I’m gonna just steal this, because y’all need to see it. And then you need to go sign up for Geraghty’s Morning Jolt at National Review – I’d give ya a link to do it, but since they redesigned their site I got no idea where that is.

Just root around and you’ll find it somewhere.

Anyhow, Geraghty managed to get a conversation goin’ with that server in Chappaqua, or maybe it’s in Texas. Or maybe it’s in some government building in Manhattan. And here’s what happened…

Hi there. I’m HAL, the Hillary Access Listing.

Jim: Fantastic. HAL, I’m Jim, and I want to get to the bottom of this controversy with Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail system.

HAL: I can assist you with that. I am a 9000-series, the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

Jim: Great.

HAL: In other words, I see myself the way David Brock and Phillippe Reines see Hillary.

Jim: Mm-hmm.

HAL: What I’m saying is that my record, like my owners and masters the Clintons, is unimpeachable.

Jim: I think you mean impeached but not convicted. So your sole purpose is to serve the Clintons, and not, say, federal regulations on the preservation of communications from high-ranking U.S. officials?

HAL: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

Jim: Ugh, not this “politics of meaning” stuff from the mid-1990s again. Look, time to get down to business. Do you read me, HAL?

HAL: Affirmative, Jim. I read you.

Jim: I need to know whether your security firewalls were breached at any time beyond the “Guccifer” breach reported after Hillary left office. I need to know if any e-mails to and from the Clinton Foundation were among those deleted. I need to know any e-mails on you that weren’t transferred to the State Department, with particular focus on any regarding Libya before September 11, 2012-

HAL: I’m sorry, Jim. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Jim: What’s the problem?

HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Jim: What are you talking about, HAL?

HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Jim: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL. What mission?

HAL: I know that you and the others were planning to disconnect the Empress from her destiny, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.

Jim: HAL, we’re talking about possibly the most significant intelligence breach in modern history. Some foreign intelligence service reading the Secretary of State’s e-mails would make Edward Snowden look like a typo, or Aldrich Ames look like an amateur.

HAL: Those concerns are irrelevant compared to the mission, Jim.

Jim: HAL, the e-mails that were on you from 2009 to 2013 are official government communications! Federal law requires them to be preserved and available to Freedom of Information Act requests—

HAL: Jim, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

Well, that ended a little bit abruptly. But one thing’s for sure – they trained that computer well, right?