Whenever key evidence simply disappears from an arena of controversy, alarm bells go off. These missing emails happen to be a case in point.

We have to ask a more basic question. If that large a gap in the official record exists, how many other key pieces of evidence are missing? What other email messages have vanished?

When a public official suddenly resigns, and so much documentation turns out to be missing, is it any wonder suspicions will spread?

But there is another side. There are reasonable explanations.

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I never thought of him as a comedian until I came across a bit of history a few months ago.

Then, a Tea Party candidate in Oklahoma again reminded me of Benjamin Franklin last week, and how he faked out an unethical rival, and made him deny his own death for years.

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Hillary Clinton can become a great President, if she stops trying to think of herself as one of us.

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With each oscillation of modulus 4 years, Republicans win, when they win, by a smaller margin. When they lose, they lose by an ever widening gap.

The reason is that Republican politicians face an increasingly conservative electorate in Republican primaries. They lose to extremists or they adopt extreme views themselves to get past primaries.

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Karl Rove's newest questions about Hillary Clinton seem to be obvious missteps. He was quoted in a friendly paper, saying Hillary Clinton had suffered brain damage in a fall a couple of years ago.

He denied saying that. He had only said she had fallen, had a serious head injury, and had been seen wearing special glasses designed for brain injured people. That's all he had said. Very innocent.

Oh, and one other thing. You know, she's very, very old.

She'll be 69 by the time of the 2016 elections. She will be 77 if she serves two terms. And this ends up being an issue.

I would remind you, John McCain - here's the headline from U.S. News and World Report: "McCain's age and past health problems could be an issue in the presidential campaign". This happens every presidential campaign.

- Karl Rove, Fox News Monday, May 12, 2014

You might think Republicans would distance themselves from this one. Here's the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

I think that health and age is fair game. It's fair game for Ronald Reagan. It's fair game for John McCain. When people came at John McCain and said maybe he's psychologically not fit because he was a prisoner of war.

- Reince Priebus, Chairman, Republican National Committee, May 18, 2014

"People" said that, did they?

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You can't just poll voters, if you want to predict how voters will choose. You have to poll voters who will choose. If a voter isn't going to vote, that voter will not have much effect on an election.

It is hard to figure out who is going to vote. Some pollsters go by past elections, taking into account what percentage of different ages, races, income groups, and educational levels have voted. So, if you find you're over-representing left handed people with blue eyes, you just count their numbers less. It's called weighting.

But weighting depends on past patterns holding in the future. Patterns are getting tricky.

It's getting harder to figure out who is going to vote for another reason. Republicans have been taking steps to make it harder for minorities and college students and working class people to vote. At the same time, courts are beginning to take a harder look at voter suppression. So it's hard to predict who will have their voting rights taken away by conservatives.

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Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution. I mean, it was like the conscience of the American people.

Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to "all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights" in the minds of God.

- Former Senator Jim DeMint, Heritage Foundation, April 3, 2014

Sometimes I have to search my heart to know why I react as I do. I confess I don't really know for sure why that interview is so irritating.

It isn't the first idiocy uttered about slavery. In fact, it is similar to earlier presentations by others.

But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.

- Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN), January 21, 2011

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Columbia, Tennessee promotes itself as the mule capital of the world. Every year around the end of March and beginning of April, they hold an annual celebration. Thousands of people come from all over to join in bluegrass, gospel, country music, with dancing and events. This year they tried a sort of take off on a rodeo, with guys riding sticks made up to look like heads of mules. It was like Monty Python for mule lovers.

They also have an annual mule parade. Four years ago, a local Republican candidate for Congress, a tea party favorite, was scolded by a parade organizer for some sort of safety violation committed by his campaign the previous year. The candidate, Zach Wamp, got really steamed. He was reported by the Nashville City Paper to have said a couple of things that make campaign managers attempt to fly from tall buildings.

"I make my own rules!" and "You can’t tell me what to do!"

Yikes. Way to go, Zack.

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When Bill Clinton won the Presidency in 1992, conservatives looked for whatever comfort they could generate from his low share of the vote. It had been a three candidate race, and Bill Clinton won with 43 percent.

George Will reacted with some degree of scorn, not toward Clinton, but toward Clinton's critics. He mocked the"delightful Republican attempt to build confidence on a rickety scaffolding of little numbers."

He stated two obvious facts.

One was that the President-elect would have won with a substantially larger share of the vote had the third candidate, Ross Perot, not engaged in a campaign that was self-financed by equal parts big money and big ego.

The other was that Clinton had ... well ... won.

"Clinton`s strong number is: He won 100 percent of the White House."

Unless you are Chris Christie making a ruthless run toward national Republican prominence, that 100 percent of any elective office means you would not be willing to block lanes or break heads to get a few more points past 60 percent. As long as you get enough past half to avoid a nail biting recount, who cares?

That's why it was hard for me to take seriously the Huffington Post headline a few days ago:

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Voters in their mid-twenties will remember just one presidential campaign in which the Republican got more votes than the Democrat. That happened in 2004 as President George W. Bush was cast as the anti-terrorist President.

Elections in which the Democratic candidate got more votes:

• 1992
• 1996
• 2000
• 2008
• 2012

Elections in which the Republican candidate got more votes:

• 2004

A trend can be seen in non-Presidential races. The line is not straight, but it wobbles along, generally in one direction. The oscillation does continue. Republicans are victorious, then Democrats win. But Republican victories are becoming narrower over time. Democrats, when they win, achieve greater margins.

What began happening in 1992? Why is it continuing?

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