Hillary has skated on the email scandal, and you had better get used to it!  If you don't, why, you're...you're...stupid!

That's that's the new drift of coverage on the cover-up left.  The examples popped up aplenty on July 7, when FBI director Comey testified before Congress concerning his inexplicable decision not to recommend indictment of the email criminal.

Many of the usual suspects chimed in.  Over at PoliticusUSA – fiercely anti-corporate, and fiercely in support of corporate stooge Hillary – we are told that the hearings backfired on those stupid Republicans.  Later, we're told that this egregious stupidity may have ensured Hillary's election.  Over at Mother Jones, we are assured that the hearings were good for Hillary, bad for stupid Republicans – largely because Comey defended his decision not to bring charges.  And over at Crooks and Liars, in defense of one of the most distinguished crooks and liars of the century, we are told that those stupid Republicans are banging their stupid heads against a wall and embarrassing the nation.

This leftist pitch is certain to grow, as it is merely a variation on an ingrained habit of thought: liberals smart, conservatives dumb.

Probably the screechiest example of this twist was the one offered at Esquire, where in-house political commentator Charles P. Pierce, a sportswriter by trade, actually glories in the word "stupid" as it appears in his headline.

A word about Charles P.: He has been praised for his "acid pen," as if he were another H.L. Mencken, but I myself just can't see it.  A Pierce piece for Esquire has to be one of those things that you can actually teach a chimpanzee to write on an Olivetti.  Just sprinkle whatever alphabet hash the friendly beast produces with the words "stupid" (preferably used as an abstract noun), "dumbass" (and its derivative, "dumbassery"), "dolt," "moron," "batty," "foolish," and "idiot."  Add a few phrases from Bugs Bunny's Big Book of Fluent Cliché, phrases such as "I am not kidding" (also a favorite of Genius Joe Biden), and the expectations of genre enthusiasts are richly fulfilled.  Thought is neither required nor expected, and the rhythm is like a musical score to accompany Jimmy Carter's rowboat confrontation with the killer rabbit.  Charles P. may be a different animal in his sportive ruminations, but his work for Esquire constitutes the most witless set of witticisms that ever laid claim to a snigger.

Charles P.'s point in his latest piece of Clintonophilia is that all the approaches of cloddish Republicans were deftly turned aside by Mr. Comey, on the unassailable grounds that Mrs. Clinton's apparent misdeeds lacked intent.  Though not as nescient as Hillary's other defenders, Charles P. fails fully to realize that Comey's defense of our beloved evasive email empress is that she was just plain stupid.  Comey uses the words "careless" and "unsophisticated," but in context carelessness and lack of sophistication amount to stupidity.

Charles P. and his peers would be wise not to use the words "Hillary," "e-mail," and "stupid" in the same paragraph.  The juxtaposition of these words can serve only to remind the public that Hillary's defense rested and rests on her incredible boneheadedness.

Besides, nobody's really buying Comey's story.  Comey admits that Hillary set up private servers, sent classified information over less than secure channels, deleted e-mails before investigators could check them, had her lackeys wipe their devices, and so on and so on and so on.  We are then asked to believe that this was all an inadvertence, or that she did it merely for the sake of convenience.  This is akin to believing that Bill Clinton took down his pants for Monica because he mistook her for his proctologist.  That Hillary lacks her claimed brainpower is not beyond imagining.  But this whole "lack of intent" tale is like the stuttering lie of a five-year-old caught peeing in the lemonade.

Who's stupid again?