A prominent political "news" site has gotten its hands on a year's worth of archives of a "top secret" Google Group of liberal activists called the Gamechanger Salon.*

According to the emails, the group reportedly includes prominent members of the Occupy movement, "Democrats, Sierra Club officials, journalists who work for The Huffington Post and The Nation magazine, senior union representatives, leaders at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the president of NARAL."

Wait, back up. You mean these people actually know each other? And they talk? Is that even legal?

The revelations are positively staggering. Apparently many Democratic movers and shakers - you might want to sit down here - don't like Hillary Clinton. Wow. Didn't see that coming, did you?

The emails, from "June 2013 through July of this year," portray Clinton as someone who is "too much of a hawk, too cozy with Wall Street," and "hasn’t spoken out enough on climate change, and will be subject to personal questions and criticisms."

It's a good thing these e-mails came to light. If they hadn't, the only way we'd have been able to learn what lefty kingpins think about these kinds of things would have been to actually ask them.

For instance, take this bit:

Guy Saperstein, "a major Democratic donor and part owner of the Oakland Athletics baseball team," said Clinton's "reassuring" message to Goldman Sachs executives was "horrifying" and reportedly raised concerns about “the type of intimidation" associated with Clinton at the State Department.

I know Guy. And I'm not going to speak for him, but in my experience he's not the sort who feels the need to skulk around whispering in the shadows. I can't imagine him saying anything on a secret mailing list that he wouldn't say to Clinton's face. Or yours. If I were the publisher of this fine journalistic outpost and had wanted to know what he thinks about Clinton, I'd have called and asked.

I pointed Guy to the story in question and asked for a comment.

"Fact: I criticized her foreign policy for being too hawkish and I said something about intimidation by the Clintons, but I never suggested she used her position as Secy of State to intimidate anyone."

Not only that, everything he said inside the cone of silence he had already posted at Alternet.

I was able to get all this, it should be noted, without any covert infiltrating, bribing or hacking.

What is it with conservatives, anyway? They act like they've ripped the hood off the Trilateral Commission every time progressives are discovered talking amongst themselves. Shocked, shocked they are to learn that some of these people have negative views about Republican leaders and policies, and they faint dead away when they learn that opinion on the left side of the aisle regarding potential presidential candidates isn't unanimous.

Of course, this isn't the first time that conservs have discovered secret liberal shenanigans. There was the JournoList conspiracy. There's this crowd, rumored home of the Illuminati. And I'm here to tell you, in the interest of saving conservosleuths some time and energy, that there are more of these lists out there. There's one where liberals talk about sports. Sometimes they even discuss soccer, which we all know, thanks to Ann Coulter, is secretly a socialist Trojan horse seeking to get its nose under the tent of proper American sporting values. You know, like child abuse and smacking your bitch up in casino elevators.

I'm sorry, that was a cheap shot. But damn, if I said that out loud, right here in public where anyone can see it, just imagine the kinds of shit I must talk when I think conservatives can't hear me. Be honest - your nipples are getting stiff just thinking about it, aren't they?

But seriously, folks, how would we know that liberals disagree on things if it weren't for deep investigative journalism like this? I mean, you go back to the 2008 primaries and you quickly see how Hillary was endorsed by every single Democratic leader and won all the primaries and caucuses unanimously. I sympathize - aside from snooping through the underwear drawers of the comm directors of every consultancy in DC, how are you going to find out that some Democrats want Elizabeth Warren to run in 2016? There just isn't any other way.

Now I just feel silly. In the past I have carped at length about people like the Koch brothers and Art Pope buying Senators and Congresisonal reps. But that's nothing compared to this.

[sigh]

I'm hardly prominent, by any metric, but I have issues with Clinton, as well. And those who have been reading me over at S&R since 2008 can tell you that I've also stomped Obama's balls off any number of times. There's no need to hack my e-mail to find out what kinds of evil secret opinions I hold.

It's called the Internet. People go on it and talk to other people about politics. And sports. And clothing. And music. And cats. And every other goddamned thing you can think of, plus a bunch more that you probably can't think of. Some of these conversations are open and others are private.

You know, kinda like offline conversations.

People have opinions. Some informed, some less informed. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they don't. But they talk.

It's called freedom of speech and it's central to the practice of democracy.

And that, folks, is what our conservative Sherlocks object to - the practice of democracy. Because all those people talking and exchanging opinions and disagreeing and spreading ideas, they're a threat to the proper Feudal order of things.

So yeah, conservative "journalists," we have lists. Lots of them. And we're talking about the best ways of driving your oligarch bosses into extinction.

Scary, huh?

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* I'm not going to link to this story for any number of reasons, all of which are hopefully obvious.