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White House E-mail Scandal Widens
Spamicles alerts us to a report just issued (PDF) by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At least 88 White House officials used Republican National Committee email accounts for government business. The RNC has destroyed at least some of the emails from 51 of those officials. Law requires emails sent by officials to be stored or recorded. There is evidence that White House lawyers and the (current) Attorney General knew of this but did not act to stop it. From the article: "These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies... Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive."
Demanding a change of government wouldn't do anything. They're sure as hell not going away on their own, and they've got plenty of young men who've volunteeered complete control of their actions to the government who'll kill us dead if we try to do something about it ourselves.
ResidntGeek
Your concerns are valid, and here's the answer: The average American doesn't give a shit.
For most of my fellow Americans, living in "freedom" means having a decent standard of living with a very narrow focus (creature comforts and more of them!) while being sold an (undeserved) positive image of themselves.
Most Americans don't really care, until their wallets or possessions enter the mix. We're more concerned with rising taxes than we are with the erosion of those freedoms that previous generations fought to protect. We care more about "American Idol" than the American ideal.
This is why when I see one of those stupid magnetic ribbons proclaiming that "freedom isn't free" on a gas-guzzling SUV, and I can't tell if the owner is connected with the military in any way (serving, veteran, family member in the service, etc.).. I steal it. Fuck 'em, they didn't pay a thing.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Is your question coming from the perspective of a person living under a parliamentary system? I can see the point of the question, if so. In the USA we do not simply call for elections. The legislature can't issue a vote of no confidence or otherwise pressure the executive into holding elections. Elections are held every 4 years, regardless. We can't move them up without amending the Constitution (which is very impractical).
The only way to remove the president is to put him on trial. Impeachment is conducted by the House and requires a simple majority. Trial is done by the Senate where a 2/3rds supermajority is required to convict. Upon conviction the president (or other official) is automatically removed from his office.
But then what? We'd have Cheney as president. That would be much, much worse. And the Congress are a lot of weak-kneed cowards who are afraid to spend their political capital on anything risky, which includes impeachment. Although the House could easily muster an impeachment, there is no way the Republicans in the Senate would vote to convict, meaning that the whole exercise would have no practical impact whatsoever.
So I have this boss... in fact, I have several bosses. And none of them know their email account and client from a hole in the ground. Maybe there's some law that says their email has to be configured some way or another, but you know what? They're old dudes who yell at me if I take more than thirty seconds setting up or fiddling with their machine. If it doesn't work in a way that's convenient for them, in the office/on the road/at home/at the mistress', my ass is grass.
:(
They're not the smartest bunch, but I guess no one who gets into this business is. They're certainly not smart enough to come up with any kind of cool movie-plot conspiracy to run the world.
Presidential Records Act? Give me a break. I'm a freaking intern, who's just trying to make the stipend cover until the end of the month and save up enough scratch to take out that hot page from Texas.
Uh oh. Sen. Pelosi's giving me the eye. Might have to flash her BIOS again later.
"We came within a couple of votes of amending the constitution with regards to gay marriage."
Not exactly. 49 people voted to end debate on the amendment. If debate had ended, 67 senators would have had to vote in favor for the amendment to pass. Then, it would have needed a supermajority of the House, also. Then, it would have needed approval of fully 3/4th of all the states!
So you see that amendment was quite a long way from success.
In the Bush family power structure, W is known as the 'enforcer'. He's not a leader or visionary; he's a henchman or goon. He's the face of the mafia. He takes orders from up above, comes to your office, and lays down the law.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Have you ever been to the South? It's actually more progressive than the self-proclaimed liberal city San Francisco WHERE I LIVE. It's about as dogmatic, closeminded and conservative (anti-change) as you can get.
Get over your stereotypes. San Francisco is the bastion of pompous conservatism.
I seem to remember Al Gore getting jacked up for making a campaign-related call from his office at the White House. It was all over the news for weeks. His answer, after you trimmed off all the rhetoric, was, "Oops. Sorry." It seemed like they were going to hang him or something. Nowadays no one would even bother reporting that.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
I don't think they mean that Rove is actually writing an email every 12 minutes, but rather that's how much email he has in total. He probably gets copied on tons of emails that he never reads, by people cc'ing the email to every relevant person imaginable in order to cover their ass. I just got a new job at a University, and I get cc'ed on *everything* that the secretaries in the department send out, even though I'm just a temp worker!
It's like being on the mailing lists of every department, meeting, steering committee, or group, of every government function you have a hand in. Of course, neither you, nor Rove, nor I, read every email from every list and every cc'd email we get.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Charles Ray Polk
Sons of Gestapo
Willie Ray Lampley, Cecilia Lampley, and John Dare Baird
Joseph Martin Bailie
Peter Kevin Langan
Ray Hamblin
Larry Wayne Shoemake
Robert Edward Starr III, William James McCranie Jr, and Troy Allen Kayser
Gary Curds Baer and the Viper Team
Eric Robert Rudolph
John Pitner
Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merrell
Floyd "Ray" Looker and the Mountaineer Militia
Eric Robert Rudolph again
Marine Ricky Salyers
Brendon Blasz
Carl Jay Waskom Jr., Shawn and Catherine Adams, and Edward Taylor Jr
Todd Vanbiber
William Robert Goehler
James Cleaver, Jack Dowell, Ronald Sherman, and Thomas Shafer
Playford Glover
Chevie Kehoe, Daniel Lee and Faron Lovelace
Eric Robert Rudolph yet again
Dennis McGiffen and The New Order
Ken Carter and the North American Militia of Southwestern Michigan
Alan Monty Pilon, Robert Mason and Jason McVean
Jack Abbot Grebe, Jr., and Johnnie Wise
Paul T. Chastain
James Charles Kopp
Chris Scott Gilliam
Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams
Benjamin Nathaniel Smith
Buford Furrow
James Kenneth Gluck
Donald Rudolph, Kevin Ray Patterson, and Charles Dennis Kiles
Donald Beauregard and James Troy Diver
Mark Wayne McCool
Richard Baumhammers
Leo Felton and Erica Chase
Steve Anderson
Clayton Lee Wagner
Irving David Rubin
Michael Edward Smith
David Burgert
Charles Robert Barefoot Jr.
Robert J. Goldstein
Larry Raugust
Matt Hale
James D. Brailey
David Wayne Hull
David Roland Hinkson
William Krar
John Noster
Norman Somerville
Sean Gillespie
Ivan Duane Braden
Demetrius "Van" Crocker
Craig Orler
That's the right-wing American terrorists between 1995 and 2005. Of course, they weren't planning on keying cars or yelling at elected officials, they planned to murder people in cold blood, and in a few cases managed to get away with it.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
*sigh* Apparently you haven't kept up with the news.
Section 9, Article 2: The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.
If it was ever challenged in court, the law removing the right of habeus corpus for foreigners would be struck down - the article is fairly explicit. Unfortunately, by its very nature, the law never reaches the courts.
I have no idea why the new Congress hasn't repealed it.
"nearly everything that I would have listed as to why our country was great BEFORE bush came along has been tainted or flat out ruined"
A problem is Americans, well all people with a national identity, have a pronounced tendency to want to believe they are "great" or greater than they really are.
The American government has spied on its citizens throughout its history, Lincoln did it in the Civil War, happened in World War I, many of the precedents Bush cites are from Roosevelt in World War II, massive spying during McCarthyism and the red scare, and of course Nixon was massively spying on the Americans on his "enemies" list. J. Edgar Hoover cemented his hold on power because he had a file on everyone. Not spying on Americans was a brief respite we had post Nixon because a Democratic Congress was appalled by what Nixon, the CIA and FBI had done. The Republicans hated FISA etc. so all that's happened recently is the Bush administration used 9/11 to dismantle it. Even with FISA there was still spying on Americans, since FISA is mostly a rubber stamp court that seldom denies warrents to spy on Americans when the DOJ comes asking.
As for torture well the U.S. has tortured, massacred etc through much of it history. Its the shit that happens in war, all sides do it, there are just degrees in how much, and how well its brushed under the rug. All we have today is an internet and 24/7 news to focus a floodlight on it so we are more aware of it. Massacres of Native Americans was routine, POW camps in the Civil War were horrors, the U.S. occupation of the Philipines in the early 20th century was met with an insurgency that was met by the U.S. with raw brutality including torture, they had a device to slowly crush skulls as I recall. There were units in Vietnam that ran rampant through Vietnam killing and torturing civilians and guerrillas alike(they look a lot alike).
How easily we forget that, after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. put Japanese Americans in concentration camps and confiscated all their property. What the Bush administration has done incarcerating people is pretty tame compared to that.
The Bush administration has been kind of over the top, but the fact is 9/11 gave them a blank check to go over the top, and if you recall back then just about everyone was cheering them on....I guess the bottomline is that we really only have ourselves to blame for the excesses of the Bush administration. We gave them a blank check for six years....and they used it. They were drunk on the power we gave them.
I think I'm saying the idea that in 1999 America was a pillar of virtue and its all Bush's fault that now we are a horror is really not true. Bush made things worse but America has periodically had serious issues in all the areas you list, usually anytime there is a war on, or there is a third world dictator we want to prop up to protect U.S. economic interest. Thanks to global communication everyone is just more aware of it now.
@de_machina
That article's headline is "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions." Bush's actions were limited by that qualifier. Hussein was complying and had given up the WMD as required by the UN resolutions (primarily resolution 687 see:http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news /iraq/un/index.html). So far 500 munitions of degraded sarin has been found (http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Natio n/archive/200606/NAT20060621e.html)(Personal, this doesn't seem like a stock pile). So technically, the war is illegal as it fails the qualifier that congress stipulated.
Most people feel that Congress wouldn't even have passed that resolution had Bush et al not been fabricating the intelegence (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3 87374.ece)
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/P1-A F888_Inequa_20061001190109.gif
I am just wondering where on earth you see a "significant closing" of the income gap during the Clinton years? It has always, and will continue to rise. With our current government it is an inevitability. No amount of democrats will change that. What we need is a new system.
Clinton's staff DELETED ALL of their e-mail, and not a peep was made out of it.
OK. Put up or shut up. Cite a source that isn't connected with the Arkansas project.
This is probably what you're thinking of. Unlike the Bush white House, the Clinton White House case hinged on an incompetent third-party contractor - not the Republican National Committee's grant of free e-mail accounts to be used for political business only.
Whether Karl Rove used the RNC e-mail account exclusively for political ends is up to anyone in a large company to decide. Anyone who has responded to a work query from personal e-mail account, for instance.
Is the American system isn't one where you just change it whenever you want. Elections happen at regular intervals. The people, congress, even the president, can't simply call for an election, the law has to be changed. At a federal level, the level you are talking with the president, the law that needs changing is the Constitution. That's not an easy document to change (on purpose). 66% of both houses of congress have to vote in an amendment, and then 75% of the states have to ratify it. As you might guess, this isn't a short or easy process.
That isn't to say nothing can be done, if the president has broken a law he can be impeached by congress, but for now congress doesn't seem to be very interested in trying that, even though the Democrats now have majority control of both houses.
That being the case, there's little a person can do to bring about any sort of immediate change. Basically the best you can do is to do as much as possible to make sure people get out and vote for someone better next time.
The US system is very much designed on a rule-of-law concept, where things can't just be changed because a majority gets pissed off. This has good and bad consequences, but one of them is that the people cannot simply call for a new presidential election and get one. It happens only once per four years, 2008 being the next, and will continue to be that way until the Constitution is changed.
Jebediah != Jeb Jeb = John Ellis Bush -- Go read a book...You might learn something.
This particular scandal is a tempest in the teapot. There are two competing laws in place: the first is the presidential records act, which requires preservation of the administration's records; the second (the Hatch Act) prevents the use of government equipment for politicai purposes. So, emails related to political activity cannot go through the white house email system. Instead, they get sent through the RNC. So far, there's nothing new or disturbing -- the Clinton administration did the same thing with the DNC, largely because there's no other way out of the problem.
The problem is that the RNC servers weren't correctly backed up. And, as a result, a bunch of those emails were lost when, by law, they were supposed to be kept. There's absolutely no indication that they were lost deliberately or that any higher-ups ordered their destruction or knew about their destruction and failed to stop it. (At best, the report says that Gonzalez knew about the RNC accounts, but "took no action to preserve" them. But, that's a non-sequitor -- he only had to take that action if he thought they were not going to be preserved.)
Was there a law broken? Maybe -- I don't know whether negligently failing to keep them is enough to break the law, or if it requires deliberate destruction. But, is there any evidence of corruption? No. Maybe incompetence at the RNC, but not corruption.
Everybody knew that when the Republicans were voted out of control of Congress the Democrats were going to conduct investigation after investigation for political purposes. That's all this is. Heck, the list didn't even come about because of some thorough investigation by the Committee Staff -- they asked for the list and the Republicans gave it to them.
There are plenty of places where the administration could be accused of incompetence. But, there's no real evidence of general corruption.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffect cannot even spend their own money fast enough on personal stuff because they have so much. A 300 room mansion is merely a status symbol because they get lost in their own house if they actually try to use such rooms.
Warren Buffet is actually very frugal with his money. He lives in a relatively modest house in Omaha, and has a low salary compared to people in similar positions. He is also a proponent of higher taxes on the rich, and has been critical of Bush's tax cuts.