The headlines are "no charges," of course, but it's worth considering what the New York Times calls an "extraordinary public tongue-lashing":

FBI Director James Comey says no reasonable prosecutor would have taken up a case against Clinton based on the FBI's investigation:

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information...

There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation...

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case...

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

The issue here is consistency in the application of accountability. If our system is going to toss Chelsea Manning in prison for disclosing non-secret State Department cables and video evidence of war crimes, force Edward Snowden into exile for awakening the public to mass surveillance, and sentence a Navy analyst for "mishandling" classified material, and, if our mayor can get the FBI involved in a hunt for one of my sources about a measly police union contract, then there has to be some kind of official sanction for Clinton.

If not, and our view is, "It's just e-mail! People are careless with classified information all the time! She didn't mean anything by it! Lots of material is overclassified anyway. No big deal! Let's move on!"—which is a reasonable argument to make—then we simply need to apply that standard to everyone: Rap them on the knuckles in press conferences when they expose classified information. Nothing more.

UPDATE: To be clear, and to respond to some of the commenters who say I'm comparing apples to oranges: A just system would weigh the harms against the benefits of exposing classified material. It would allow Manning and Snowden to make arguments about their intent as whistleblowers and their goals of enlightening the public about wrongdoing. The Obama administration's controversial application of the Espionage Act prevents them from even making this argument in court.

Clinton and her camp have talked repeatedly about her intent with the private e-mail server: her motivation was to use a convenient, efficient way of communication. The benefits were ease of use and quickness. But there were immense potential harms, if you accept the government's assertions that this material needed to be kept secret.

In the FBI's analysis, it's clear they considered Clinton's intent as a key factor. What's troubling is that whistleblowing intent is determinative in other cases—people are automatically charged and treated as traitors—while in this case lack of intent or selfish intent means zero sanctions are levied.