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Thousands of White House E-mails Deleted
kidcharles writes "The Washington Post reports that in the midst of an investigation by the U.S. Congress into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys by the Department of Justice, numerous White House e-mails have been lost. Among them are communications from presidential adviser Karl Rove. Parallels are being drawn with the infamous '18 minutes' missing from the Nixon Watergate tapes. Also at issue is the use of Republican National Committee e-mail domains (such as gwb43.com and georgewbush.com) rather than the official White House domain. This is a violation of the Presidential Records Act."
... really come to anyone as a surprise by now?
There is a war going on for your mind.
Whatever, GWB is a douche bag.
-H
We all know e-mails are never really deleted. They just hide a little bit harder.
Is anyone surprised in the slightest?
Begin the left-wing conspiracy. This, Imus and Anna Nicole's baby are all I'm going to be hearing about for the next few weeks. Damn.
..Bush will still be allowed continue on this rampage without being impeached. Incredible.
Blerg.
From Crooks And Liars:
This one's a no-brainer.
The NSA has been monitoring and logging all US domestic phone and email traffic for a few years now, thanks to Bush and Cheney.
So subpoena the "lost" WH emails from the NSA. Put the domestic spying operation to some practical use.
If they don't have the emails, they aren't doing their job, and it will be time to get rid of the NSA.
Annoyed Canuck | 04.12.07 - 3:57 pm | #
I hope this helps the Federal criminal prosecution of the world's largest crime syndicate.
Patriotically as always,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
And, as usual, no one will be held accountable for it. If it looks like someone may, they will claim "National Security" and halt all proceedings. It would seem that "Slick Willy" has some competition.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
gwb43.com and georgewbush.com domains are marked as spam domains. Would you keep copies of spam mails ?
...how much has to happen before impeachment proceedings? He is clearly at least as deserving as any former president, and probably far more. If you can have people impeaching you over a blowjob - which I know is a very tired statement, but bear with me - then bush's long, long list of offenses surely must qualify. As if I needed any further proof that the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same gang...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Don't they understand that computers mean nothing can ever be truly deleted?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I seriously doubt the server people in charge of email for the White House would not be keeping both full and incremental backups in addition to major redundancy. After all, they'd want to CYA for actions they did take more than actions they didn't take. Of course, this IS the government, so anything can happen!
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
The US presidental office is run by a gang of criminals. What else is new?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
What is the penalty for violating internal White House policy, I asked? "I don't believe the staff manual contains penalties for failure to preserve," the lawyer said.
Stanzel, possibly unwittingly, offered one possible explanation for why the rule on preservation was flouted so widely: Because there was apparently no prospect of personal consequences. "There are no personal violations of the Presidential Records Act, but you can have a personal violation of the Hatch Act," he said.
The lawyer criticized the crystal-clear (to me) ban on using non-White House e-mail for official purposes as being "too concise" and described a new, more extensive White House policy No accountability, no responsibility, no repercussions for stepping over the line, no penalties, maybe they'll make some new rules as a token gesture of fixing the problem, they'll be sure to leave better loopholes with even less accountability in the new rules...
Our government has become everything that the first settlers to America were trying to get away from.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Wow. Nixon had NOTHING on the current thugs in the White House administration. It's patently absurd that these people haven't been impeached, fired, and tried for treason at this point.
I don't respond to AC's.
subpoena the backups.
.. that noone cares how many emails I've lost over the years.
Email is a medium while to the non-technical person seems the epitome of temporary. While there have been people who have gotten in trouble (both PR wise and in more serious ways) for emails that were kept when they didn't expect them to be, the average Joe still pays little attention to what happens to an email after they've read it. Neither in the sense of making sure to keep it, or making sure it's gone.
Something must have short circuited in in your partisan brain, but this would be a right wing conspiracy. It let to BabyBush gaining power and keeping it. Or do you believe all the exit polls were wrong at the last presidential election?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I'm generally a conservative -- very pro-gun, willing to try the "surge" in Iraq, generally favor Republican policies over Democratic ones -- but I'm to the point now where I think the Bush administration (which I've never really felt comfortable with) has demonstrated that it is entirely corrupt -- lying to get into Iraq, lying about Plame, and now the total fix/lie-fest of the US Attorney mess.
Bush needs to hang Rove out to dry -- let a special prosecutor send that guy to a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, can Gonzalez and seal the door to Cheney's office.
that somebody learned from the mistakes from the past.
What?
Hi. Can I have my country back please?
This isn't the sort of thing I was brought up to believe in. I was taught that we were supposed to believe in the constitution, and that the streets were paved with gold. Now I see that the constitution doesn't mean much, and the streets are lined with unemployed systems administrators!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I can't wait for some Senator or Congressman to subpoena the drives and spend $50,000 trying to examine the magnetic domains for traces of what may or may not be the emails he's looking for.
I bet he'll find more traces of spam and pr0n than useful emails.
The upshot of all this is Congress will demand White House keep all non-junk emails for a minimum period of time.
Some future president is going to get into very hot water for deleting or modifying an email before it's data-retention time expires.
In the future, about the only emails you'll see coming in and out of the White House will be to schedule or confirm appointments or to talk about innocuous topics. "Conversations that never happened" will be held in person, informally, without a paper trail.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's a traditional thing, much like the 18.5 minute gap in Nixon's tapes or the shredding of Enron documents:
n _scandal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_tapes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Enro
He didn't get a blowjob. He needs one direly, but he didn't get one. No blowjob, no impeachment.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Parallels are being drawn with the infamous '18 minutes' missing from the Nixon Watergate tapes."
Just like with the documents that went missing during the Whitewater investigations, right?
In fact, mine is likely the more apt comparison: because the odds are that those "thousands of e-mails" are as innocuous as the missing documents found in (iirc) the attic of Clinton's White House. They certainly aren't each a smoking gun the way the unexplained "18 minutes" might have been. The question is, who is to blame? I'm more prone to look to IT first and the administration second.
The second part, about them using RNC domains, is far more troubling to me. I'd be interested to know the specifics of the law they reportedly violated, and whether it was intentional.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I think you missed the parent's pathetic attempt at being humorous. It was lame, but sarcastic nonetheless.
All emails should be archived for national security. Isn't that the government position?
Well why get their own house in order first?
They should have used gmail, then they could have kept them forever! Well, assuming they didn't want them deleted...
gwb43.com? WTF is that - his IQ?
(Sorry, a little too easy.)
What has to happen before someone IS held to account for all of this ongoing nonsense? Exactly how bad will it need to be? Someone needs to bring the White House up short and remind it that no, it is NOT given a license to do as it pleases, and if it thinks it can and is prepared to insist on it the consequences involve job loss.
Can someone with a real background in politics explain what WILL be bad enough to merit serious action, if everything to date is not enough?
adviser????
The real news in this story isn't that the e-mails were "lost", the story is that major media outlets are covering this story and not allowing this to go away.
Is there already a law that says this can't be persecuted or are we gonna get one in the next few weeks?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wouldn't it be ironic if their ISP was retaining their email?
They're setting a fine example over there in Washington. Delete e-mails during investigations, wait until the Senate recesses to hire some questionable Swift Boat Veterans schmuck, refuse to allow under-oath interrogations, etc.
almost certainly involved with this as well. But president pelosi. Wow. I am not wild about that either. But then again, she is not the one who is running massive deficits, totally corrupted, treasonous, OR cowardly. But what worries me is that the W. and cheney would be let off scot-free as "being in the best interest of the nation" similar to what we heard from Ford and Poppa Bush. It seems obvious that as long as criminal presidents can get by, then others will be tempted to follow in the same paths and not make the same "mistakes". This time, all those that are involved (W., cheney, Rove, and probably libbey) need to do LOTS of time with no pardon in sight. Then and only then, will we have better future government.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
These look to be three distinct domains. For example,
gwb43.com - 24.58.33.115
georgewbush.com - 64.203.98.31
whitehouse.gov - 205.160.212.222
And being as part of the problem is that the white housers were using those other domains, if that is where the emails are missing from, then we might not be able to blame the white house for losing the emails, as they may have been located on a different server, at a different location.
I hope none of their service providers had a constant pcap of cleartext port 25 going appending to a log file. This would create duplicates of all email for the last X amount of time it's been running.
Even if they have TLS enabled, I hope they don't use a third-party spam service. Yup, body of messages stored there too.
I bet this information is worth a lot of money.
Having only worked at a few providers across the east coast, I have no knowledge of this happening. Nope.
FLR
Democrats and Republicans are they really different?
Given these facts, you're surprised he thinks the Presidential Records Act doesn't apply to him? You're joking right? You think these people want to be held accountable 5-10 years from now? Put it in the memory hole, so we can have one of those swell state funerals like they had for Ronald Reagan, put on the rose-colored glasses and talk about how greatness of this catastrophy of a President. America wins the war on intelligence!
Also at issue is the use of Republican National Committee e-mail domains (such as gwb43.com and georgewbush.com) rather than the official White House domain.
On the plus side, I bet it will be tough to claim executive privilege on those e-mails.
#!
The problem here is that the emails were not on White House government email accounts but rather Republican Party email accounts. So technically it was a third party email system that the White House does not control. There is an issue whether the 22 aides should have used those accounts instead of their government accounts. The Republicans have countered that federal rules forbid the use of government email for anything other than government business.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
All of this red tape is making things run slower and with less efficiency. Although I am all for recording 'official communication', I think they can go too far at times. If people are going to be sending emails for fraudulent activity, then I would not exactly consider it 'official communication'. If they send emails using different accounts for the sake of convenience, then we haven't much to worry about. The government is already far too inefficient. I say we need less red tape and fewer 'investigations'.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
I recently got involved into a legal issue where the question posed to me was "What was on our Internet site on a particular day several years ago?" We went through our file backups, but it turns out the data was pulled from a database. Then it was looking at database backups, which we don't keep that far back except for certain patient-related databases.
To top it off, we've started implementing a policy where old stuff is no longer backed up, simply because of the huge costs involved in legal discovery. It's very easy to spend millions of dollars when a judge demands "Get every electronic document that talks about X".
That being said, I'm sure people can find all sorts of clever ways to recover e-mails. Personal computers are a good first step. It would be interesting if the NSA was intercepting e-mails. Sometimes when e-mails are "deleted", the hard drives still contain pieces of the data. Finally, if people are sending and receiving e-mail outside of the RNC's systems, you can look into those e-mail accounts.
I've investigated people doing inappropriate things and the best thing to do was to get your hands on their personal computers. There are amazing numbers of things you can find out about a person. Of course, I'm not sure the RNC would cheerfully hand over their computers to a Democratically controlled congress.
The secret is that the emails aren't on the White House servers and ought to be...
Why, that's so clever its ... stupid!
they purposefully used non-WH servers owned and operated by THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE. No retention rules. How convenient.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Are you referring to this item: http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruis er-Tank/dp/B00067F1CE ?
If Bush wants to kill the terrorists, he should jump off a cliff.
I think our commander in chief has been an unmitigated disaster, but Watergate comparisons on this particular issue of document retention regulation seem ridiculous. Especially considering the much more blatant constitutional crises brought on by the GWOT. And in the end, these are appointments by the prez.
I guess the dems think they got a case against Rove and feel they are cleaner than on the GWOT where they share some mud on their hands with the prez. Whole thing seems like an issue of technicalities, considering the crap we have going on with demestic spying and such that are clearly illegal and unconstitutional.
Bush I: sorry,. we were just following orders.
Clinton: It depends what the meaning of is is, and I didn't inhale, and we eventually found the papers we misplaced
Bush II: Is has been 20 years since I supported terrorist by buying illegal drugs, I believe that Hussein had WMDs, and the emails have been deleted anyway.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
If anyone else tried something like this, their hard drives would be seized and then gone over with tunneling electron microscopes to find recently switched bits.
So, that's what Congress should do.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
No, it's the number of people who still think he's doing a decent job.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
no just that the previous 42 versions of gwb turns out to be failures. May be gwb.v44.RC1 would be better?
Everybody happy now? Good, now get back to work...
Look, I don't expect everyone to agree with me. It's fine if you want to ignore both history and what is going on around you, that's your prerogative and one engaged in frequently by the majority of the population of the USA. But the simple fact is that our current president has a worse record in every way than any former president! The deficit has been swelled more than ever before, and the pretext under which we went to war was a lie. (They later tried to foist the blame for the belief that Saddam was sitting on WMDs off on other countries, but you should be sure before you sign your name on the dotted line. Not being sure, but acting as if you are sure, is lying.) At least one election was stolen, although more accurately, both were. Stopping a legal recount without justification is itself an illegal act. And it is well known that many types of badness went on in Florida; listing persons from predominantly black boroughs on a list of disenfranchised felons and literally instructing the company assembling the list not to check it for validity is just one example.
In terms of freedoms lost, this has been one of the worst administrations of all time. And when caught performing a blatantly illegal act his response is "I'm the president!" and to issue a writ. Bush has issued more presidential writs explaining actions which are otherwise illegal (but apparently explaining why you did something illegal makes it okay if you are president, even if your explanation is pure bullshit) than all other presidents combined. You might not consider that cause for concern, but it seems like a big warning sign to me.
Since Bush has done so many things which are clearly impeachable offenses, and the Democrats are not interested in doing it, I must conclude that they feel they have something to gain by not doing so. In other words, as a party they are willing to compromise their convictions (As if they had any) for some temporary gain. Picking your battles is one thing - although I do believe that we let too many battles go in general - but this is just obscene.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but there was a strong groundswell of support for impeachment of Bush when the Democrats once again gained some power in Congress, and it has petered out with nary an action. I don't believe in either major party to any degree any longer. I think I'll just start voting green party to make a statement, and then when I get the cash up I'm getting the fuck out of here. I'm not willing to assassinate anyone, and I think that's about the only thing we could do to make a difference at this point (and no, I'm not talking about killing the president - it would take a lot more than that to make a difference) so if I'm not going to be part of the solution, at least I might as well not be part of the problem.
But like the wise man said, first, let's shoot all the lawyers. (No special offense meant to our friendly and helpful neighborhood lawyers, but the very existence of such people is part of the problem with the entire system. I'll be happy to go on a diatribe about that at a later date.) :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's not the White House e-mail that's the problem, it's that the people who work at the White House aren't using White House e-mail for White House business.
Seems more to me like a combination of laziness (do non-techs really want to check more than one e-mail when they refer to "my e-mail"? Chances are, probably not) and not wanting to be caught for doing personal e-mail with their "work address" (which is forbidden, can lose them their job, etc.) Both these reasons are cited in the article.
Judging from all the conspiracy theory comments, there are a lot of people who:
a) Are hating on GWB a little bit too unfairly; he doesn't personally have much to do with this, and doesn't seem to be hiding anything through this, just someone's being pretty damn neglectful about internal White House policy and at worst not realizing how this is Serious Business.
b) DIDN'T READ THE EFFING ARTICLE.
what about the missing rose law firm documents or the documents missing that sandy berger took?
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Nope. Credit score.
Yesterday he said this:
Here are the specifics of what is required by the Hatch Act. It is clear that
A) Politicization (partisan activities) within certain Federal Agencies, such as the CIA or the Justice Department, is a felony.
B) All records relating to government business MUST be retained for investigative purposes, and later historical preservation. To destroy these documents is a felony.
This law is clear, has been on the books since the 1930s, and has passed several Supreme Court affirmations. There's no wiggle room here. This is a clear violation of the law. And note A) in relation to the Federal US Attorney firings. To fire is legal; to fire with even just partisan intent -- never mind apparent Obstruction of Justice -- is a clear felony.
We're walking right into another constitutional crisis. Comparisons to Nixon's firing of Archibold Cox (The Saturday Night Massacre) are spot on.
If you follow that line of thinking to its conclusion then the only real solution to the abuse of government power is to simply do away with all of them. There is not a single compelling argument available to maintain that they're not all in it together--from the President through the cabinet to the Congress and right down to the state level politicians. It's one big pyramid scheme set up to keep Americans occupied while the politicobankers, and their cohorts on Wall Street, walk off with the profit from the nation's work.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
What's that you say? Time to mail bomb that domain? sounds good to me.
MABASPLOOM!
I'm sure you were trying to be funny, and some mods will mod you as such, but that doesn't mean your post was actually funny.
I find it hard to believe that senior staff members were not aware their emails were being deleted for years. I am just a lowly grad student and I routinely have to wade through old emails, some months or possibly even years old. You're telling me Rove never once needed an email from a few months ago? I don't believe it, not for a second.
Secondly; as long as Rove for example was sending and replying to Officials who are using the standard Whitehouse domain then there should still be copies, it might be a little more difficult to track things down but most stuff should still be there.
Third; this is enough. Records and archiving of official communications should no longer be the responsibility of Whitehouse staff, who can be made to delete incriminating information. IT should be managed by an independent body. Government officials should be unable to communicate for official business using anything other than official communication channels. Failure to comply should result in punishment similar to perjury. I say this in reference to government but really it should be true for the private sector as well. Too many people are getting off easy for "lost" emails.
Well, if the NSA has been really doing their job
of wholesale network sniffing,
they should have a copy of the e-mails.
That was my suggestion to Senator Leahy.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Impeach, impeach, impeach
This is a mountain out of a molehill. Read the Presidential Records Act, at least.
The law specifically excludes "materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President;"
The last I checked, Rove was a political advisor, NOT a cabinet member and did not have any official policy-making power. He might have had an indirect effect on policy, but certainly did not have a direct effect. Heck, it's not even completely clear that his emails are covered -- the act only applies to the President, his immediate staff and units of the Executive Office. Do we know for a fact that Rove is in this category?
And, there's also the problem that the Hatch Act forbids using government-owned equipment for political purposes. Political emails are SUPPOSED to be off the While House mail system.
While it is certainly possible that some material which should have been kept wasn't kept. However, there's a large body of material which is not required to be kept. The Clinton administration also used outside mail servers to avoid the archiving of political information.
This is just a witch-hunt: the Democratic Congress is engaged in a Karl Rove witch-hunt and is trying to snoop into his political activities. They're not doing it as legitimate oversight, but just to help their own political ends. And, now they're making an issue that they can't get to Rove's email. But, this is a catch-22: if he had done what the democrats think he should have, they'd be complaining about Rove using the official While House server for political purposes.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike this administration. This is not one of them.
Do you have any facts? Or is this just generic outrage?
From what I understand, the RNC, Rove, 'White House Staffers' and Gonzalez have been tied into this. AFAIK, nothing has been reported that ties the 43rd President into all these shenanigans.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Will someone please take one for the team and suck his dick already so we can get on with impeachment proceedings? Please.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
If the government was run as a business... could not the CEO be put into jail for this, under current US legislation?
Besides, if a government is willing to create lies in order to be able to start a war, which costs trillions of tax payer dollars, the death of thousands, some "missing" emails really don't seem to be a big deal.
That's until a politician - god forbid, even a president - is eventually put on trial and sent to jail if found guilty.
I have a feeling, that my life will be long enough to witness that day...
I can't think of no better way to refute this sort of spew than to quote one if its finest purveyors back at you. Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2005: After a long investigation, however, Justice says the picture that emerged is of a man who knowingly and recklessly violated the law in handling classified documents, but who was not trying to hide any evidence. Prosecutors believe Mr. Berger genuinely wanted to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission but felt he was somehow above having to spend numerous hours in the Archives as the rules required, and that he didn't exactly know how to return the documents once he'd taken them out.
More than a few conservatives have been crying foul, or whitewash, in part because Mr. Berger's plea means he'll likely avoid jail and lose his security clearance for only three years. So we called Justice Department Public Integrity chief prosecutor Noel Hillman, who assured us that Mr. Berger did not deny any documents to history. "There is no evidence that he intended to destroy originals," said Mr. Hillman. "There is no evidence that he did destroy originals. We have objectively and affirmatively confirmed that the contents of all the five documents at issue exist today and were made available to the 9/11 Commission." Sandy Berger was punished and the final result of his actions was, uhh, nothing. No information was permanently lost. Whichever one of Karl's minions clicked "delete" willfully and permanently erased years worth of evidence in a criminal investigation, and when the resulting obstruction charge is handed down, it's going to be extremely gratifying.
So, recapping: your analogy is flawed, your point is wrong, and my guess is you knew all of this and went ahead and said it anyways. Cuz that's how you people operate. Lie till you get caught, then go on the offensive when you do.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Berger eventually pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material on April 1, 2005. Under a plea agreement, U.S. attorneys recommended a fine of $10,000 and a loss of security clearance for three years. However, on September 8, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson increased the fine to $50,000 at Berger's sentencing. Robinson stated, "The court finds the fine [recommended by government prosecutors] is inadequate because it doesn't reflect the seriousness of the offense."[14] Berger was also ordered to serve two years of probation and to perform 100 hours of community service.
USA has become a 1st class banana republic.
Wow - first again! Makes you want to proudly wave the flag and shout "WE ARE NUMBER ONE!!"
The guys pulling the strings in the White House cut their teeth in Nixon's cabinet. Why does this come as a surprise to anyone?
What I'd like to know at this point in time, is how many of these evil-administration stories are really evil or just the usual administration enemies highlighting some rule-breaking.
My short list of "really evil things" is:
Domestic spying.
AG Gonzalez (sp?) and his crack-pot unlimited executive powers theory.
Tom Delay
Deficit spending policy that's just putting off the a very bad day of reckoning that will harm everyone but the richest 2%.
There must be a couple of conservatives with an opinion.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
So, this is our government acting like the Enron guys and their accountants. Are we going to let these guys get away with it because they are politicians, or are they going to face consequences comparable to the people responsible for the Enron thing?
People seem to be forgetting that Rove had already utilized non-government computers for 95% of his governmental correspondence. Just because the other 5% is equally damning (hence its completely anticipated disappearance) is no reason to forget about this equally crippling illegality.
What, you mean this? I think not.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
It's not a violation of the act. You have to use separate phones/email for "political purposes" ask Al Gore about his hearing for using the White House phone to drum up donations. Get your facts right. You can't force the White House to use government owned systems for that -- THAT is illegal. They could have stored copies of of the off-site system sure... but they have no law forcing them to do that. I hate to break it to you but you also can't force staff members to turn over their home answering machines either. What a weak troll. Even if you hate Bush you shouldn't stand for the power grab the Congress is going for lately. There is a reason we have a separation of powers. If you keep heading down this road the president becomes a figurehead, and soon the people that write the laws will be enforcing them as well. More likely not enforcing them and building bridges to nowhere.
>(Score:5, Funny)
as homer once said, "it's funny, because it's true!"
If they haven't been already, I'd suspect the hard drives in question are being shredded as I type.
Sig cannot be found.
A past precident does not excuse current mistakes! If I walk up to you and punch you in the face and I get away with it, that doesn't make it right for me to walk up again and kick you in the stomach. Wrong is wrong. I'm disgusted by the lack of a sense of justice around here.
I don't know about the joke, but Robin Williams is definitely not funny any more. I think he probably lost it around the time he did Aladdin...
If people THINK you're funny, and humor is subjective, then doesn't that make it so?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
they allow people to escape accountability, just blame it on the computer...
i wish i had a computer...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Yes, in other words, a slap on the wrists.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
This president also fired all sitting US Attorneys in 2001. The firing was phased out over months, just like with Clinton. US Attorneys are expected to resigned or get fired when a new president is elected. No one has a problem with this, even the US Attorneys themselves.
The problem with last December's massacre is that the Attorneys were fired in the middle of Bush's term, and for not being "loyal Bushies." These were all appointed by Bush. It is a controversy because once in their office, US Attorneys are be expected to be free from political influence and carry out the law as they see fit. They certainly should be free of influence from their Senator, Congresswoman (Iglesias of New Mexico) or White House Counsel Miers (McKay of Seattle).
To bring out the Slashdot tinfoil hate crowd. You guys are pathetic. Get back to coding.
Whether they're really gone *permanently* is another story, and already being discussed elsewhere. I think the bigger story, and I was Googling like crazy but can't find the link now, is that it turns out these Republican-controlled email addresses were on some of the *same servers through which electronic voting results were being processed.* I thought I read this on DailyKos but maybe I'm wrong. If anyone has a link to more info. on this, please post. Thanks.
Here are the sender, subjects and dates...
Mara Marrero Doctor Approved And Recommended. cereal Wed Apr 18, 2007 2k
Kendra Kauffman I've got a 12 inch vfnhbnc Tue Apr 17, 2007 2k
Military.com One Step to a Better Life Thu Apr 12, 2007 12k
latimes.com Los Angeles Times Home Delivery for Only a Dollar a Week Thu Apr 12, 2007 7k
Quality Paperback Book Club Come Back to Big Savings on Books Thu Apr 12, 2007 20k
NewsMax Media Hormone Loss Tied to Sexual Dysfunction Thu Apr 12, 2007 9k
TurboTax Online TurboTax: 5 days left to file. Finish today. Thu Apr 12, 2007 17k
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Fox News: "It's been recently discovered that, in fact, the Clinton Administration had deleted Bush's emails during their second term. The Democrats, as usual, are to blame and need to be held accountable."
------
On a similar note, I read this quote today by Lee Iacocca regarding the Bush administration:
"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."
Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have."
Yup, and then there was the time Hillary stole the 500 FBI files. Nothing ever happened with that either.
The Republicans stood (when I was young and carefree) for freedom. No coddling and pampering from the state, take your life in your own hands or perish! Be strong, grasp the opportunities and you will succeed! Lean state, lean government and as little regulation as possible, the freedom of market and people as the principal goal to achive.
How does this match a government that limits and restricts every kind of freedom the US used to have? How does this sync with more and more laws, more and more regulations, more and more limitations, not only for personal freedom but also for enterprises? Where "free trade" is a farce, and instead you have more and more laws that support and fortify the leading position of a few cartels?
I not only want the country back, I want the friggin' party back!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So when we talk about loosing White House's emails.... which email address we are talking about exactly?
"....Whoever...
...covers up by any trick, scheme, or device
a material fact...
in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative or judicial branch
Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or both."
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Impeach Bush?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Isn't the NSA supposed to have access to all emails, phone conversations, etc?
Maybe they can help out their master, who funds their operation, the tax payer public and pull a copy from their files.
According to the Washington Post and other news sources, you find that these emails were intentionally deleted by specific individuals, chief amongst these criminals being Karl Rove.
Now, I delete emails every day, but I don't do so knowing it's an intentional act to cover my tracks, and my email server probably makes tons of archival copies, for all I know.
However, you can reconstruct these emails by subpoena action for all the individuals that the felon Rove sent and received said emails from.
And you can grab the server logs at all the waypoints - you would be surprised what you can find.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Check out this story at TPMmuckraker - according to a report from CREW there were actually more like FIVE MILLION emails deleted. The scale of this is just stunning.
I don't drink, can't stand Idol, and have trouble following the plot of my own reality show (my real life), much less something on TV.
:)
I guess that just leaves me to simply enjoy being fat, dumb, and happy, without the addiction.
Now excuse me while I do something useful, like watch a roll of toilet paper run through a shredder.
Let's recap:
1.) You use the phrase "you people." Who exactly are you referring to?
2.) You claim the analogy is flawed simply because you automatically give Berger the benefit of the doubt--because he's a Democrat. You would NEVER, EVER give him the benefit of the doubt if he was a Republican. You would be criticizing the media for "whitewashing" this "important story."
3.) Your analysis is based on someone's op-ed piece. Whoop-dee-doo. Instant +5!
4.) You seem to think stuffing papers under a trailer is a-okay as long as there's no direct evidence of the destruction of any originals--which we'll never know.
So, how long have you been a member of the Democratic Party? Do you always lash out at people who criticize your party due to some strange mindset that only Republicans are deserving of criticism?
Thanks to the Democrats and the liberal media's whitewashing.
You have absolutely no idea if this is true. We'll never know. Convenient for Clinton, eh? Funny how you'd never let Bush get away with such a thing.
You mean like when Berger willfully stuffed papers in his pants and hid them under a trailer, removing years worth of evidence in a committee investigation? Since Berger got a slap on the wrist, I guess we should expect the same in this case as well.
I love how blatantly biased and anti-Bush the media has become. They just don't give a fuck about being subtle anymore. Everything Bush does is amplified, even when Clinton did the exact same thing (like the firing of the lawyers). You're not actually pissed off about this, you're just feigning anger for political purposes going into '08 like your MoveOn cronies tell you to.
The difference is, Clinton didn't pick and choose, he fired all of them, which is actually not rare among Presidents are of a different party than the previous.
The question with the US Attorneys' firings are more along the line of - "Did they pick and choose who to fire based on who would look more favorable at their actions over the past 8 years?" rather than "Did they just fire all them Democrat-hired lawyers?!?"
Same farm, same grove of trees, but apples and oranges, nonetheless.
PS: I'm a Democrat who commonly votes Republican when the Dem is a 'tard. Oddly enough, I had a lot of trouble deciding who to vote for in 2004.
Actually, he probably didn't know that since you never hear that version of it on rightwing radio. They say the same pithy sound byte that he said and move on to the next subject, leaving the listener to speculate the reason why he wasn't more seriously punished for taking documents. I say he probably didn't know this, because I didn't know this.
The Democrats don't really want to impeach Bush. They LOVE the idea of having him still in office during the 2008 election. Although, one would think President Cheney could be just as awful.
Domains are not IP addresses, also the first two domains use the same mail servers.
Trolling is a art,
Please. I've done computer work for the gov't - they have very strict requirements in terms of backups/redundancy, etc. I'd bet everything I have that there are backup tapes sitting at Iron Mountain with all of their Exchange (or whatever mail system they use) backups on them going back to at least 2000. If they really don't have backups then they should all be at least fired for incompetence.
Frankly I'm more concerned about The DNC hiring an RIAA shill then some moron deleting e-mails.
I agree that although it wasn't good to lie to a grand jury he did what any person in a marriage would do who wanted protect the marriage. Anyone married knows that if you make the error of fooling around but still love your partner and want to preserve the relationship the best thing to do is bury it as deep as possible. Your partner doesn't really want to know about this, particularly if it was just a short term slip and didn't lead you to question your commitment to the relationship.
Additionally he has his child to consider. Kids want to believe their parents are happy and true to each other. No kid wants to discover one of his or her parents fooled around.
The only reason I can think of to let your partner know about your cheating is if you are really trying to say you don't want to be with him or her anymore and you cheated to make them mad enough to leave you since you don't have the courage to be the one to end the relationship. Or maybe you have some guilt and are naive enough to think spilling the beans is going to make you feel better (not very likely). In general the only times that I know of someone voluntarily telling a partner about infidelity is when that person was feeling the relationship was in trouble, to express serious unhappiness with the relationship, to indicate a desire to end the relationship, or when the person they cheated with was still in the picture in some way. Almost always it means trouble. If your partner tells you they cheated the chances are good that what they are really saying is that they don't want the relationship with you to continue.
Oh, another good reason is if you think you picked up a STD while you where fooling around. Then you have the responsibility to tell your partner so s/he can get treatment.
Anyway, from my perspective Clinton was just acting as responsible as he could in a bad situation. Sure, it was irresponsible to cheat, particular with the stakes so high, but once he got control of himself again and ended the illicit relationship he did what anyone should do in this situation by burying it. He felt he could ride it out because it was his word against her word. If it wasn't for the dress with his DNA on it there would never have been an impeachment.
Peace, or Not?
Yes, absolutely. "Serve at the pleasure of the President" is correct.
And it's absolutely correct that why these US Attorneys were fired is still unknown. Because the Bush Administration appears to have used secondary communications channels and deleted communication specifically to avoid his legal responsibilities to collect and archive Presidential records related to Executive activities.
IF those US Attorneys were fired to either promote a partisan prosecution or to stifle a partisan prosecution, then that is a also a clear (though different) violation of the Hatch Act as well. This appears to be document destruction for obstruction of justice, which suggests further criminal activity hidden in the documents.
Felonies all around...
All the Dems would have to do is watch (and laugh).
The emails were on non-government accounts.
So when we talk about loosing White House's emails.... which email address we are talking about exactly?
kr@gwbush.org
Aka Karl Rove.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Jesus christ, did you even read the fucking quote? It's right there in print. A Bush justice department official telling the Wall Street Journal nothing was permanently lost, and there was no evidence of a conspiracy. What the fuck more do you want? Cheney singing it in verse on Limbaugh?
And btw, hah. You know you've won the argument when the other side starts trotting out grievances dating back to the Civil War.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
See my small cartoon: http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/04 /geek_bush.html
Bye,
Oliver
I hate to break it to you but you also can't force staff members to turn over their home answering machines either.
We are not talking about home recordings of voice mail.
We are talking about literal emails - which legally are correspondence - and are subject to the law.
You know, the law. Something that every patriot defends - Truth, Justice, and the American Middle Class Way of Life - something that seems to be attacked every day by the Red House and the Red Bushies.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In retrospect, Watergate was a 30th not a 3rd rate burglary, and Mr. Nixon could be teaching ethics to this crew.
It was destroyed, therefore it was not required to be preserved?
...
Let me guess, the Red poster thinks we need to burn the village to save it, right?
Hmmm, no wonder the Bush twins and the Cheney daughters are conspicuously absent from serving in Iraq in the military
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la
This administration seems to have learned from the Nixon administration's failings. Namely they don't keep records. Hell, Cheney and Rumsfield were in the Nixon administration, so this shouldn't be surprising. If they really want to impeach the president and prosecute the guys in power, they need someone inside the administration to start talking. However that seems unlikely to happen as they have been diligent to hire only pro-Bush people.
As much as I despise the practices of this administration, we need evidence.
I'd like the record to reflect that we have officially recorded our first "B-b-b-b-but Clinton...!" post. GWB could drop a nuke on North Korea and start WWIII and there'd still be some whiny cunt running around going "ZOMGBLOWJOB!!"
Bunch of whiny cunts...
After watergate, one would think that noone would be stupid enough to think that pulling such a "i lost them" trick would serve his/her cause.
Read radical news here
Precisely. The argument that this is a non-issue because the information might not have had to be preserved is nonsense. If the information actually was destroyed, we may never know whether it had to be preserved, but we may infer from other circumstances that it should have been preserved. These are not completely novel legal concepts; it is common in litigation for parties to get scored for having destroyed documents that they should have known should have been preserved (see ''Spoliation of Evidence"). Indeed, sometimes the finder of fact (e.g. jury) is instructed that, as a penalty to the party that committed spoliation, it must be assumed that the destroyed information would weigh against the spoliating party.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
> Everything Bush does is amplified, even when Clinton did the exact same thing (like the firing of the lawyers).
Except, as has been pointed out a million times before, Clinton followed the time-honored tradition of clearing house at the *beginning* of his administration and not waiting years to do it when things started getting hairy. But don't let that change your O'Reilly-approved list of talking points, you goddamned idiotic stupid buttfucking shithead.
"Countless e-mails to and from many key White House staffers have been deleted -- lost to history and placed out of reach of congressional subpoenas..."
Can you say backup?? Sure you can...
I don't believe that there aren't backups of all that data. Go get 'em boys...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Ok, so they're under investigation and they delete emails....
LBJ turns out to have arranged the JFK assassination....
Cheney had the planes stand down on 9/11.....
Marvin Bush was head of security in the WTC, and had the bomb sniffing dogs off duty....
At what point do we stop calling theories theories, and present it all as evidence and start locking people up and restoring the constitution? Is there somebody in Washington who can at least serve papers? I have some hand cuffs right here if you need to borrow them!
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Seriously people come on. We have no knowledge what the fuck went on, attacking Bush over this when he's barely mentioned (except as the leader) is a little premature. He's not omnipotent, hell according to most people who are rallying against him he can't tie his shoes so talks of conspiracy should be laughable?
Now we are taking Washington Post (who's doesn't surprise me that they'd bring up Watergate) and NPR (who's bias is rarely in question unless it's ignored) and hearing them bring up the 18 minutes. Not surprising in the least.
Personally I'll wait until after this is all over, the last 6 years have been the Democrats trying to get a pound of flesh after the Republicans shamed Clinton so I think we'll be hearing about this for the next 2 years, but personally I'm waiting until we get some ACTUAL evidence of who did what when before I place blame. But if you're ok with this then realize you better be ok if Hillary or Obama gets in and the Republicans continually harass him, and then better be ok when the next president gets harassed by the opposite side again and again. Personally I was sick of it when people couldn't figure out what the Clinton impeachment was about (hint: it had nothing to do with the sex, it had to do with an actual crime).
The only question I have is it any wonder why people are so disillusioned by our government where our president and congress both can barely break 40 percent approval?
That's a total lie!!
Your mother is a nappy headed ho - don't bother to deny it. I've got photos and everthing.
If there is to be any real change, people are going to have to stop voting for both Democrats and Republicans.
I can't think of no better way to refute this sort of spew than to quote one if its finest purveyors back at you. Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2005:
t ml?id=110006534
And here is follow-up to that article (from April, 8th) of the same interest,
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.h
for Microsoft, and is in the process of working for Intel. So why not the President.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
insightful in a sad kind of way.
All emails were first printed, shredded then burnt. You are not going to get any more deleted than that!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This is a petition to impeach both Bush and Cheney, citing offenses agaist the American public.d =g1&gclid=CKGNhKyZvosCFSOUEAodm3xSwg/
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/65?a
The goal is 100,000, they are at 85,000. You can also include a short message which they claim will be routed to your senator by state.
--Drive carefully. 90% of people are caused by accidents.
Do you have statistics on how many U.S. Attorneys the Presidents Clinton, Bush Sr., and Reagan fired in their last two years in office, rather then the first two years? There was no transition to a new President in 2007, so the recent firings seem rather unorthodox. The second half of your quote seems to indicate you acknowledge this differentiation, but your opening statement suggests you're saying there is no difference.
if the emails were on servers operated by the EOP they were backed up and are recoverable. i used to work as a contract backup administrator for the EOP.
This tired GOP talking point is completely untrue.
A USA can be replaced by the President. But the President cannot replace a USA in order to obstruct justice.
In the Carol Lam case the alleged reasons for firing her have all proven to be lies. The only credible explanation for her being fired was to prevent her continuing her investigation of corrupt Republicans - an investigation that had already resulted in two top House Republicans pleading guilty. When Lam was fired it appeared that an indictment of Jerry Lewis was likely to occur.
Two senior members of the GOP house leadership are in jail here. There is nothing remotely similar that occured during the Clinton admin.
Other USAs appear to have been fired for refusing to bring bogus charges against political opponents. This is also a form of obstruction of justice and is again a criminal offense.
There is more than enough evidence here to impeach Gonzalez. Any successor who did not immediately appoint a special counsel to investigate the corrpution allegations against Rove, Lewis, Foggo, Gonzalez and their subordinates should also be impeached.
Reno appointed independent prosecutors in cases where there was a clear conflict of interest. This administration should stop stalling and do likewise.
Also Bush should immediately pledge not to pardon any person who was a member of his administration. There is a strong suspicion that many are keeping quiet here in the hope that Bush will issue a blanket pardon after the November 2008 election.
He won't of course because he is as corrupt as they come, as well as being incompetent.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Remember, impeachment is not the OUTCOME, it is the BEGINNING. Impeachment is essentially a congressional indictment, instead of a criminal indictment. It begins the congressional equivalent of a trial. Then the impeached person (president in this case, though judges can be impeached as well) is tried and found guilty or innocent.
Clinton was impeached and found innocent. If he were found guilty, congress could vote to have him removed from office, or it could be as little as a censure. Let me repeat: You do not have to be removed from office if you are found guilty from being impeached.
IMHO, Clinton SHOULD have been found guilty. Hear me out. He lied under oath. However, I believe he should have been found guilty and then given a slap on the wrist, but at the time everybody had "GUILTY = REMOVAL" in their heads. On the other hand, Bush has lied repeatedly, and as a result many thousands of people (if not millions) have died, and our liberty and security are non-existent. He should be impeached, tried, found guilty, and removed from office (if not worse).
(IANAL, I just read Wikipedia a lot.)
Google server building mysteriously burns down
Engineering is the art of compromise.
she would never have been allowed to come back without being arrested. Even now, only foxnews is making an issue about it. DOJ and the white house says nothing any more. It should be obvious that since she was out in the open AS WERE THE 3 republicans, then it is above board and almost certainly legal.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ours likes a sacrifice of Edam cheese. May I suggest a Gouda?
Typical wingerdom on display here folks...
Pot...Kettle...Black...
Your guys never "lost" any emails, huh?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
More like when he stopped doing cocaine.
There's time-tables to keep on this whole genocide thing, after all.
As he speeds up the clock with regard to bombing Iran or whatever else needs doing, I suspect the whole email thing will evaporate.
My (not very) optimistic side, however, is thinking that something more interesting might be about to happen. Probably not anything good, mind you.
-FL
I misread the prior posters' comment. He stated that the firings were NOT rare, whereas I read that they WERE rare (I missed the not). If that was you, apologies.
IIRC, Clinton fired every US Attorney save one, who was conducting a criminal investigation into Democrats (so he did not fire to avoid impropriety). Bush I, I believe, kept many US Attorneys on from Reagan. Reagan fired all the US Attorneys from the Carter administration, though he did take a year or so to fire and then confirm every replacement.
This should be treated just like other Internet crimes. (Think porn, gambling, RIAA)
;-)
Just send in the goons and collect all the computers... sort it out later.
I'm sure just about half the country would like to see every computer in the RNC confiscated in the name of "justice".
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
Those emails weren't deleted. Karl Rove (the Soviet-style "Political Director" who's been in charge of Bush's Republicy conspiracy for years) and his minions used Republicy Party laptops and even separate installed White House "phone lines" (probably DSL, T1 or other broadband) to hide their criminal conspiracies. And their Republicy partners controlling Congress just ignored it all.
This is the criminal gang that brought us Iraq, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, $80 oil barrels of $4 gasoline gallons, Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, fake Niger/Iraq uranium, fake Iraq/Osama meetings, fake WMD, fake economic recovery from real tax exemption for only the rich, NSA spying, Mark Foley the Congressional child molester, the US Attorney purge... the list is ENDLESS.
And it is indeed a list. These Republicies need that email to study from when they do get called before Congress or a judge, now that their Congressional jig is up. They will claim they're deleted, because they still have 49% of the Senate (plus Lieberman), have now obviously riddled the Justice Department with Rove's soviet cronies, and believe they're home free in their conspiracy to destroy our government that stands between their favorite corporations and what's left of our money to steal.
WE MUST IMPEACH THESE CRIMINAL TYRANTS NOW. While we still can, before it's too late.
I defy any of your remaining shameless Republicies to defend these obviously criminal actions. Come on out - the TV says there's something like 30% of the country still standing up for these gangsters. Where are you? What the hell is wrong with you? What do you need to see to start telling some truth in your life?
--
make install -not war
Why is it that to refute the firing of the 8 U.S. Attorneys, the conservatives always say "But Clinton did it! He fired all 93 at the start of his administration", as if we're leaving out some key fact. But if you want all the facts in play, you can't stop half way. Every president, Reagan, Bush #1, Clinton, and Bush #2, all fired the U.S. Attorney's at the start of their terms. Its customary.
What is not customary is firing 8 of them - the same ones you appointed, no less - in the middle of your term, for dubious reasons which may have included, but not been limitted to the fact that many of these 8 attorney's apparently either refused to back off on investigations of Republicans, or refused to vigorously persue investigations of Democrats - probably because in both scenario's they acted based on what they felt was warranted by the available evidence. In other words they acted as they were supposed to, as unbiased officers of the law, not as political shrills which is what Bush wanted them to be.
By the way, has anyone besides me realised that with 8 of the 93 attornies fired for not doing enough to go after the Democrats or too much to go after the Republicans, that leaves 85 who, by implication, are doing plenty to go after the Democrats and ignoring the mis-steps of the Republicans. Shudder.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
when all you had to worry about were blow jobs and firing the travel office!
I see this as simply history repeating itself. The war in Iraq is Vietnam II and this whole Gonzales/US Attorney issue is just Watergate II. I can't believe that the Republican voters intended this when they voted for Bush/Cheney.
Bush has tried to remake the Executive branch in ways that the Founding Fathers would find reprehensible and vile. He should be impeachable for that, if nothing else. He swore to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights and has done nothing but weaken them.
He's also weakened the country militarily by maintaining this stupid Iraq war. What if we had to defend ourselves on our own soil? How much troop strength could we muster?
Bush has done more to hurt than help America.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
Thank you, you really hit the nail on the head. It's pretty obvious where I stand politically, but I can honestly say that were I a total independent, there would be absolutely zero ethical equivalence in my mind between this presidency and the one before it. Politicians are politicians, fine. And the Clintons certainly aren't winning any points for honestly. But rarely did the cross they line into flagrant abuses of executive power, willful obstruction of justice, shameless cronyism. I feel like I'm living in the Ulysses S. Grant administration every time I pick up the paper. The pardons are one example where I'd say they did, but the pardons simply rise to the level of this administration does on a weekly basis.
What really cracks me up about all this is that, all through the 90s, it was Newt Gingrich and other Contract With America signatories who were assailing the democratic party for its "moral relativism." My, how the tables have turned. Somewhere along the way, Bush apologists decided that their guy's peccadilloes weren't any better or worse than anyone else's--just different. "It's all relative," you can almost hear them saying. Well, I never was a relativist, and I'm here to say there damn well are moral absolutes. The question of is this president more moral than others is a valid one which has definitive answer. And who here has any doubt what the historical judgment will be?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Impeach the Bitches!!!!
Good lord, you are one funny fucker. I just got done reading a dozen or so comments about how maybe, just maybe, we had some pretty serious malfeasance going on here, and cries of "But!" were only going to ring ever more hollow, and along comes the exact "quick link and a snarky line"-type post that offered precisely nothing.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
a slap on the wrists
Where you been? The rich and the powerful rarely do hard time (Watergate, anyone?). You could be Marx or Barry Goldwater, if you have money and/or influence, you get to walk.
But then, you seem to think there's substantive difference between Democrats and Republicans, so I can understand your confusion.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Their consistent MO has been to spout brazen nonsense, then rely on the sheer effrontery to keep the truth hidden until it is covered in a pile of bullshit so deep it will never be brought to light. And the damned thing is that it worked -- a least for a while. Seriously, who has time to think about the truth behind the Iraq WMD lie?
Actually, if you go back to early 2003 and look at the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq, you'll see that the Bush gang pretty much gave up on the WMD argument during the last month or so. The reason was that it had been so thoroughly debunked by so many people that they realized they needed a new pretext. They had pretty much run through all that were even remotely credible, so they pulled out their trump card: They had to stage a pre-emptive attack to prevent whatever Saddam's government might do in the future.
This pretty much stopped the attempts to debunk their arguments, because this one can't be debunked. Unless you are blind, deaf and quadraplegic, you could be planning an attack on anyone, no matter who you are or how peaceful you've been in the past. It's a challenge-proof excuse for attacking anyone anywhere anytime.
This is still remembered by a fair number of people in the world. It became clear that the people running the US government weren't joking when they used the phrase "sole remaining super-power". They did consider themselves in charge of the world, and they were prepared to attack anyone who challenged them. Or even people who didn't challenge them. They don't need evidence; all they need is to think that you might attack them.
A lot of us still remember this. And we remember that roughly half of the Americans who bothered to vote in 2004 voted to give these people four more years.
(The WMD concept does keep rearing its ugly head, of course. This is partly because of the discovery that, despite several more years of debunking, around half the voting American population still believes it. But it's also routinely used by American comedians, so it's not so good as a theme song any more. The real future is in worrying about what you and I might do in the future if we're not stopped now.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Can we PUH-LEASE stop this bullshit of being governed by corrupt politicians?
http://www.metagovernment.org/
All the impeachment talk is worrying... Our last president was impeached, do we really want to make it two in a row?
It's called projection. All along they were acusing Clinton of being what they are.
Take the character issue, did Bush's behavior in the National Guard demonstrate 'character'? I certainly don't think so. His tenure as governor of Texas pretty much showed what sort of a person he is. The treatment of death penalty cases in particular where he appeared to show actual delight in putting people to death like it was some sort of perk of office.
Take the family issue, did Newt Gingrich demonstrate family values when he served divorce papers on his wife in the intensive care unit? Somehow that type of behavior got a pass.
I think that what really drove the GOP over the past 20 years or so was the devil's bargain they made with the 'religious' right. Pat Robertson and co were happy to let the GOP gain power provided they spent plenty of time talking about their agenda. But Gingrich, DeLay and co were no more religious than the typical American, they just talked that way because they wanted power and talking about religion helped them get it.
So you have all these people talking about religious values non-stop, values that they don't make any attempt to live up to. But they have to keep talking about them and even they can't pretend that its not hypocrisy. So they start excusing their behavior by saying that the Democrats do is so much worse.
And pretty soon there isn't anything left that they can't excuse away to themselves. They don't ever question their actions because they define themselves as posessing a monopoly on moral virtue - even as they are taking the bribes from the like of Abramoff and covering up the corruption of Ney, Cunningham and co and the odd pedophile in their midst.
And they get away with it all because the establishment media is hand in glove with them. They don't care whether the stories they print are true, all that matters to them is getting good copy.
And it all worked so well for them right until the bologsphere came along and the wheels fell off the tomato.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Oh well. Have fun and happy hunting. I'm certainly not defending the Bush Administration.
I agree with filesiteguy. Any well established entity, government or corporate, will have technicians to deal with email systems and backups. This is the White House we are talking about, and the White House is HUGE. In order to backup such a huge amount of data, there will most likely be tape libraries set aside just for email backups. In order to "lose" email data, a technician would have to manually navigate to the tape in question and either erase it or physically remove it from the tape library and destroy it.
It is VERY unlikely that the backup technicians just "suddenly lost" their backups. Either the backups exist and someone is lying, or the backups were erased and someone is lying. Either way, someone is lying.
Same kind of crap they have been getting away with for years. Only the story has changed, not the people responsible. Lets see if anyone can break the camels back this time. I doubt it. All involved will walk away squeaky clean.
I believe that the way people use email that it should be covered by wiretapping laws. I agree that formal, published content and work product should be fair game if subpoenaed but email is more like phone conversation. Like a stream on conscious thought for most folks. Jump on the wrong side of this issue and don't be surprised when one day an email you wrote 20 years ago winds up embarrassing you or endangering your freedom.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Talk about "what a crock."
... okay, you say, technically it wasn't lying - then surely, it must have been, ummm, "Obstruction of Justice, right?" you blurt out. Only ... it wasn't that, either. I can't remember the details now, but IIRC there are four elements to that crime, and all legal scholars of any salt at the time said there was no way he committed that crime and no way he could ever be convicted of it. IIRC, one of the main elements of an obstruction of justice crime was materiality going to the very essence of the court matter, or something like that, and so even if Clinton HAD lied in that case, it was about a side issue and his lie never would have been prosecuted successfully.
When did Clinton "lie"? The fact is, HE DIDN'T, and that's one of the main reasons his impeachment went nowhere.
Read up on the facts some time, instead of reading the islamic-christian talking points.
Clinton was basically asked, under oath, "Did you have sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky?" His lawyers asked for a clarification, "Define sexual relations." A definition was provided, and approved by the judge, which encompassed sexual intercourse only. He and his sharpie lawyers saw an opening, "Hey, Bill - you only had a blowjob! So, you can truthfully answer "No" to the question of whether you ever had sexual relations with her."
Now yes, admittedly it was a crafty, cagey response, similar to the whole "I smoked pot but didn't inhale" answer. Clinton was SMART - thank God, one of the greatest distinctions between he and that idiot Bush - and drawing fine lines was one of Clinton's greatest arts. But did he actually LIE under oath? No, he did not.
So
The Republicans knew all this - they brought unsustainable charges against a crafty guy who they could never beat on the merits merely to embarass him, and then let the whole thing die, because there was no real substance to their witch hunt. Since at least Watergate, the Republicans have always been the US party of dirty tricks.
So go on, please, we're dying to hear more of your unfactual allegations. So "Clinton lied," huh? I'll bet you were equally gullible and believed that phony talking point about Al Gore claiming he invented the Internet too, huh?
He can be impeached for anything that Congress decides meets the criteria. It could be a crime. It could gross imcompetence or lying to the public or Congress. I can certainly be because his administration is corrupt!
Besides, the committees are just getting warmed up. There will be direct evidence of personal wrongdoing before their through, I feel certain.
Dave Williams
Get involved with a third party!
Seriously, our system was never designed to function with just two parties. It ideally operates with none, thus preventing the interests of a sub-minority from overshadowing the entire legislative function.
Until people back away from the idea that they are throwing their vote away and begin supporting the candidates who best embody their ideals, we will be stuck with a federal government that only wants to grow its own power at the cost of the rights reserved for the states and people respectively.
Yep, "you people". That's right, I am racist against republicans. Sue me.
:-)
The rest of your post is so nonsensical that it does not even merit refutation. "Someone's op-ed" was, in fact, written in the party organ itself; and actually I do have an idea if that is true, because your own people said it. Please refer to my other post, where I confront someone equally as dense with the cold, hard facts. I realize they're hard to swallow when they don't swing your way, but it's time to gradually transition you people (there it is again!) out of the la-la land you've been living in for the past six years and into a more, erm, reality-based existence. Absent that, I fear 2009 will be a rude awakening indeed.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
To creatively parrot-phrase or raven-phrase things I have said about US, EU... politicians:
....
... it is still a fycking rave rape of the people/citizens/humanity. More than 3000 (Sparta 300) brave Warriors are dead, because faux-patriots, pseudo-prophets, and other frauds lied or did not question the lies. DAMN, it is sad when you loose even a campy horror show script, because emails are easy to whoops-delete 18sec/18GBytes .... Treason yes, but justice and trials to follow ... I think not ... far too many politicians would hang themselves, US, and EU.
Did you ever feel that USA Presidents are just "B-actors" in a staged production with many playwrites and directors?
I mean they can only play their part as well as the scriptwriters, directors, and producers can deliver on good material/funds.
NEVERMORE dishonest
NEVERMORE stupid
NEVERMORE evil
NEVERMORE deluded
NEVERMORE schizoid
NEVERMORE putrid
NEVERMORE unaware
As were rove Cheney Rumsfeld Poindexter Gonzales North Delay Casey McFarlane Wolfowitz Secord Weinberger
If Mrs. Laura Bush was my mom, I would have to ask her who is my real daddy?
If you're US your ficked, and as EU gets serviced
We can but laugh in the face of many great tragedies that have happened, and will happen for many decades to come PTFL?~0o0~%
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Hi,
I'm the guy that posted what you were responding to. I just wanted to write and say: thank you for proving my point. Have a wonderful day; you've definitely made mine.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/
http://tpmmuckraker.com/
Do let us remember that US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told the White House back in 2004 not to delete email for the duration. And yes, he was on the list to be replaced with a "loyal Bushie". So, the deletions were deliberate, and so was the move to use the republican mail servers to dance around the order of the prosecutor.
Damn, this gets better and better...
I miss the old days when political hacks used to go on fishing trips the old fashioned way. They actually had to break into the offices of the other political party. Now they just write bogus subpoenas for their new-fangled fishing expeditions.
The difference was the Democratic controlled congress, particularly Democrats sitting as chairmen of committees (like the Judicial Committee) that can issue subpoenas. And the funny thing is, had it been 10 months ago, the bald face lying would have worked, because the republic congress had already shown time and time again that they would take the Bush Administration's word at face value, and not look further. Gonzales would have said that the firings had nothing to do with politics or a peversion of the Judicial branch, Bush would have said Gonzales is a good man and I trust him, Democrats and many American would scream murder, but no subpoenas would be issued, and the truth would never be found. The news would stop reporting on it after a week, and that would be the end of it. Watch how much the shape of American politics changes when we have actual checks and balances.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
So is it time that Congress directed the FBI to confiscate all servers, backup devices, and media of the gwb43.com and georgewbush.com domains, since these were used in violation of the Patriot Act and White House operational manuals, and may contain evidence relevant to a congressional investigation? Somewhere on those hard drives or tapes would be copies of the missing emails.
There shouldn't really be any problem with obtaining this stuff since the owners are patriotic supporters of the US Government.
I note you're already at -1, so I won't waste a modpoint on you.
But you're a flying retard who is incapable of anything but spewing republican lies. Clinton stonewalled about delivering emails located on the official servers. Congress took them both to court, they won, she handed them over. That's the rule of law working as it should.
The Incontinent Shrub--I mean President Bush(easy typo to make)--was asked to deliver some emails, and instead of stalling, claiming he doesn't have to, or any other semi-valid tactic, he deleted them. I'd like to note that deleting any correspondence associated with the office of the President is a crime. Pound-me-in-the-ass Federal jail time.
What Bush did is like going to negotiate with the army that's already taken over your country, but instead of signing the treaty, your briefcase is full of plastic explosive.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Come on, we've gone through some bad shit with Bush, and I know it's got us begging for a return to the Clinton years, but there is (or there was) a certain amount of sanctity to the office of president. The president is not, and should not, be allowed to lie or otherwise be dishonest with the American citizenry.
Let's not lower the bar just because Bush is/was such a clusterfuck.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
There's a difference between dissent and being wrong. Don't expect positive moderation for claiming that up is down.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Actually, I think your peers just don't believe in dumb people.
profile political cases labeled "illegal immigration", they're doing what WE are paying them to do. And it appears that US Attorneys can be hung around a President's neck like an. . . albatross?. I won't ask why or how that metaphor came to your mind, you might tell us.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I think you have me confused with every OTHER poster in this thread. I was saying that these individuals should be punished as harshly as Berger. Actually less so, since this isn't a matter of national security.
Why not go pick on the posters here who want these people strung up my their toe nails? Oh that's right, you are one of them. A hack who wants people to be punished differently based on their political party.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Doh! Well to be fair, you gave a very brief and inaccurate summary there. :-P
RTFA? Who Me?
It also seems like the KOS "blournalist" wasn't too keen on clarity either,
with the half-dozen updates after the initial post.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Betcha there is at least one highly paid sysadmin in the Whitehouse that is a Perl expert and knows how to use regular expressions to make email get lost selectively...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Here are two reasons why Imus getting fired is a Bad Thing:
1. He was canned less than halfway through the initial two week suspension. Now we will never know just how many -- and which -- advertisers were voting with their wallets.
2. As much as it pains me to hear it, this sort of thing needs to be on the air. Firing Imus isn't going to change his mind or his attitude, it's only going to reduce the number of people to whom he affirms his idiocy daily. He isn't hurting for money, and I get the impression he's really not an evil guy. The kind of discrimination that filters his worldview is better off out in the open where it can be discussed and dealt with. He may be a dog too old for new tricks, but not everyone who thinks similarly is a lost cause.
I am guessing he'll be on satellite radio in the near future, and that their subscriptions will go up, but only slightly.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
try at google:
site:dailykos.com keyword1 keyword2
IMO, it's time to subpoena the servers and a whole bunch of recipients' PCs.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Carol Lam got fired after getting a $4.7 million settlement against the Golden State Co. for using illegal immigrants to build the border fence. If you can explain how her firing was above reproach, I'll give you a cookie. My guess- punishment for putting Duke Cunningham behind bars.
Sig cannot be found.
I still can't believe anyone was gullible enough to vote for Bush in the first place. We all saw the same guy on TV, and it was blindingly obvious from the beginning that he was a lying neo-fascist prick that would drive the country straight into the ground. You based your vote on promises? How about basing your vote on the guy's record? Hell, a distracted three-year-old could tell Bush was lying just by his tone of voice. Jeez, it's been frustrating having a brain the past six years while the rest of you enabling zombie idiots finally wake the fuck up. Thanks for destroying America, morons.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
Maybe some genius thought that sending them to the Recycle Bin would recycle their old emails into new, springtime fresh emails.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I just wanted to write and say: thank you for proving my point.
You're quite welcomed. I agree completely. When the people act as if their appalled when Republicans do something, we take great delight in pointing out that the Democrats have done the same thing.
That was your point, right?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The quotes I've heard are about a 4 or 5-1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans investigated. Worse, many of these investigations started right before elections. The ratio also isn't validated by the investigation outcome, with most being dropped or failing to bring convictions. Also note that these AGs were replaced in battleground states that Karl Rove named in a speech before the firings.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I don't know who will be elected President in '08, but he will be a corrupt (Democrat or Republican) and we'll pay more taxes and lose more freedom.
Paying more taxes would be a good thing. Bush decreased income and massively increased spending. Both of these trends have to be reversed.
Americans have a shitload of money, and way more consumer goods than most places (okay Japan might be an exception), and still complain about their taxes, even though these taxes are significantly less than they need to be for a sustainable government.
If you believe the emails were lost, then I have the scent of some dog poop I'd like to sell you. Its all part of my effort to raise funds on behalf of the NEW REPUBLICAN VALUES!
Shredding Pieces of History
The Washington Post, October 15, 1996
Byline: William G. Rosenberg
The recent revelation that Dick Morris managed to circumvent White House strictures on confidentiality in contracting for his memoirs may have jolted the Clintons, but because of loopholes in the Presidential Records Act, the broader public may benefit from this further bit of sleaze. Like many of his predecessors, President Clinton has resisted any judicially enforceable means to prevent his advisers from destroying or removing their records as they leave office. The only remedy can come from new legislation. Congress must take action, or the whims of a Dick Morris will spin the historical record if the Clintons leave office in November.
Presidents covet confidentiality, and for good reason while they are active in political life. The problem is in ensuring the opportunity for historians to analyze and construct an appropriate historical record, something even politicians concede is vital to the nation's knowledge of itself.
Calvin Coolidge systematically destroyed most of his presidential papers during his final months in office. Chester Arthur burned his in White House garbage cans. Richard Nixon's decade-long effort to have the Watergate tapes sealed as "private property" found at least pale imitation in George Bush's insistence that all White House e-mail communications belonged personally to him. Untimely disclosure can destroy the integrity of decision making, but concealment wrecks historical understanding.
The problem lies in the current legislation. After Watergate, Congress changed a long tradition by which laws on the preservation of federal records were not applicable to the White House. The resulting Presidential Records Act required each president and the executive offices that serve him and his advisers to preserve their records, but omitted provisions for enforcement.
In the case brought against President Reagan by the American Historical Association, the American Library Association and the National Security Archive, among others, the Federal Court of Appeals ruled in 1991 that courts lack authority to review executive branch compliance with the Presidential Records Act.
As a result, although the preservation of presidential records is mandated by law, this mandate is not enforceable. Two years after this ruling, departing Bush officials sought to clean the slate by purging their own electronic records but were stopped by the fact that their computers contained other clearly protected records as well.
The Clinton administration has taken full advantage of this ruling and has sought to expand its implications. Recently, it further convinced the Court of Appeals that the National Security Council is not a government agency. The destruction of NSC records is therefore not even subject to judicial review.
By this ruling, most of the NSC records on Iran-contra could have been shredded with impunity. And even with Clinton's appointment of his longtime political friend and former governor of Kansas to the position of national archivist -- in violation, in the view of the American Historical Association and others, of legislation requiring a nonpartisan, fully professional appointment to this office -- the Clinton administration has opposed judicial review of the archivist's handling even of those presidential records that are transferred to the archives when the president leaves office.
The Presidential Records Act, along with other preservation legislation, rightly accommodates legitimate concerns against premature disclosure; all of us have an interest in candor and recognize its particular importance to an effectively functioning White House.
But no administration should be permitted to clean the slate by permanently destroying records that chronicle its conduct, whether by means of paper shredders or delete keys. What Congress now has to recognize is that unless it amends the Records Act with a clear provision for judicial oversight, there will be no guarantee that historically vital presidential records, and hence a full and accurate national history, will be preserved.
Let's consider the people in question:
These people are completely loopy. They're delusional, deceptive, evil, and irrational. Referring to the GOP as "hypocrites" is like referring to a rabid llama as "hairy". They ARE hairy, but that's really just barely scratching the surface of what makes them the way that they are.
Hey, I'm convinced, I'd vote Cheney. What you've described would be the best presidency EVER! I mean, wow. If we're going to be stuck with horrible leaders, they can at least have infinite entertainment value.
He run the government exactly like a business: cheating his way to the top, minimizing social and health care costs, making deals under the table that promoted his buddies over the competition, made rich people richer and poor people poorer, gave no $h1t for the environment, managed to piss off all other businesses etc.
That's a valid point, but it's no kind of defense to say "but the other lot did it as well". You should be outraged in both cases.
Frankly, all this political partisanship gets right on my nerves. In the UK, we had the Labour government blaming all their ills on the previous administration. They can't get away with that now, as they've been in power for 10 years - although it still surfaces occasionally.
If *your* government is breaking your own laws, no matter which party they belong to, go after them. If you don't, eventually they'll be coming after you. I thought you guys were in favor of small accountable government?
Thanks to Echelon all mails are now recovered in a dusty box at NSA.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Everybody deletes e-mail messages. But the sort of thing that the Clinton White House would delete is at a much more human and benign level than anything that goes on in the Bush White House. Torture, the attack on the Constitution, subversion of the intelligence process, appointment of incompetent cronies and coverup of failures, awards of contracts to profiteers, etc. This is a more honest and open White House?
You were lied to, son. So were we all. This administration will go down in history as the most corrupt and dangerous ever -- that is, if it does not succeed in rewriting the history books to suit its purposes.
I see I was modded troll above; off-topic might be appropriate but troll? Nah. Wiliams, along with Carlos Mencia and Dennis "Hicks" Leary are all known joke thieves.
Quote the originals, not the hack thieves, and I don't have a problem.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Whaddya expect? It's Slashdot. Not only are they liberals, they're liberals who think they're smarter than everyone else. They don't want debate, they KNOW the answers. They read about it on Doonesbury last week. I'm suprised Zonk hasn't figured out a way to post the Washington Post's Starbucks IWW union article here under a "news for nerds" spin.
'Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening?' Iacocca writes. 'Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder.'
Iacocca backed Bush in 2000, switched to Kerry for 2004.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Mod this summary misleading. TFA, and all other coverage of this comes as a result of a letter from Henry Waxman to the Republican National Committee. Why? Because this doesn't have anything to do with the White House, it has to do with the RNC. The emails in question were on RNC servers, which is not subject to the laws and regulations that constrain the White House. Indeed, RNC has a 30-day retention/deletion policy, which was partially suspended in 2004 in response to legal inquiries submitted to it. Trying to make this into a scandal is stupid. Your PERSONAL ISP and your PERSONAL wireless phone carrier aren't required to keep the emails or text messages from one of your 50 PERSONAL accounts that you used for your work unless they host for your company. RNC isn't, either. Now you might want to change the law, but until you do, there is absolutely nothing to see here. TFA even states that the White House retained email as it was required to do. Rove AND OTHERS, using RNC-issued hardware (a Blackberry) on RNC-financed wireless accounts, sent and received messages. FYI, all Rove messages from 2005-on have been archived at someone's request.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
I think you make a very good point; not all businesses are created equal.
By nature, free market business will seek to fill any findable niche. Some businesses succeed by consistent customer service. Some succeed by being right bastards and screwing everyone in sight. Some by simply having more capital. Some by doing persistent research and staying ahead of the curve. Over time, nearly every business will have to shift it's particular strategies, and become one or another type of business.
But does this apply to working a government? A government, at best, can be described like a whole hoard of businesses - much like Microsoft. But unlike Microsoft, the government is *not* working for a profit - at least not a monetary one. Yes, they need to be on budget, but their real 'profit' comes in terms of the things laid down in the Preamble. I think that this important lynchpin of our government is worth repeating:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The government has diverse interest, diverse goals. The fundamental issue is not one of greed, or stupidity, but a reversal of a long-held though oft-ignored precept: separation of powers. In the attempt to consolidate power in the executive branch - most recently an agenda pushed by the attempt at refusal to allow Congress to call prisoners to testify and the DOJ's firing of judges - there has been a push to centralize the decision making process of our country. Whatever benefits might be gleaned from this is not worth the losses, however; no one centralized branch can properly execute the above mandate while still overseeing itself and being responsible to the People. Hence, checks and balances.
Hopefully, this is becoming apparent enough and people will learn the lesson for another generation or two.
[Ego]out
Better hurry - you've already had seven years and you've only got one left.
Ha ha!
Some people THINK Don Imus is funny. Does that mean that he actually IS funny? Only to those few people, I suppose...
How no one seems to remember that the previous administration fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys shortly after coming into office. Of course there was no congressional or MSM uproar at the time.
Nor how when the previous administration was required to turn over e-mails to an investigation, the e-mail servers "crashed" destroying the data contained on them.
Nor the fact that the previous administration sicced the Justice Department and FBI on the White House Travel Office staff, people who like the U. S. Attorneys, serve at the pleasure of the President and can be terminated at any time, without disclosed cause or reason. (BTW, the federal jury in the case exonerated the accused former head of the travel office. (No other staffers were prosecuted.))
Pot... Kettle... Black...
Look Out Above!
Here's an article from the Guardian. It's an interesting Q&A article detailing the ups/downs for the decisions for the Iraq war, it's repercussions, and possible reasons for doing so, focusing on the popular 'lie' as so many people like to call it.
For those to lazy to RTFA, it basically reminds those that France, Germany, Britain, Spain, and the US all believed Iraq had WMDs. Though they did not all agree that War was the best solution. Also, I might remind you that Iraq HAD WMDs. This isn't debatable. They used them against the Kurds. The question was, did they STILL have them. And all of the above nations believed that they did.
The "Bush gang" didn't "give up" the argument of WMDs because it was "thoroughly debunked", in fact, the WMD argument could not be debunked, even by the countries who opposed the war. When one is speculating if a country does or does not have something. Intelligence reports claim they still do, you know they use to, then there's not a whole lot you can say to "debunk" the argument other than "trust" Iraqs government, who was jerking around UN weapons inspectors, successfully leading to the confusion of the "did they or didn't they" argument, and empowering the tin-foil hat wearing people to speak even louder.
Of course, if you mean "debunked" in the terms of, once the US was there, couldn't find any WMDs, got all kinds of egg on their face and embarrassment for believing bad intelligence, or dropping them down a few pegs because the "all mighty Intelligence" was wrong, and in one of the worst ways. It really was a mass deflation given the worlds perception and stereotype of how America has their super secret spy satellites and super organizations of the CIA and FBI and the might American technology as presented in endless popular Hollywood fan fair with their ability to detect a cats fart in Timbuktu. Sure, anyone can "debunk" an argument after the fact.
There's 2 better and logical reasons why you believe they 'stopped' pushing the WMD argument. First, despite the fact that it couldn't be debunked, it also couldn't be confirmed absolutely. It was and always was speculation based on facts, which is still speculation. We know they 'use' to have WMDs, but they were suppose to get rid of them and we cannot find any in inspections (as if we expected them to say, "here they are!"), but then there was this mysterious 'intelligence' that said they did and they where being hidden. You just couldn't confirm it or deny it, unfortunately for Iraq.
So, the WMD argument remained controversial, not "debunked". The US needed more ground to stand on and try to persuade the UN security console (see China and Russia) to not veto a new resolution allowing force(despite older past resolutions that allowed 'force' when broken, which they were). What they did is put more energy into this less controversial argument. The UN resolution was there, on the books, and could be proven that it was broken and that it validated the US's request for force. To promote this new line of arguing, they try to drum up the support by saying that "they used WMD's in the past, they broke these resolutions the UN set that allow force, and they have no credibility that they won't do it again in the future".
It wasn't that the WMD argument was "debunked" so they HAD to add another line of argument, it was that the WMD argument wasn't a strong argument to validate force because it remained controversial. They didn't switch to "Iraq will attack in the future" as the next argument, they switched to "Iraq attacked in the past, broke past r
How dare you post pro-Bushitler propaganda and offend the politcally correct Progressive majority on /.!
Have you no shame, sir? Have you no shame?
My point was that once you get past the rhetoric, if W. and his admin had had a single legal issues, they almost certainly would have gone after her. And you can bet that they tried to come up with SOMETHING. After all, it appears that W. is more and more concerned about the title "madam president".
I used simple practical logic to vet that she was within legal borders. You pulled up just a partial set of issues. Somehow, I am willing to bet that you are NOT a lawyer and are probably not fully aware of ALL the precident setting laws that have been done. IOW, you may be falsely certain and are not berating me without having cause. Or are you a member of SCOTUS?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Shut up with your stupid "But Clinton did it too" garbage. Yes, Clinton fired most of the US Attorneys at the start of his first term. Guess what? So did Reagan. So did Bush Sr. And ... here's the good bit ... so did Bush Jr. What you say? Your idols Hannity and Limbaugh never told you that part?
US Attorneys are bound by federal law to be non-partisan public servants. They should not be fired mid-term unless they are caught in some gross act of crime or dereliction. And definitely not because their prosecutions are insufficiently skewed against your political opponents.
...you've not been paying attention. Unfortunately, most people aren't.
George 'Duh-bya' Bush has utter contempt for the rule of law, as evidenced by his turning the Constitution into his personal shit-ticket. Why break the precedent?
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
None of it turned into actual convictions. And in retrospect do you really beleive that Clinton was helping the CIA run drugs for the Contras while he was Governor or Arkansas? During the Clinton years there were numerous investigations but no convictions.
So far two of the top five Republicans in the House are in jail having admitted accepting over a million dollars in bribes. DeLay is indicted in one investigation and it looks likely that there will be at least another three Republicans indicted over the various Abramoff corruption scandals.
There really is no comparison, but the press which reported endlessly on the most stupid allegations imaginable (e.g. the drug running thing peddled by Pat Robertson) is curiously silent.
One serious possibility is that maybe it wasn't just the politicos who were attending the Wade/Wilkes Poker and Prostitutes parties in the Watergate, maybe some of those journalists who don't seem to be interested in journalism were also attending.
Its not like this is a moonbat allegation either, the parties are documented in indictments that led to guilty pleas. Yet no mention at all of such a juicy titbit in the establishment media.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
If *your* government is breaking your own laws, no matter which party they belong to, go after them. If you don't, eventually they'll be coming after you. I thought you guys were in favor of small accountable government?
You raise a valid point. We *SHOULD* go after them, no matter which party they belong to. The fly in the ointment is that no matter how guilty the last administration was, their die hard supporters did nothing to hold them accountable. Since they did it for their guy, I don't understand how they could expect us to do any different for our guy.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
He lied under oath. You can talk about the complaint over the BJ being bullshit, and frankly I don't care either way, but seriously, the president is not allowed, ever, under any circumstances, to commit perjury. Like I said, I know Bush's deeds makes perjury about sexual impropriety seem like parks and rainbows, but it's still not ok. And JFK never said he didn't fuck Marilyn Monroe, or at least not to a court.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
remember Jeff Gannon/Guckert
let that happen
If you actually would have lived in France, Germany, Britain or Spain at the time (I lived in Germany) you'd know that only the latter two governmemts played along. But even living in Britain or Spain the MSM there would have bothered to inform you about this and the wide-spread anti Iraq war sentiment around the world.
You are truely an AC living under a rock if you still buy this spin.
PBS says otherwise read about the history
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which permitted the military to circumvent the constitutional safeguards of American citizens in the name of national defense.
The order set into motion the exclusion from certain areas, and the evacuation and mass incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, most of whom were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens.
These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.
They were forced to evacuate their homes and leave their jobs; in some cases family members were separated and put into different camps. President Roosevelt himself called the 10 facilities "concentration camps."
Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and the emotional stresses they encountered. Several were killed by military guards posted for allegedly resisting orders.
At the time, Executive Order 9066 was justified as a "military necessity" to protect against domestic espionage and sabotage. However, it was later documented that "our government had in its possession proof that not one Japanese American, citizen or not, had engaged in espionage, not one had committed any act of sabotage." (Michi Weglyn, 1976).
Rather, the causes for this unprecedented action in American history, according to the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, "were motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."
Almost 50 years later, through the efforts of leaders and advocates of the Japanese American community, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Popularly known as the Japanese American Redress Bill, this act acknowledged that "a grave injustice was done" and mandated Congress to pay each victim of internment $20,000 in reparations.
The reparations were sent with a signed apology from the President of the United States on behalf of the American people. The period for reparations ended in August of 1998.
Despite this redress, the mental and physical health impacts of the trauma of the internment experience continue to affect tens of thousands of Japanese Americans. Health studies have shown a 2 times greater incidence of heart disease and premature death among former internees, compared to noninterned Japanese Americans.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I actually said "not rare" in my comment, please re-read it. You just supported my statement though, so thanks! :)
-1 offtopic? Has this become the new freerepublic.com?
Yes. You're absolutely right. And I noticed that a few hours after posting my reply to you and then replied to someone else in this thread to that effect. Here's the link:
7 10677
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=230577&cid=18
Apologies for the error.
No apology necessary, but it's much appreciated. :)
Yes, but in 2004 we had to vote against Kerry, from the great state of Taxachusetts