First we heard that the dog ate those RNC emails that Bush White House staffers had been sending off-the-books in an attempt to stay under the radar of the Presidential Records Act. Then, yesterday, White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, attempted to claim that Executive Privilege covers, not just the regular White House emails, but all those black op emails—missing or otherwise—sent by Bush Co West Wingers using the RNC accounts.
(Good try, Fred. File that under Hail Mary pass with no receiver in sight.)
Meanwhile, Judiciary Committee chair, Patrick Leahy, and So-Cal Congressman Henry Waxman both have their respective jaws clamped around the issue, and seem disinclined to buy all this hide-the-ball nonsense that’s going on among the White House/RNC folks.
(The New York Times has the story. So does the LA Times.)
In the last four years, Waxman’s arc has been an interesting one.
He voted for the Iraq war resolution even though his staff admitted at the time that the mail, emails and telephone calls pouring into Waxman’s office from his constituents were running very strongly against the resolution. Then sometime a year later, Henry seemed to snap awake and become furious at himself for getting snookered by all the imminent danger/mushroom cloud horse-pucky, and whatever other threats and persuasions that the administration (and AIPAC, if we are to be honest about it) was then ladling out.
Since then, Waxman has been a relentless terrier nipping at the administrations’ ankles. Now that there is a Democratic majority in Congress, Waxman-the-terrier has developed larger, sharper teeth, and he’s sunk those chompers into this newly unspooling EmailGate scandal. (Is it too early to give it a “gate”? Nah.)
BTW, here’s one more plot twist in the ever-more-fascinating tale of how the Bush Administration handles its email. It comes courtesy of a non-profit org called CREW, the group that was way out ahead of the pack when the RNC email story first raised its head.
Here’s the opening to CREW’s newest report on the subject:
In a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of record…
Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said today, “It’s clear that the White House has been willfully violating the law, the only question now is to what extent….
…and, this had what to do with injustice in Los Angeles? I’d be more concerned about whether an umpire for a Dodgers game called the play at home plate correctly.
Anyway, everyone said that Nixon’s mistake was that he didn’t burn the tapes.
I think Leahy and Waxman are planning on calling Geek Squad to get those missing E-Mails restored.
Meanwhile, is it just me or does it seem that everyone is looking for a Czar these days? Maybe Antonio and George can combine their search and we could get a single czar who coul look at gangs in Baghdad – by way of City Terrace!
So let me get this straight.
1) The Hatch act requires that you cannot use government building, phones or Email service for political business.
2) When you do use an outside email service for political business as required by law this is a problem with the Dems.
Nope, when you use outside emails for White House business, and give the impression you might be, in some of those cases, doing so to keep them from being part of gov’t record, then destroy the emails, THEN it’s a problem.
Also, when you—in addition—manage to lose or mislay or purge or heaven knows what, a possible 5 million other emails that were sent and received on the White Server, that’s potentially a really big problem. (Especially when you’re notified that the emails might be lost and you do nothing about it.)
This sort of habit of mislaying emails tends to make the suspicious among us a tad jumpy.
Roving Strategist and Tech Guru
It appears that Carl Rove is not only a genus political strategist, but also a technical prodigy that is able to remove his emails out of the system making them unavailable to democratic snooping.
After weeks of investigation, DEM’s discovered the nefarious method that he evil Rove used to cover his tracks
—— THE DELETE KEY ——
Yes that right, Carl Rove used his powerful delete key to thwart DEMs at their own game of hide the political email. “This evil rascal deleted old email in his INBOXâ€Â, Waxman was overheard saying.
Waxman was compiling lists of everything that he wanted to investigate before the Democrats took over Congress. This has nothing to do with honor and honesty in government, or Waxman and his ilk would actually limit themselves to real issues rather than throwing a net out there and hoping to catch something. Celeste, you should be embarrassed about the Democrats rather than critical of the Republicans.
No it has everything to do with getting ready and the fact is that his efforts have been thwarted – so much muck has come out that several large turds – like the missing 9 billion in Iraq from the CRA – has yet to be looked at.
And Woody, the reason that the “Missing E-Mails- have been such a problem is that Waxman had the goods. He was feeding Leahy and Schumer the info they needed so those requests were not “Fishing Expeditions” but demands for docs that they knew would be there.
Old rule in Crossexamination: Never ask a question that you don’t know the answer to. Well, in subpoenas always go first for the stuff you know the content of.