“After two days of silence, Hillary Clinton weighed in on the controversy surrounding her use of a personal email address during her tenure as secretary of state late on Wednesday night, saying she had asked the State Department to release her emails,” Politico reports.

Said Clinton: “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”

“The computer server that transmitted and received Hillary Clinton’s emails – on a private account she used exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state – traced back to an Internet service registered to her family’s home in Chappaqua, New York,” the Associated Press reports.

“In most cases, individuals who operate their own email servers are technical experts or users so concerned about issues of privacy and surveillance they take matters into their own hands. It was not immediately clear exactly where Clinton ran that computer system.”

Hillary Clinton’s aides “sought to play down the significance of her exclusive use of a personal email account for State Department business. But an examination of records requests sent to the department reveals how the practice protected a significant amount of her correspondence from the eyes of investigators and the public,” the New York Times reports.

“Mrs. Clinton’s exclusive use of personal email for her government business is unusual for a high-level official, archive experts have said. Federal regulations, since 2009, have required that all emails be preserved as part of an agency’s record-keeping system. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, her emails were kept on her personal account and her staff took no steps to have them preserved as part of State Department record.”

Chicago Tribune: 5 things to know about Clinton’s email

New York Times: “Perhaps no other political organization is more poised — or under more pressure — to capitalize on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s likely presence at the top of the Democratic ticket in 2016. After losses in the midterm elections, and seeing abortion rights threatened across the country, Emily’s List is treating a Clinton candidacy as its best chance yet to convert enthusiasm among Democratic donors into funding for women running in federal, state and local elections.”

The New York Times notes that by not addressing the growing controversy over her private emails, and with her allies working to undercut the original New York Times article on the emails, Hillary Clinton is signaling that she will employ a “Rose Garden” strategy as much as possible.

“Although she is not holding office, she is behaving like the incumbent.”

Jill Lawrence: “Far be it from me to underestimate Hillary Clinton. She’s weathered scandals, tragedies, her husband’s affairs and impeachment and her own wrenching primary loss to Barack Obama to become her party’s leading 2016 presidential prospect by a mile. Make that a light-year.”

“Stipulate that the former secretary of state is on a different plane from most other Democrats when it comes to experience, endurance and popularity. And yet, as one damaging report after another emerges, it’s got to be asked: How dumb is it for Democrats to count so completely on this one person? What is their Plan B?”

Hillary Clinton “exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record,” the New York Times reports.

“Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.”

Washington Post: “It was not clear why Clinton, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, created the private account. But the practice appears to bolster long-standing criticism that Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, have not been transparent.”

“Hillary Clinton and her close advisers are telling Democratic donors that she will enter the presidential race sooner than expected, likely in April, a move that would allay uncertainties within her party and allow her to rev up fundraising,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Clinton aides have spoken of the earlier timetable in private meetings, according to people engaged in recent discussions about the presumed Democratic front-runner’s emerging 2016 campaign. Many within her camp have advocated her staying out of the fray until the summer.”

Hillary Clinton’s advisers “are in serious discussions with nearly a half-dozen operatives to fill key roles such as political director on a likely 2016 presidential campaign,” the New York Times reports.

“The prospects are mostly people who have worked with Mrs. Clinton before… The conversations reflect a fast-moving effort by Mrs. Clinton to build a campaign as a number of Democratic Party operatives are vying for position.”

The last time Hillary Clinton ran for president, “she seemed torn over whether to emphasize her chance to make history, or to play down her gender and reassure voters that she was tough enough for the job,” the New York Times reports.

“This time there is no question: Mrs. Clinton’s potential to break what she has called ‘the highest and hardest glass ceiling’ is already central to her fledgling 2016 presidential campaign.”

“But rather than the assertive feminism associated with her years as first lady, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign message will be subtler. It will involve frequent references to being a mother and grandmother and to how her family has inspired her to embrace policies that she believes would help middle-class families.”

Ana Marie Cox: “An ‘air of inevitability’ should be a good thing, right? It’s in the superhero toolbox, right next to the cloak of invisibility and hammer of invincibility. So why do journalists treat it like kryptonite?”

Washington Post: “As she readies her second presidential campaign, Clinton has recruited consumer marketing specialists onto her team of trusted political advisers. Their job is to help imagine Hillary 5.0 — the rebranding of a first lady turned senator turned failed presidential candidate turned secretary of state turned likely 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.”

“Clinton and her image-makers are sketching ways to refresh the well-established brand for tomorrow’s marketplace. In their mission to present voters with a winning picture of the likely candidate, no detail is too big or too small — from her economic opportunity agenda to the design of the ‘H’ in her future campaign logo.”

Hillary Clinton, “the subject of intense news media attention and public scrutiny for the last three decades, is preparing for another thorough vetting as she plans for a likely presidential campaign. In this case, however, it’s not Republicans trying to thwart her or journalists looking for a juicy scoop, but researchers she herself has hired,” the New York Times reports.

“Mrs. Clinton, who is all but assured to seek the Democratic presidential nomination for a second time, has hired the firm New Partners, an outfit with a history of doing deep research projects, to handle at least some portion of the work, known in the political world as ‘self-opposition research.'”

Nate Cohn: “I remember that Mrs. Clinton was ‘inevitable,’ and I see why today’s discussions of Mrs. Clinton’s strength sound familiar. But there is no equivalence between Mrs. Clinton’s strength then and now. She was never inevitable eight years ago. If a candidate has ever been inevitable — for the nomination — it is Mrs. Clinton today.”

“No candidate, excluding incumbent presidents, has ever fared so well in the early primary polls as Mrs. Clinton. She holds about 60 percent of the vote of Democratic voters, a tally dwarfing the 40 percent she held this time in the last election cycle.”