posted by Damozel | More White House officials than previously supposed took advantage of the Republican National Committee's generous offer of free email accounts. The RNC helpfully preserved more than 140,000 emails to and from Karl Rove, but only 130 of them pre-date Election 2004 (Washington Post).
President Bush refused to allow the turn over of emails to congressional investigators, claiming executive privilege. The RNC wants to give its emails to White House counsel Fred Fielding "to determine whether Bush will want to withhold those as well" (WaPo). What are the odds?
There are more than 100,000 emails from two of Rove's "top lieutenants" (Sara Taylor and W. Scott Jennings) but no emails from 51 of 88 White House officials, including Ken Mehlman, White House political director from 2001-2003.
The House Oversight Committee is determining whether this pleasant arrangement violated the Presidential Records Act [see Committee's report]. The PRA's Section 2203(a) provides that:
"...the President shall take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as Presidential records...." (emphasis mine).
About 75,000 of Rove's emails went to addresses ending in ".gov," (i.e., addresses belonging to government employees).
Committee chairman Henry Waxman plans to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales knew of the e-mail use during his term as White House counsel and whether he "took steps to preserve the records" (WaPo). Apparently, Congressmen aren't tired of hearing "I don't recall."
Though it would bother me if I were president and my attorney general had Gonzalez's demonstrated memory problems, we all know that Bush is perfectly happy with Gonzalez, just as he is, Bush's policy being on all points of contention: Don't know; can't tell.
The RNC, still "searching its records," thinks it's possible that all "remaining" emails were political in nature and therefore exempt from the records act (WaPo). Reasoning thus, perhaps Rove could argue that IF the U.S. attorney firings were---as some cynics maintain-- driven by political objectives, all of the related emails (political in nature) are exempt from the Presidential Records Act! Could it be that we've spotted a.... loophole for Rove? You're welcome, you guys!
Because I just can't understand why Henry Waxman and his crew want to go nosing about in the White House's private business just so they can prove a point. Does anyone in America who even cares about employee relations and such in the Department of Justice care why those guys were hired or fired? Didn't everyone just sort of assume that if somebody gets you a job in the government, he or she will call in favors from time to time and that a Republican president or his attorney general would of course want to see his guys do their bit to serve the party?
Does anyone today still believe that Justice wears a blindfold? Let's not be naive, Congressman Waxman!
As for the invasion of people's private email accounts, you'd almost think we were back to the days of Watergate, when the Congress just would not let the President keep his [expletive] tapes to himself. It's almost like the days of the Iran Contra investigations.
I remember how furious the people in my little South Carolina town used to get back in the Seventies at the way poor president Nixon was persecuted over that little misunderstanding at the Democratic Party's National campaign headquarters. Republican officials, it seems, are naturally secretive and tend to suffer from memory problems. (See, e.g., the 1993 federal report of the Independent Counsel for Iran-Contra Matters by a certain special prosecutor.) It's not their fault. It's probably some sort of genetic disabiliy or virus, judging by the number who develop memory problems.
Let Reagan be Reagan; Nixon, Nixon; and George W. Bush, George W. Bush. And let Rove be Rove too. If we let Congress go digging around in emails and things, who knows where they'll stop?
After all, we're all entitled to our privacy, right? How would you like it if the Executive branch wanted to oversee your personal records? (And don't listen to those whiners at the ACLU; we all know what they're like.)
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