Liberal Watchdog Questions White House Gmail Use

MexiCali59 writes "Liberal watchdog CREW has joined Republican Congressman Darrell Issa in calling for an investigation into whether White House staffers regularly use private email accounts to communicate with lobbyists. The allegations, first reported last week by the New York Times, would likely constitute a violation of federal law as well as an ethics pledge created by Obama upon taking office last year."

Comments

No Surprise...

[milbournosphere]

I've learned to ignore the bulk of what the President pledges when it comes to administration transparency. That was a campaign promise that I don't feel he lived up to at all.

Re:No Surprise...

[Attila Dimedici]

You mean there are promises he has kept?
Government transparency? Ummm, no
If you like your health insurance, you can keep it? Umm, no
No lobbyists in the Obama Administration? Umm, no
Close Guantanomo within a year? Umm, no

Re:No Surprise...

[IICV]

Their huge majorities? What majorities? In the senate, there's 58 Democrats, 40 Republicans and two independents that are mostly Republican. Yes, if it comes to a vote the Democrats can outvote the Republicans - at least, they could if they had some sort of party discipline, which they don't (as you mention). However, the Republicans still have the power to keep any issue they don't want voted on from actually coming to a vote. They've been using every trick in the book to delay any vote they think will go against them until the Democrats just give up. Consider the filibuster, for instance - the Democrats are helpless against it, because it takes sixty votes to stop one and they don't have sixty votes. It's turned legislation into a war of attrition, and that's why almost nothing has actually been done.

Further, this new Democratic majority means that almost all of the new Democrat representatives are junior members of Congress, which means that they have less actual power - they don't know who's who, they don't have powerful positions in the committees where the real work gets done. On the other hand, the Republicans that are still in Congress are mostly well-entrenched; they've been there for years, they head important committees, they know who to talk to to get things done, they know which curry places will give you the shits. They've got the home-field advantage.

So no, it's not just a simple matter of "whoever has a majority wins".

Re:No Surprise...

[Solandri]

You've got to be kidding me. To quote Jon Stewart, "Democrats... have an 18 vote majority in the Senate. Which is more than George W Bush ever had in the Senate when he did whatever the f*ck he wanted to do. In fact the Democrats have a greater majority than Republicans have had since 1923. But for Democrats apparently a majority of 100 is 60?"

The Republican party does not vote in lock-step. They have moderate members who will vote against their party. In fact, of Senators in the current term who vote against their party more than 20% of the time, 5 are Republicans (out of 43) and 4 are Democrats (out of 62). In the 2007-2008 Senate when Republicans held a 51:49 majority, the 9 Senators who voted against their party more than 20% of the time were all Republicans.

The problems the Democrats are having passing anything is because when they effectively got 60 Senate seats, their leadership went into the throes of a collective orgasm and dreamt up every far-left bill they could think of and tried to pass them. Not only did Republicans vote against them, they had to beg and bribe moderate Democrats to support those bills. If a bill you propose is opposed by all Republicans and a significant number of moderate Democrats, most intelligent people would logically conclude that the bill is far too liberal and needs to come back to center to have a chance at passing. Not that there's some right-wing conspiracy to thwart you.

Re:Everybody does it...

[Meshach]

I think the point is that Obama pledged to stop this from happening and it hasn't.

Re:Everybody does it...

[Cytotoxic]

Good for CREW. Most of these partisan advocacy groups play team red / team blue and have to check the roster to decide where they stand on an issue. It is great to see one of them finally standing on principal and holding their own team to the same standard. It would be nice if every "issue advocacy" group would stick to its guns without regard to party affiliation.

Argumentum ad populum fallacy

[Benfea]

Even if it is true that all politicians do this, that does not make this right. Archiving and disclosure laws are there for a reason.

Re:Everybody does it...

[andy1307]

So we've gone from "Hope and Change" to "STFU, everybody does it"?

Re:Who's taking care of ordinary folk's business?

[jellomizer]

Well what is the ordinary citizen?

What is their education, what do they do for a living, what services do they need, what don't they need...

You say who is fighting for the ordinary citizen's like it is a simple statement. If you are too tough on corporations they cannot operate and move out and kill the economy, if you are too lax they will take over. Every choice has a tradeoff. Lobbyists work for a big slue of sectors including many non-corprate groups, and other groups that you may call the Good Guys...

Hey if I worked for a Oil company I just may like the Oil Lobby as it is defending work for me as the average joe... But if you don't then they may be the enemy.

Unfortunately without lobbyists I see politicians swerving to whatever the general population thinks at the time, and then money and resources are put in and by the time it gets going it is dropped as their values change overnight...

Re:Everybody does it...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Yes, but this is "the most transparent administration in history"

Don't forget that being the best at transparency does not mean being good at something. It just means being less terrible than the other guy(s).

Re:Everybody does it...

[Surt]

Which leaves me facing the next election to choose between the candidate who says he'll do things I care about, but won't, and the candidate who says he'll do things I hate, and will.

Sigh.

Re:I give up

[regular_gonzalez]

All promises aren't equal. If I promise to drink at least 3 glasses of water a day, to exercise for at least 30 minutes every day, and also promise to not embezzle from my employer, keeping the first two but not the third may give me a respectable "promise keeping" percentage, but I would guess my employer would be much happier if I kept only the third and not the first two.