I still don’t understand the conservative claim on Hillary Clinton’s received E-mails.

From what I can gather, three (of thirty thousand) had paragraphs in them, in which there were embedded (c) marking (which may or may not have had anything to do with classifications).

Holding a secret clearance myself, I understand how classified documents are marked. (c) does not mean “classified” as wingnuts are claiming (which is not a classification). I also understand how difficult it is to declassify information. (I once tried to get a maintenance manual seven hundred pages long declassified by removing a single paragraph marked (s) from the introduction of the book, only to be told no, it would cost too much to reprint the page without the paragraph.)

In any document that has any classification, the header and footer are marked on each page with the classification of the page. Thus, a document classified as “secret” will have “secret” emblazoned on the pages where at least one paragraph has secret information. Pages with confidential information will be emblazoned “confidential” in a secret document, and pages with no classified information will be marked “unclassified” in a secret document.

Any document that sources classified information (such as technical notes or an E-mail) must carry the same markings, as well as the person or organisation classifying those notes or E-mail. (Thus in my avionics job, I frequently generated information in the form of troubleshooting notes that I would classify as Secret or Confidential, register with my command, and report the destruction of the notes when destroyed.)

Department of Defense Document on How to Mark Original and Derived Classified Material
(How classified material is marked)

(ts) Top Secret (if anyone tells you they have a Top Secret clearance, they are lying, as that clearance itself is classified)
(s) Secret
(c) Confidential
(u) Unclassified

For nuclear technology and weapons, the Department of Energy also uses Restricted Data and Formerly Restricted Data as classifications.

If Hillary Clinton, in those three E-mails, actually received classified information that was paragraph-marked with the (c) for Confidential, then Hillary Clinton is not the guilty party. The sender is. (That would be sort of like blaming a recipient for a Romance scammer’s sent E-mails.)

Unfortunately, the political adage “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” applies. To explain all this to a non-governmental person causes eyes to quickly glaze over.