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White House Must Answer For Missing Emails
Lucas123 writes "A District Court judge this week ruled in favor of a Washington-based watchdog group, allowing them to question White House officials about missing emails involving controversial issues. The subjects include the release of the identity of a former CIA operative, the reasons for launching the war in Iraq and actions by the US Department of Justice. The group had filed suit [PDF] last May against the White House Office of Administration, seeking access to White House email under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The discovery ruling is bringing to light issues of email retention in businesses and other private organizations. We've previously discussed the White House's difficulties with email."
Dick Cheney doesn't care about the Presidential Records Act. That's the least of our problems. He doesn't care about any of his legal responsibilities, or even the constitution. He will chalk all of this illegal behavior up to "his interpretation of the rules," and he has consolidated so much power in the executive brand nobody can touch him (and of course, Mr. Bush). These documents will be destroyed years before the Democratic congress can repair the damage that has been done by this administration, but hopefully lessons were learned and this will never happen again.
This is what happens when there's a Republican Congress and a Republican President. Congress lets him run free and completely ignores their oversight responsibilities, acting like lords and barons in a monarchy, knowing they'll get kick-backs from the king. Don't believe me? Guess how many times in six years the Republican-controlled Congress subpoenaed the Bush administration for potential executive abuses? Yeah, zero. In contrast, Clinton's administration was subpoenaed over 1000 times.
Our government is completely broken... worrying about emails with a blow-by-blow description about how the system of checks and balances in this country got destroyed is a waste of time; We need to look at these last eight years on a macro level and make sure through legislation that this disaster never happens again.