Hillary's email...

Hillary's email...  The latest revelation is that the State Department didn't actually archive the emails that Hillary sent to other State Department employees.  Nor did they archive anybody else's.

Everyone I know with any sort of IT background shares my reaction to the news reporting on this issue: it's all complete nonsense, credulously reporting the State Department's assertions that this is a difficult problem only recently addressed.  That's the sheerest poppycock and twaddle.  Specialized email backup programs have been readily available commercially, and routinely used by private organizations, since at least the late 1980s – almost thirty years ago.  I personally selected and acquired such a system for my then-employer in the mid-1990s.  These backup systems save every email (no selection is required) and then provide tools for recovery of particular (or all) emails.

For the State Department (or any branch of government) to assert that this is difficult, time-consuming, or expensive is one of two things: an outright lie, or a confirmation of an almost unimaginable level of incompetence.

Occam's Razor says: it's a lie.

But why would the State Department lie about this, making themselves look stupid and ignorant?  The most likely reason I can imagine is that if they actually produced copies of their internal emails, it would expose them as the utterly incompetent fools and nefarious knaves the electorate suspects they are...