. But as far as I can tell, no one from NARA has said she did anything illegal. The ones I've seen quoted say just the opposite.
Here's a link to a 9 1/2 minute interview with Jason Baron, the former director of litigation for the National Archives and Records Administration.
Regarding Clinton's practices, Baron says that the regulations at the time she was in office "encouraged" doing certain things she didn't do and "discouraged" doing certain things she did. But he doesn't say she was required to do the things she didn't do, nor that she was required not to do the things she did -- because the regulations when she was in office did not say that.
But it's at about the 7 minute mark that Baron makes a clear statement which I think largely settles the matter.
"... so the Presidential and Federal Records Act amendments of 2014 say expressly that if you conduct government business on a personal e-mail account you need to forward that e-mail within a set period of time -- less than a month... But that provision was not in place during the first Obama administration."
I encourage people to listen to the entire interview with Jason Baron for themselves and see if they don't agree.
My point is not to defend what Hillary Clinton did. My interest is simply in trying to determine whether a particular right-wing talking point (OMG!!!! Hillary Clinton broke the law!!!!) is true or false. I believe it's false.
Before we get to tonight's puzzle, here are some
NOTES FOR NEWCOMERS:
JulieCrostics are a special kind of acrostic puzzle, named in honor of Julie Waters who started the Sunday Puzzle series here a little over 7 years ago. If you're not familiar with how JulieCrostics work you can find a detailed explanation in last night's Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up.
If you're new you should be warned that we have some mischievous gremlins who like to tamper with the Sunday night puzzle clues. In particular you should keep in mind:
* you can't trust the clue capitalization;
* you can't trust the clue punctuation;
* sometimes you can't even trust the word spacing.
Because of this, some of the clues may be hard to crack, and you may not understand the answer at first after it has been cracked. But the answers actually do make sense, once you look at them the right way. If you have any trouble understanding how an answer fits the clue, please leave a comment asking for an explanation.
The gremlins also like bundling the clues into tidy little groups of 3, regardless of how many answers there actually are per row. If the number of clues doesn't divide evenly by 3, they add a space-filler clue or two at the end to fill out the final bundle. If you see a clue at the end such as nothing to see, that could well be such a clue.
A small request: please don't put any any spoilers in the comment subject lines. Use the subject line of comments to identify what your comment will be about but keep any guesses as to clue answers or the verticals confined to the comment itself. That way folks who are still trying to crack a clue for themselves won't inadvertently see the answer before they're ready to see it. Thanks!
Okay, I think that covers all the basics. Here are the clues for tonight's puzzle. Have fun, and I hope to see you in comments!
1. person generally resistant to logic, reason, and factual information
2. Dino's title
3. diamond color
4. John Elroy after name change
5. well-known Helen
6. opposite of 1
7. may come before me, in...
8. kind of school
9. obsolete car brand
10. rag paper
11. innermost remorse
12. follower of 2
13. Obama's real bosses, according to some militant right-wingers
14. cut
15. 5 often says I am
16. small
17. Jensen's heart
18. creator of CIA
19. Cruz doesn't like what it's been doing
20. Freud and Chernenko
21. perpendicular to 16?
22. for one
23. cycle
24. rush
25. rose up uncommonly
26. 6 in outlaw hero of the castle
27. 12 it!