Slashdot Mirror
White House Wins Ruling On E-mail Records
An anonymous reader writes "The White House Office of Administration is not required to turn over records about a trove of possibly missing e-mails, a federal judge ruled Monday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found the agency does not have 'substantial independent authority,' so it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act."
Openness is overrated in democratic societies, anyhow. I'm sure they wouldn't be keeping this all a secret if it weren't in the best interests of the people.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go send my credit card numbers to these nice former Nigerian heads of state.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
IANAL, but I'm still surprised to hear that the FOIA only applies to government offices which have "substantial independent authority."
From everything I've heard, it applies to all government agencies. Does this mean if a government office can make itself appear harmless enough, it doesn't have to cooperate?
"Sorry, I'm only the FBI director's SECRETARY. I don't have substantial independent authority."
This ruling brought to you by the same judge who overturned most of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's decision in United States v. Microsoft! Completely boneheaded as usual.
My blog
Isn't Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly the same bonehead that overturned the Microsoft ruling?
And, can we expect this ruling to be appealed?
Best regards.
..Has this Administration NOT had 'Substantial Independent Authority'?? Haven't Bush & Co. been arguing that they have since the beginning?
Not that the White house has ever given a damn what any judge has said anyway. If any backups of those emails had been made, they would have disappeared long ago.
This administration sickens me when I think about it, so I'll stop.
1.) Conduct all illegal activities through email
2.) When I get sued, pay off court clerk to assign case to Judge Kollar-Kotelly.
3.) ???
4.) Profit!
This isn't about Bush bashing. This is wrong no matter what president is in office. The whole point of our constitutional government is so that government cannot make itself more important than the people it governs. In short, to prevent the mistake that England and other governments made which necessitated [bloody] revolution. We've got secret laws, secret courts, and now even more secrecy within the government that we do know about.
Note that, unlike popular current trends, judges are not there to decide what the law _should_ be and rule on that but only to enforce the applicability of current laws to the specifics of the case at hand. Might think about that before you decry the ruling. Bottom line: if you don't like this, stop whining and playing the martyr and go vote for someone that will do what you want. Otherwise, see Catharsis(4)(a).
Could you explain this statement? You seem to be saying that we shouldn't be critical of one particular politician and/or party because another hypothetical politician and/or party would do the same thing, at least hypothetically. Doesn't this constitute a race to the bottom for ethical standards, and shouldn't we demand better than that?
That's entirely irrelevant. I don't really care what party it is, if the Democrats were in this situation they would be scrutinized just as much as the current administration is.
That they be held accountable for their actions?
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
Time to get some mandatory email journaling voted in, folks.
Seriously, what if the roles were reversed? The Feds are looking for some HIPAA-related email, and you can't produce it. What would they say??
"You should have had a system in place that you could rely on..."
Goose, meet Gander.
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who just created this official, binding policy that the government is above the law, is a fascist judge. She might be familiar to Slashdotters as the judge who the incoming Bush "Justice" Department got to run the Microsoft monopoly verdict's appeal and toothless "remedy phase.
You might not know that Kollar-Kotelly ruled in the execution trial of Saddam Hussein that "the United States has no right to interfere with the judicial processes of another nation's courts", when such interference might mean Hussein might live to tell more of what he knows about US interference in Iraq, or rather its lengthy cooperation with his murderous regime.
And you might not realize that Kollar-Kotelly is the presiding judge of the Bush-packed FISA Court, that has rubberstamped Bush's regime's tens of thousands of "exceptional" wiretap requests that violate the 4th Amendment (which artificial loophole is the entire purpose of that court). Which is why today's Congressional Republicans are doing everything they can to put telco amnesty for violating FISA under the FISA Court's jurisdiction, instead of a regular court that actually obeys the Constitution.
Kollar-Kotelly is the go-to judge for Unitary Executive fantasy privileges, whenever they can squeak some out. After all, she kicked off her legal career as a lawyer for Nixon's "Justice" Department.
Play ball!
--
make install -not war
More Twoson than Cupertino
In case you are missing the context here, the emails in question are interesting for a whole slew of reasons. The probably contain evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors (most likely by Cheney, but who knows) and pretty much have to contain evidence of perjury (with the morass of statements that have been made under oath, someone is surely lying, we just don't know who). And them there's the Hacth act violations, the Abrimoff issues, the election tampering, and on and on.
These are the missing 18 minutes gone gonzo,
--MarkusQ
Are you serious? No, you can't be, either that or you've missed the entire point of the supreme court. Judges are there specifically to decide how a law should be enforced or even if it should be enforced at all.
if you can't get the transparency from your democratic government that you deserve, petition the chinese government to air their copies of our government's email
i'm sure they have a copy of the inboxes in question sitting around somewhere
thank god for shoddy us government computer security and snooping totalitarian regimes: securing the transparency in our democracy that we deserve!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If voting could actually change anything, then it would be illegal. You think shuffling around Congress and the White House will change the entrenched corruption, pay-to-play atmosphere and pro-corporate agenda of the US government (or any government)?
Voting is little more than a democracy placebo. Every few years you are given a "choice" between corporate candidate A and corporate candidate B, both of whom support the exact same agenda--only phrased differently and with a few minor variations. Enter the compliant corporate media to highlight and magnify those differences and shut out any genuine challengers to the status quo.
Meanwhile, everyone is so busy arguing over which of the terrible candidates is less terrible, that the task of building a genuine progressive, grassroots movement for change (against the war, for worker's rights, health care, etc...) is indefinitely shelved. The only way to win progress is through struggle. As abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand." So instead of actually struggling for change we're herded into the political system controlled by the same people who benefit from the status quo and resist our every demand for progress. All of our demands are dropped or watered down to suit the electoral needs of your chosen candidate--and after the election they are forgotten completely.
The major parties aren't worth wasting more than 1 minute or 1 dime on. The real task is to create a movement powerful enough to win our demands regardless of which corporate tool sits in the White House. As famous historian Howard Zinn put it, "the really critical thing isn't who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in--in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating--those are the things that determine what happens."
The problem has been throngs of douchebags like yourself who voted for him.
No, I think you missed the point of his post. Judges aren't there to make law. They are there to interpret the law, as written, and weigh the merits of the case at hand as to what precedents apply based on current facts.
The Supreme Court also is supposed to do this, its just that at that level they are almost exclusively supposed to put the law in the context of the Constitution. Then the thing is, if they are strict constructionist or not, as to what "side" they're likely to come down upon.
Thing is, When Washington was appointing judges, its not like they had to reach very hard to find out what the guys who wrote the Constitution meant -- they were alive and kicking and hanging out down the block. The system was created before political parties when it was just assumed that people would know what they were supposed to do.
Of course, things are different now. People who see themselves as "Democrats" or "Republicans," "Liberals" or "Conservatives," instead of just as "Americans" are in the position to appoint judges who will agree with their specific neo-tribalist sensibilities, slants and biases.
However, I would venture to say that no matter what form of government was constituted, the end result would have been the same because the pattern is obvious since the time of Rome, if not before.
Oh well, only a few months left
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Well, they (judges and justices, all-inclusive) are there to both interpret the law and to determine if the law is constitutional.
This is why people roll their eyes when wackjobs start harping about "activist judges". That's what judges are there for, to temper the will of the people (or their representatives), and the power of the executive branch, via applying the filter of the Constitution to their actions.
It shouldn't be "White House Wins" -- it should be "Citizens Lose".
Not with this White House.
Actually, I don't think there is that much pure Bashing happening around these parts. --I equate 'Bashing' with the desire punish by proxy for purely emotional reasons devoid of rationality or factual data. You can see evidence of this on those blog sites which are hopelessly obsessed and enraged far beyond any measure of reason by such things as, 'welfare moms milking the system'.
When discussing Bush, however, it's hard when pointing out basic reality to sound like one is doing anything BUT bashing. This is due to the reality being so very grim and the damning facts so plentiful. Welfare Moms and similar concerns generally don't have much impact on anything, whereas Bush policies have resulted in $120 per barrel oil, a crashed dollar, a quagmired immoral war, the hideously mis-managed Katrina disaster, to name just a few items. So the complaints may sound like 'Bush Bashing' but really, I would say that it is rational and necessary discussion, especially in the lead-up to the next election. Calling legitimate complaints about things which affect everybody in the country 'Bush Bashing' and condemning it as such smacks of Republican pouting and pissiness.
Sorry. I refuse to allow people make me feel guilty for having legitimate complaints. Abusive parents do the same thing to their kids.
-FL
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
mandatory email journaling voted in
They have, it's called the Presidential Records Act.
This ruling just says that the general public is not allowed to use the FOIA in order to find out whether the administration is complying with the law or not.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
> They are there to interpret the law, as written, and weigh the merits of the case at hand as to what precedents apply based on current facts.
The fun thing about the law... and all the caselaw that goes with it, is that there's so much of it.
You could argue it either way.
So underlying legal philosophies do come into play. That's why it matters who
gets apointed to the bench. They can push the law in one direction or another.
They may choose to only push inches at a time but they can still push.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Seriously, what if the roles were reversed? The Feds are looking for some HIPAA-related email, and you can't produce it. What would they say??
"You should have had a system in place that you could rely on..."
Well, sure. Because there are actually regulations in place that call for that. It's the law. In the case of people who have been hired by an executive administration to provide research, advice, and political guidance... they aren't subject to that same standard, for a reason. They're not an agency. We're not talking about official communication between, say, the C-in-C and the military people under his command, or between that office and the TSA, or the Dept Of The Interior, or the State Department related to issues overseas. That stuff is all archived, and subject to FOIA. And that's the whole point. You hire an executive to bring their own judgement and the thinking of the people he or she chooses to help in complex judgement calls to the issues in front of them. They then ACT on their judgement, and leave quite a FOIA-able paper trail behind them.
If every conversation that President Obama wants to have with his pastor of the week - in person or by e-mail - as he thinks through an upcoming condition-free meeting with Hugo Chavez is information that you get have by FOIA, then how likely is it that he's going to use such channels for frank communication while arriving at the opinions he was hired to act upon?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
BE DISHONEST! it pays. its the quickest way to succeed in the New America(tm).
please don't believe in 'good guys win, bad guys lose'. clearly, bad guys WIN BIG. they cover their tracks, they lie and cheat and steal and kill and start wars to further their personal needs.
we all take our examples from our highest leaders. if something is game for our leaders, it should be good enough for us, too.
so kids, don't bother being honest and ethical. it does not pay nearly as well as being dishonest.
I believe we should be as honest and ethical as our exemplary leaders. they set the tone and the pace for what our society is becoming. so take your cue, kids; its not worth it to be honest and decent. lie, cheat, steal and do whatever you want because ITS WHAT OUR LEADERS DO.
"do not as I say but as I do"
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
My guess is that these earlier e-mail screw ups were partially responsible for the decision to move from Lotus Notes to MS Exchange. It would seem that this transition has been a disaster.
Never ascribe to malice what can be more easily blamed on incompetence. Or something like that.
But know that the media has biases, and they quite frequently bury a story earlier if it adversely affects someone or something they like. I won't go so far as to say they universally favor one party or another, but I think if you pay close attention you will see a pattern.
Long live King George II.
I await King George III so the people may repeat history. Again.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I'm outraged; googled the Judge and called her office in Washington DC.
I'm getting to hate that phrase "Never ascribe to malice what can be more easily blamed on incompetence". That works all right when the people involved don't have a history of doing stuff that they don't want other people to know about. When you're getting strong evidence of rampant skullduggery (torture, warrantless wiretapping, incredibly sloppy bookkeeping esp. w/regards to suspicious contractors, etc), then you really need to go about the investigation with the opposite mindset.
If you don't, the people you're investigation will keep trying to divert you by throwing "Never ascribe to malice" phrase in your face. "Oops, I didn't know we were/weren't supposed to do that!" "Ooo, what a stupid mistake!" "Gee, I guess I'm just a moron!", but they could very easily be hiding their corruption behind a facade of incompetence. If you don't ignore their protests & keep digging until all trails die out, then you haven't been doing your job as an investigator.
As any comedian will tell you, the letter K is a funny letter. The sound, itself somehow adds to the comedic value of any words in a joke. Since this judge has not one, but THREE K sounds in her name, I have no choice but to insist this is a joke. There's no other explanation.
If the actions of President Bush has taught us anything over the past 8 years, it's that voting most certainly is NOT pointless. Sure we voted for the wrong guy, but his administration's gross mismanagement of this country showed very clearly that the two parties are not by any means identical, and that your vote for a president can have a very real impact on the policies that are put into place.
At this point, I can only wish that we had an ineffective president who did not accomplish anything in the white house for the last 8 years. We would be a lot better off right now.
>Much more to blame are environmentalists and other terrorists.
You misspelled "futures market traders", which, if you have a 401(k), you probably are yourself.
Neither supply, demand, nor the ratio of the two correlate to the price. Every other factor
can be derived from quite transparent market trading data.
So where did the environmentalists ("and other terrorists") come in? Did the hippies simply BUY all the oil?
Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Publicise this despicable action and watch bunning struggle to find a job mopping floors in his local elementary school.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
That's exactly the point, isn't it? Eventually, you can no longer ascribe it to incompetence.
Also, the message of the phrase was never 'they're incompetent, so do nothing'.. especially since those in question are in a position of great power. Personally, i'd prefer a competent president.
Sadly, those horses bolted a long time ago.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/