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Not All the DOJ Missing Emails Are Missing
Hylas sends us to Democracy Now for a newscast on the missing emails, an interview with investigative journalist Greg Palast. Here's Palast talking about the fired US attorney from New Mexico, David Iglesias: "Iglesias believes the real reasons for the firings are in what are called the missing emails, emails sent by the [White House political advisor Karl] Rove team using Republican Party campaign computers, which Rove claims can't be retrieved. But not all the missing emails are missing. We have 500 of them. Apparently the Rove team misaddressed their emails, and late one night they all ended up in our inboxes in our offices in New York City." This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC.
This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC
Democracy Now airs in the US on quite a few small local stations (I listen to it on my ride home from work every day) as well as a few satellite channels.
Of course, everyone seems to completely ignore it, even though so far they have a pretty much spot-on record regarding the evils of the current administration... They broke the "secret prisons" story about two years before the mainstream media caught on; Regularly discussed Abu Ghraib and detainee torture at least six months before we all started "Doing the Lyndie"; Private jet chartering for illegal renditions to have prisoners tortured by third-party countries, 18 months before anyone cared (and still, even now that everyone stopped caring despite the practice continuing).
But then, ya just can't trust them tinfoil hat types, right?
Greg Palast is one of the few good reporters out there still willing to probe further and deeper. An interesting book of his, detailing the election, war, and oil machinations is "Armed Madhouse": http://www.gregpalast.com/madhouse/index.php/about /. For a quick summary, see this talk he gave in Portland: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-680222806 2297352475.
He made that one comment about the availability of mail going to/from accounts that aren't part of the normal government flow of things through the archived WH comms system. Political communications - such as when, say, Al Gore was working (while being VP) to coordinate campaign-related fundraisers - are traditionally done through other channels, and in fact in some cases are required by federal law to be handled through other channels.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't the entire point of the Gonzo hearings that there was undue political interference in government business? One of the many outrages of the committee members overseeing the mess is that documentation and correspondence that *should* be on record have conveniently gone missing. Your argument that cabinet members have tough jobs and have to wear different hats from time to time is as unconvincing as Gonzales' "I don't remember" statements are ludicruous.
Why does this matter? I suspect you could compare it to Bill Clinton and Nixon. They were not threatened with impeachment for the original crimes but more for the cover ups and perjury. If Bush came out and said 'ya I fired them - so what?', that would have been it but now there are 'missing emails', Gonzalles on the stand making a fool out himself claiming he does not remember anything and the White House tap dancing all around the issue making it worse and worse. Frankly, when you add this to the made up intelligence that lead to an illegal war that lead to the outing of a CIA intelligence officer, illegal wiretaps, Guantanimo detentions, secret CIA prisons and the whole slew of other cover-ups, I can not understand why the Democrats have not started the impeachment proceedings by now. I mean really, they were shocked, I say SHOCKED at Clinton's morals for getting a blow job in the oval office yet Bush is a swell guy and we should over look all these little indiscressions?
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Bush can fire WHOMEVER HE WANTS, for WHATEVER REASON HE WANTS.
Actually, RTFA. The reason cited was "too many days absent from office". But those days off were for active duty in the Navy. Supposedly you guys have a law that says you can't be fired for being away from work for active duty in the military.
GWB could have fired Iglesias for some other reason - he picked the wrong one.
The reason cited for Iglesias being fired was "too many days away from office".
But apparently in TA those days off were spent serving active duty in the Navy, something workers are legally protected from being fired for. Supposedly.
I suppose GWB should have picked a better reason.
If that isn't the most crass, scummy tactic to keep Dems from voting, I've never seen worse. The Dems have certainly had their corruptions (hello, Mayor Daley), but I've never seen them resort to ANYTHING as underhanded as what Republicans do on a regular basis.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
a) They "typoed"
b) They manually typed in the addresses. Just this point doesn't make sense. How many addresses do you manually type in? Not click from an address book, not type in the first couple letters and hit TAB to auto-complete... If anything the less savvy user would lean on crutches like mailing lists and auto-completion far more than manually typing in long addresses.
c) If he's really REALLY so interested in the right thing happening, and all that, why hasn't he forwarded these to the congressmen who are looking into these matters instead of announcing them on the radio?
d) How hard, exactly, is it to fake an SMTP message again? What kind of authenticity can he lend to this? How does he know that someone didn't fake the mail and send it to that domain? Heaven knows it couldn't have been spoofed, right? a) There have been many descriptions of the missing emails numbering in the millions. 500 ish that got typo'ed with
b) see a). Also it makes more sense since they weren't using the in house mail system, they were sporadically using RNC email addresses and mail systems to discuss the purged USA's among themselves and with the DOJ to avoid having a record of the issue. In which case, many of the whitehouse.com email address may not have been in their address books.
c) He *did* forward them to congress.
d) They could indeed be spoofed, we don't know yet. That's why it will be interesting to see what the reaction is from the people who were on those email threads.
(Actually, it might be worse than that. Iglesias was fired because he wouldn't obey a senator's demand to prosecute innocent people for political gain. Of course, the Rove House didn't want to admit that, so they fired him for missing too much work - a violation of Federal law, since he missed the work due to being on active duty with the US Navy.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I believe Benjamin Franklin said it best when he wrote, Those who would sacrifice their freedom for temporary security are on to a damn good thing and should never be questioned. Things are improving somewhat since the clusterf*** that is Iraq got so bad as to be undeniable. Compared to around 2002 when just about anything could be passed in the name of security and even the opposition party was scared to speak out lest they be accused of helping the terrorists win, things have got a lot better.
Even so, a lot of people are living with the guilty knowledge that they jumped on the "Do you want the terrorists to win?" bandwagon back then. Admitting you screwed up is seriously painful. Whilst they won't actively support what's happening anymore, they sure as hell don't want to have to look too closely at what the people they did support have done.
The media is a business. They sell advertising and, to get people to watch it, they show whatever will get the viewers. Often that's sensationalist drivel (Anna Nicole Smith). In this case, making people feel guilty about the people they voted for, even if they do regret it now, is a sure way to get them to turn off - a sure way to lose the advertisers.
The reality is there are countless corrupt things this administration has done: Karl Rove undeniably leaked Valerie Plame's identity and his aide has been found guilty of obstructing the investigation. The CIA was pretty much told to falsify intelligence to justify the war. Al Queda didn't exist in Iraq and there weren't chemical weapons there - now we've "liberated them", Al Queda is in Iraq and they even have chemical weapons now. Torture was openly condoned, albeit with hazy wording, right up until someone had to take the blame and then it was a few rogue troops. Torture is still routinely outsourced via "extraordinary rendition". Illegal wiretaps were performed on the bulk of the U.S. population. The list goes on...
So, you have audiences that don't want to be reminded of how badly they screwed up by supporting these people. If broadcasters are going to report something that makes their viewers uncomfortable, it had damn well better be something sensational. In the scheme of things, that emails exist to prove something relatively trivial (serious in its own right, trivial compared to the above), that the Whitehouse will weasel out of yet again anyway (Rove is blatantly guilty of the Plame leak and yet is still there), is it any wonder the news networks rank it pretty low?
Don't get me wrong: For what America is supposed to represent, it's essential these things come to light. The sad truth is, however, the media's a business selling what people want to buy and people who already feel guilty don't want to buy yet another, not very sexy story, in a long list of reasons why they made a terrible choice.
Let's say it was legal and above board. Fine. Even if they were fired for political reasons. OK. The president is a political entity, he can do politics.
Know what's also legal? Congress investigating actions of the executive branch, holding hearings, questioning interested parties. If you think it's inappropriate, don't vote for them when the run for re-election. Oh, that's right, most of them aren't your Senators and Reps, you can't vote for them.
To summarize, you can't vote for most of them, and what they're doing isn't illegal. So it's a non-story.
I am not a crackpot.
Exactly. Republicans don't have to resort to amateurish election fraud like bribing the homeless with cigarettes to vote, having dead people vote, and complaining that ballots they approved are too confusing. Republicans like the big stuff.
From the NYT,
"In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud"
By ERIC LIPTON and IAN URBINA
Published: April 12, 2007
excerpt:
"Federal prosecutors in Kansas and Missouri successfully prosecuted four people
for multiple voting. Several claimed residency in each state and voted twice.
United States attorney's offices in four other states did turn up instances of
fraudulent voting in mostly rural areas. They were in the hard-to-extinguish
tradition of vote buying, where local politicians offered $5 to $100 for
individuals' support.
Aside from those cases, nearly all the remaining 26 convictions from 2002 to and
2005 -- the Justice Department will not release details about 2006 cases except
to say they had 30 more convictions-- were won against individuals acting
independently, voter records and court documents show."
In other words, Democrats did not have an organized campaign to skew the elections like certain other parties....
Remember that constitutionally, the President can't authorize spending. That must be done by the (then Republican) House. If you are going to raise spending, then you ought to raise taxes as well, and since Clinton would have vetoed the spending, they had to hold their nose and raise taxes. Once Bush was in, then they were free to incrase spending while cutting taxes.
The result: we will be paying much, if not most of our taxes in the future to pay creditors. Mainly China. How does that make you feel?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But then who will oppose the Democrats? I would much rather have a Republican president -- maybe even one two or three times as corrupt an evil as Bush (Cheney's available, right?) -- while there's a Democrat congress, than a Democrat president while there's a Democrat congress.
Both of these parties need to get killed at the same time, or else knocking one over will only make things worse.