Looks Like Biden's Running

From the New York Times last night:

Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.

What does that have to do with whether or not Joe Biden intends to run for president?

Well, the relationship between the Obamas and the Clintons has always been -- to put it mildly -- strained.

There are all kinds of reasons why. The Clintons resent the righteous ass-whipping Obama handed Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primaries. The Obamas resent the fact that the Clintons remained enough of a force in the Democratic Party that they had to give her pretty much whatever she wanted, which turned out to be her train wreck tenure as Secretary of State. And so on, and so forth.

So anyway, it's comeuppance time. Obama has no intention of letting Clinton follow him as president. He doesn't want his fingerprints to be too visible on her downfall, but neither does he want to wait and let the Republicans take credit for pushing him into appointing a special prosecutor (especially to the extent that they would tie the whole thing into the Benghazi attack).

He also wants to avoid a mud-wrestling match between Clinton and his preferred candidate, but to keep things moving fast so that there's no time for someone else to move into "front-runner" position after Clinton goes down and before that preferred candidate announces. Biden is reportedly planning an announcement soon. The time to get this over with is right about now.

Enter the executive branch. The State Department and the "intelligence community" are asking for a criminal investigation. Shortly, the Department of Justice will, more in sorrow than anger, announce that it's conducting that investigation.

By the time Biden announces, Clinton will either have exited the stage or obviously be in the process of doing so (depending on just how much public humiliation she is willing to suffer in an attempt to remain relevant).