from Cafe Hayek, A Canned Lie:

As ‘responsibility’ is commonly understood in modern English, a responsible person is able and willing to respond to the events in question by personally bearing the bulk of the consequences.

If Ms. Clinton were really to take responsibility, she’d submit herself to a genuinely probing legal investigation or even quit (or at least suspend) her political campaign.  But, instead of her really taking responsibility, her strategic exclamation “I take responsibility” is meant only to make her immune from actually having to take responsibility.

Hillary Clinton, of course, is hardly the only public figure who emits whatever verbal effluvia she or he senses at the moment might distract the public from scrutinizing her or his actions too closely.  Such “I take responsibility” faux-boasts are very common.  But these boasts of responsibility-taking are meaningless at best and, in reality – unless the boaster actually takes a truly responsible action such as resigning from office – are actually more like lies.  Sensible people ought not be soothed or duped by any claim by any public figure caught in some nefarious or reckless activity that he or she “takes responsibility.”

and from Jonah Goldberg at National Review, Who Cares if Hillary Apologized? :

This raises the question: Who gives a rat’s ass? Were you demanding an apology from Hillary Clinton? I wasn’t. I wanted the facts. And those are still in short supply. Which raises a second point: What the Hell is she talking about when she says the State Department “allowed” her private, off-site, server? First off, Hillary Clinton was running the State Department. Does she mean that she allowed herself to do it? If so, this may be the greatest example of Clintonian weasel-wording yet. If she doesn’t mean that, can we have the name of the official who told Clinton it was okay? Can we have the paperwork? Or is the Clinton team still drawing straws to see who gets to take one for the team?

Which brings us back around to this apology business. Note that she’s apologizing for the narrowest definition of her transgressions, which is a clever way of trying to minimize the scandal.​ It was perfectly allowed…but I should have used two email addresses. My bad. This is a strange way to “take responsibility,” after months of saying you did absolutely nothing wrong and attacking anyone who said otherwise.  If she’s going to apologize for anything, she should apologize for that. Or she could apologize for putting national security at risk. Or she could apologize for violating rules rank-and-file people can get sent to jail for. This “apology” is a response to her falling poll numbers and nothing more. That’s because everything she does these days is in response to poll numbers

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/423744/who-cares-if-hillary-apologized-jonah-goldberg

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