Thoughts On E-mail

People used to say, “Do right and fear no man; don’t right and fear no woman.” And now e-mails have supplanted old fashioned snail mail, but yet, no such caution seems to be involved. It seems that people feel that when they sit in front of their computer alone at night and type out all sorts of nonsense, somehow they are removed from responsibility for their missiles.

Currently, the Governor of New York appears, perhaps rightfully, perhaps wrongly, disinclined to release his e-mails that may be part of the scandal du jour, and, the Governor of New Jersey appears to be in trouble because of e-mails concerning his girlfriend, which he now, pursuant to a court order, has to turn over. All of this is quite an apart and aside from the fact that any divorce lawyer will tell you about half of the people who come into their offices have a briefcase full of e-mails sent or received by a formerly believed-to-be-faithful spouse. Various laws have been passed, such as one in New York, making it illegal to look at somebody else’s e-mail, but that doesn’t seem to deter jealous spouses. They apparently operate under the proposition that if the computer is in their home, it is open season on whatever’s in it.

Best advice: don’t send e-mails of a personal nature unless you have no problem with your spouse – and eventually a judge – reading them.

If The Hsu Fits… Give It Back

Don’t you think you would be pretty sore if somebody decided to take your money and make a charitable donation with it and not even ask your permission, nor even tell you to what charity the money was to go. But that is exactly what Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer did.

Norman Hsu was an on-the-lamb businessman who had been wanted by the State of California on grand larceny charges and just surrendered to authorities. Simple enough story! But wait, it gets more involved. Hsu had given $62,000 to Governor Eliot Spitzer’s and $23,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. A fundraiser for Mrs. Clinton called him “a bit of a political junkie.” The media revealed his criminal background, and both Hillary Clinton and Governor Spitzer then said that they would take the money given to them by Hsu and donate it to charity. Now really! Hsu never intended that money to be given to charity. He intended to donate it to two political campaigns. The proper thing to do would have been to return the money to its source, not volunteer to be charitable with Mr. Hsu’s money. But then again, politicians are good at spending other people’s money.