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."

Comments

Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Just how obvious does the corruption in the White House have to be before you demand a change of government?

Judging by the number of people still defending this administration on slashdot, it would seem the parade scandals, lies, coverups & half-truths aren't enough. What will it take to convince you people? Does Cheney have to visit each house in the US personally, pry open the door with his shotgun, be caught shitting in your pillowcase while installing a keylogger on your PC?

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[wytcld]

Something like 70% of Americans do demand a change in government. A majority have favored impeachment for some many months now. When the new Congress came in it had broad support, but then failed to either end the war or impeach. Now its popularity rating has dropped below even Bush's.

The problem in America isn't the people. We get it. The problem is the politicians still listen more to television commentators than to the people. And the talking heads mostly don't get it at all; don't see how corruption matters if that corruption just amounts to their friends in business and government going about their business "as usual." Of course, the networks overwhelmingly favor commentators who are of the right or center. The corporations that own them know very well who their friends are. This is too bad, since other parts of corporate America are far to the left, socially, of General Electric, Disney and whoever-the-hell-owns NBC now. We won't mention Fox.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[i_b_don]

The problem is that the current administration and their supporters have done a very good job of turning everything into "us vs them" and 1/3 of the american public has fallen for it. Politics becomes like a sports team where you always root for "your side" and while you think you're rooting or your side you're really screwing yourself and the country because politics becomes not about doing what your constituents want but about whipping your partisan crowd into a frenzy.

Look at what's happened... 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. From not torturing "enemies", to due process, to "checks and balances", to freedom of the press, to NOT spying on your own damn citizens, to NOT doing wars of agression, and on and on and on.

If you would have asked a run of the mill republican before back in 1999 if these were good things I believe they would have said "no". But now inch by inch they've traded their ideals for support of their team . but at least 20% of them have had enough balls and intelligence to quit drinking bush's cool-ade. I personally don't think you can ever pry the cool-ade out of the fingers of the rest because they're in too deep and they can't face a reality beyond what Rush or Fox has told them.

d

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Elemenope]

I'll give you seasoned and intelligent, but that buys her nothing (most everyone who is in national Presidential level politics is both of those things, regardless of popular images to the contrary); principled is a laugh, and party 'lines' are one ginat blurry smudge when it comes to issues of actual governance. Hillary would make, IMO, a mediocre president; one who does not lead but rather follows slavishly the polls and bends with the wind as a pseudo-populist centrist who cares less about constitution than 'keeping America safe', and less about proper governmental restraint than about 'raising our children' for us.

Truly a cynical idealist would be better than the messianic wacko we have now, but only just, and there are better in the field on both sides.

e.g. B. Obama and R. Paul.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[antic]

(Non-American here.)

How many people on either side of the main political line in the US simply argue points to favour their bias like they're barracking for sports teams? That's one of the perceptions I get, and something that can definitely be true here in Australia as well.

The same goes for console fanboys or ice cream flavours or cats vs dogs. And in politics more than almost anywhere else, it shouldn't be how things are thought of and done. Why is anyone a "card-carrying" anything? Why don't they assess each issue and position as it arises regardless of which party is presenting it?

Maybe that's just too much of an ideal scenario?

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Elemenope]

No, it's more like everyone is sour on pretty much everyone (except the fanboy wingnuts). The average American thinks that Republicans are soulless plutocrats, and Democrats are pansy socialists. For those that have heard of them, they think that the Libertarians are batshit crazy, and the Greens...well, the Greens endorsed a career product liability reformer for President not so long ago. It's not so much cheerleading as it is simply 'no way out'. The only people with a lower approval rating than the President is Congress, and they are controlled by opposing parties.

People hold on to parties because it gives them a shadow of an identity. It lets them identify with their parents or their parents' generation, to connect with the past and to meaningful political legacies. After all one party freed the slaves, another delivered on civil rights. They belong to parties because it is so damn inconvenient having to explain ones own political idiosyncrasies every time they meet someone new. They join to pretend that issues can be simplified, or marginalized, or shunted into more comfortable sizes and spaces. They join to have something to fight. Sometimes, they join because there is fresh coffee.

And the way I understand it, it isn't a whole lot different in most other voting republics.

BTW, Xbox, Maple Walnut, and Cats FTW. Everyone else is simply crazy. (Ironically, I AM a card-carrying member of the ACLU.)

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[StellarFury]

Yes, well done, Slashdotters. Let's dodge the initial problem of "Corruption in the White House" and "what does it take to convince you about this administration" by screaming OMG HILLARY SUCKS over and over until no one remembers what the original argument was about. As for the OP's original question - I think you have your answer. They'd rather ignore the scandal and the implications it has and go back to partisan squabbling on the internet. Go ahead. Mod me down. I dare you.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that we don't give a shit, it's that after 200+ years we've come to the conclusion that we're screwed no matter what we do.

I disagree: too many young people have reached that conclusion.

The seems to be a correlation between the decline of civics teaching in public schools over the last 20-30 years and the increase in this sort of nihilistic attitude toward politics you so clearly epitomize. I propose that the decline in political socialization and education is responsible for the decline in respect for political processes and institutions. Then, since fewer people understand how things are supposed to work it may be easier to exploit their ignorance. Of course it's much more complicated than that (everything is more complicated than most people think), but I do believe the correlation is meaningful.

A recent Harris poll showed more than 1/3 of respondents didn't know the three branches of government, with 16% responding "local, state, federal" and 18% responding "Republican, Democrat and Independent." Other polls have recorded similarly dismal responses. That's not a trend conducive to the well being of our political system.

Remember that disengaging from politics, throwing up your arms in disgust and walking, away makes it that much easier for an ambitious bureaucrat.

On the other hand, if what you say is true then the conclusion is simple: our system of government simply doesn't work. That's a pretty profound conclusion and I'd be most fascinated to hear how you think it should be replaced. Or does your extend so far that you think it just doesn't matter how we're governed because "we're screwed no matter what?"

I'd rather try to give people the tools to fix the present system, and I'd start in the schools by teaching civics.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[QuickFox]

What the US needs isn't a new administration, it's a new system.

The presidency is too powerful, too tempting, too corrupting. The Republican/Democrats more or less alternating in power makes it almost a one-party system where the one party has two wings. The US media are inciting and creating artificial conflict rather than debate. The media don't guard the guardians the way they should. The US war industry is keeping the nation perpetually at war.

Lots of countries have less corrupting systems.

The US needs to somehow divert its war industry to do something else, the citizens need to buy and subscribe to media that become forums for true debate and that truly guard the guardians, the elections system needs to allow five to seven different parties in position of strength vying for the people's trust and keeping an eye on each other, and there should be far less power at the very top so that it becomes less corrupting.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Kjella]

No, it's more like everyone is sour on pretty much everyone (except the fanboy wingnuts). The average American thinks that Republicans are soulless plutocrats, and Democrats are pansy socialists. For those that have heard of them, they think that the Libertarians are batshit crazy, and the Greens...well, the Greens endorsed a career product liability reformer for President not so long ago.

Unfortunately, the only Liberitarian I've personally known is batshit crazy. When you're gathering people from the fringes, you get those that have fallen off the edge. He was very vocal about it, but he did more harm than good. In any case, I think 'pansy socialists' is mostly reserved for Europe or the UN, for those that have heard of them ;). The blessing and the curse of the US system is the system itself. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats will ever be pushed out of power because the system makes the "split" side in a three-party configuration weaker, and because people are always looking for greener pastures the ball will continue to go between the two. The downside is that bi-partisan power grabs happen without recourse.

Here in Europe, I can vote far left, far right, or one of the parties that go off on a different tangent, but it stlll counts for my side. If the Democrats had 45%, Republicans 45% and Liberitarians 10%, then whoever wants to be in government would have to cooperate with them, give their politics a liberitarian touch. In the US, they're nowhere. In fact, the one voter who left the liberitarians could decide on democrats vs republicans instead. Or if it was the Green party, then it'd have to be a red-green or blue-green government (not sure if the symbolism is right for the US). Even within your side you're not safe - take our last parliament election: Progress Party +7.4% to 22.1%, Conservative Party -7.1% to 14.1%. Both of those belong to the same block, so the grand effect was *gasp* 0.3%, but it sure means competition. There's no "safe" states or voters you can plain old ignore because they're in your core constituency.

So what's the downside, apart from vastly reduced job safety for politicians? Well, with so many parties (seven in parliament now, three in goverment) you end up with a lot of negotiations. Voter promises generally get lost during coalition talks, and there's always a lot of in-fighting to get "their" politics through. In the US, there's never any doubt on who's running the country and who is to be blamed/praised. On the whole I don't like how the people are voting here either (we voted the Socialist Left into government, which are so far off the US political landscape as can be, all democratic but also all nannystate and naive) but at least here I'm fairly confident the people are at fault, not the system.

Things shift, and drasticly. Controversial issues show up in the polls, not as big landslides from one block to another but as shifts within them. Every party needs to fight for their right of life every day. The Labour Party, which has been the biggest party since before WWII with nearly a majority by itself at its height, fell over 10% to a horrible 24.3% in 2001 bleeding voters to all other social-democratic parties, but recovered considerably in 2005. In the US, have you got an option for "I like the politics, but your party is a disgrace"? No, it's either vote or sit at home in protest. We vote for the alternatives, because there are alternatives which make sense.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[kcbrown]

The politicians are elected by the people. If the politicians do something wrong, it is the fault of the people who voted for them. Stop passing the buck.

The people choose who they elect from a list of politicians not of their own choosing. The people who ultimately choose who gets onto the ballot from (at the very least) the two major parties are precisely the people to whom the politicians are loyal: those who run the big corporations.

And there's no "no confidence" option on the ballot, either.

Really, what do you expect the people to do in this situation? Wave their magic wands or something?

I'm sorry, but this situation has no peaceful solution. All the exits are covered by the bad guys.

Question for any longstanding Slashdot reader

[jd]

There have been dozens (at least, and excluding dupes) of stories covering systems that can lift the last ten layers of disk content off a drive. Unless these guys have done a secure wipe with specially-designed patterns to eliminate residual information, why the hell isn't anyone paying one of the labs capable of such content lifting to read these drives?

The owners of the system claim deleted files can't be recovered. Well, like I said, unless it's a secure wipe, that's patently bogus, even if the original tracks have now been filled with other data. Up to nine times over, if you're lucky. I'm not sure I would trust a technologically-ignorant group to run a critical service.

The Democrats, on the other hand, no matter how justified their cause, are either unwilling to get competent technical advice or are unwilling to take the gamble of being wrong if they have that advice or knowledge. This may well be rocket science, but it still doesn't take a rocket scientist to do a search on Google to find out what can be done and who can do it.

In short, for me this has ceased to be a matter of rights and wrongs, of whether the law was broken, or of whether civil servants lost their jobs due to degenerate politics. Nobody will ever know the full facts of the matter, because those who could perfectly well obtain them have - for their own reasons - declined to do so. I trust the Democrats on many issues, but after this, I cannot trust them on the issue of cleaning up politics. How can I? Either they want to but can't, or they don't and won't. What does it matter which it is?

I'd also LOVE to know where all the technologists are, who are fully aware of these sorts of capabilities. Why the silence? It's not a conspiracy, that's obvious enough, so why is nobody asking questions? Why are the Republicans not asking why the Democrats aren't making the effort? Why are the blogs not discussing the effects of layering text over text on the magnetic fields? Even if the reliability of the technique is too poor, someone could at least have asked and gotten that reply.

Ends-Justify-Means Mode

[Tablizer]

let's not be so tunnel-visioned to believe that this could never happen on the blue side of the aisle.

It is fairly well-known that the repubs had a sense of "ends justify means" for quite a while. They practically felt that since they were doing "God's work", they had a right to skirt the rules. Perhaps in the 1970's the Demo's had this kind of belief due to civil rights and Vietnam. However, the prez was a Repub at the time, putting that in check. This time there were no checks on power: Pubs controled 2, and perhaps 3 branches of gov't.

It is this sense that the ends are important enough to justify the shady means when these kinds of things happen. They felt that when their grand plans succeeded (Iraq victory, Gaza democracy, Prayer, etc.), then voters would be so happy that they could stay in power and stop any investigations. But, reality caught up with them.

Yes, it could happen to the Demo's, but it takes almost a perfect storm. Voters have historically kept mixed parties in the different branches, and this kind of "alignment" is rare.

Chalk one more onto the tally

[r_jensen11]

Honestly, I believe that this administration has fucked up so bad that there is no shock element any more. Compared to Bush, Nixon was a saint, and Carter was as accomplished as FDR.

I agree with some points earlier about how we'd be even worse if we impeached Bush, though. Who would we be left with? Cheney. The only solution would be to impeach both Bush and Cheney at the same time, but by the time that proceeding gets through we'd already have finished the next election.

yargh!

[lordvalrole]

basically, Mr. Carl Rove ended up only having 130 emails actually recorded throughout bush's presidency when there should of been all of his emails and all of the other peoples emails recorded. This is why we will never know anything come 25 years from now when things get declassified. This seriously amazes me why the general public is not outraged by this. Compared to the insane ridiculousness of this administration. This trumps it all. I could bet my life that most of those emails were about foreign affairs in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, oil, military, war funding, contracts and contractors for Iraq, occupying the middle east, nsa wiretaps, spying on Americans, the whole damn thing were in those emails. I seriously would be my life on it. Now we have no records of any wrong doing. How screwed up is this place. We should be marching in DC with pitchforks (well guns) and over take the city. Un-fucking-believable

Off Topic read at own risk.

[jombeewoof]

(Non-American here.)

Why is anyone a "card-carrying" anything? Why don't they assess each issue and position as it arises regardless of which party is presenting it?

Maybe that's just too much of an ideal scenario?

  I usually don't chime in on political topics, because frankly I just don't care. I know I'm going to get it in the "end". Any politician is going to screw you, it's part of the job.

But this question begs to be answered, and I think I can give it a little bit of justice.

I think it's because everyone knows that politicians are corrupt. But they want to be on the the "winning team" In the late 80's Bush the Senior was ruining things... opps Running things. and after 12 years of Republican rule the country wanted something a little different. So the majority of people found some flaw in the republican platform. Anything at all they could disagree with. They would build on this one thing(or 2 small things you get the idea) and eventually talk themselves into being a Democrat. (i'm too young to cite any specific examples... poor schools I guess)

Clinton had his fair share of scandal, whether deserved or not (not up to debate in this post) is irrelevant. Many people claimed to "think of the children" or Family Values or whatever judeo-christian BS the Moral Majority is shoving down our throats.
These people now identified with the Republicans more because they would never (get caught) cheat(ing) on their wives. Or Lieing under oath. Or even would never be confused as to the legal definition of "is".
These people were slowly but surely shown the benevolent side of the Republican agenda. As their following got stronger they branched out into more legally/morally obscure areas.
The people are already going to vote republican because they agree you should (get caught) cheat(ing) on your wife, you shouldn't (get caught) stealing from children etc...
wow that turned into a rant.

I am an American. At one point I thought this country was great, we had freedoms many other places didn't enjoy. We had a great document that limited the power of any one individual, we even had a system of checks and balances so that in the off chance that one individual or group became too powerful it could never truly take away our inherent rights.

This system probably worked rather well for quite some time. Maybe even 50 years.

With the current system, there is no possible way to get back to what this country is about. We are too far gone.

But I cannot think of any alternative. Power breeds corruption. I cannot honestly say that I have never used my job to further my own personal goals. I drove cab for 4 years, I used that job to meet loose women, and score drugs. I'm now in the IT field. I use this job to keep with current trends in the industry and meet contacts that will further my personal agenda.
I'm not saying that if I was a politician I would burn schools down to create parking lots for my fleet of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, but some people do not have high moral standards I do.

If there is a way to use a position of authority, any authority at all it will be abused, more often than not. This is the new American dream.
Lie, Steal, Cheat, Blame your predecessor.

The Constitution is a great piece of work, sad to think of it more as a work of fiction these days.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, America has to go through some kind of radical change. IMHO nothing short of revolution will bring this country even close to the splendor that it once was.
I'm not talking about riches and wealth splendor, I'm talking about freedom.

Re:Geez, since when is making money a crime?

[vcalzone]

The choices are not as you would like us to believe.

What we currently have is a corporate environment filled with anti-American sentiment. They avoid paying taxes at all cost, sidestep environmental regulation, avoid paying fair wages or proper benefits (if they decide to give Americans jobs at all), and do it all without a trace of thought as to the state of the country.

And that is NORMAL. Corporations are sharks, they only exist to make money, and to ask them to fight on behalf of the people is preposterous, because it is simply not feasible or logical.

Government, on the other hand, is responsible for its citizens. They are responsible for the common welfare. And when they start making decisions that are not in the best interest of the people who elected them, they have made themselves obsolete.

Pick one. Either corporations are responsible for helping citizens take care of themselves, or the government is. And I, for one, don't think this is a burden that business should have to bear.