Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Hey liberal elite, suffer with Websense like the rest of us.
Reason:
The Websense category "General Email" is filtered.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I thought this was how every politician operated? Palin, The previous white house, etc, all used non-government assigned email addresses to avoid archiving and disclosure laws.
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
Things like this don't even surprise me anymore, because I've come to expect them from our government.
Living With a Nerd
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.
....aaaaaand the Obama administration has ZERO excuse for this, given that the Bush Administration and WH staffers were caught doing exactly the same thing (well, not exactly- in the Bush case, they were discussing firing US DA's for political advantage, and discussing CIA leaks...the list of illegal activity goes on and on.)
Aside from ignorance not being defense, Obama-ites were obviously not ignorant about it after the last administration were caught doing it!
Oh, and if you think this only happens in the White House, guess again. Mayor Thomas Menino in Boston had a lackey named Michael J. Kineavy who had his fingers in everything and was deleting emails before the City Hall backup server would get to them. And the City didn't have an email archiving system. And the city tried to claim that it'd cost a bazillion dollars to try and recover from the tapes they did have! More: http://www.google.com/search?q=menino+email
Please help metamoderate.
With all these lobbyists in Washington, I have always wondered who takes care of the ordinary citizen's interests in that city.
I guess the better question would be:
Who is lobbying on behalf of Joe Six Pack and family in Washington? Is there any?
THIS!
And, to add, Obama ran into this PRECISE issue when he wanted to use his personal Blackberry after he was elected.
He damn well knows better, and we can prove it.
I think the penalties should be double for willful disobedience, especially from the POTUS.
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.
Yes. When in doubt, err on the side of caution. An email from a government account will reach the recipient just as well as a gmail account emai.
It's not that contacting a lobbyist, or the child/relative/friend of a lobbyist is bad. It's that contacting a lobbyist and discussing action/inaction items with out the interaction being recorded, transparent, and reviewable is bad.
Heck, not all lobbyist are bad. I work full time, I barely have the chance to keep on top of local politics, let alone national and international issues. I don't have time to organize meetings with my representatives and administrators in the federal government. So I find other like minded individuals and we come up with enough cash to send a representative to Washington to make sure our views are known to the folks in power. That person is a lobbyist. Even if it's Grandpa Joe who is going because he is retired and has the time to wait around for some under secretary to get out of a meeting.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I thought this was how every politician operated? Palin, The previous white house, etc, all used non-government assigned email addresses to avoid archiving and disclosure laws.
Running a light because the guy in front of you did it too, doesn't make it legal.
Also, for the President and his staff (and the ex-president and his staff), the issue is more that they violated this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act
Please help metamoderate.
That is easy, for the Obama Administration a lobbyist is someone who tries to convince Congressmen to pass laws that Obama opposes or to oppose legislation that Obama supports. Everyone else is a public spirited individual.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
...the Sun was seen rising in the East.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
This administration has been terrible. All this promise, and then failure. And now there is news that the voter intimidation case got dropped for political reasons? I mean, there the guy is, holding a baton.....seriously, WTF.
Using Gmail should not be allowed. Government officials need to have ALL their activities OPENED to us, the people, unless it is personal stuff. This stuff is NOT personal, it is skirting the law. I don't care if PREVIOUS administrations did it or not. I don't care. Obama promised to do things DIFFERENTLY and I see nothing but business as usual if not more of an orgy type atmosphere there since they have a hold on both houses as well right now.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
I think the funniest and saddest thing is that Video FOX news likes to air of Nancy Pelosi saying to her people that she'd love to share what is in the bill but they need to pass it first.
That is exactly the problem in Government right now. These HUGE bills that no one knows what they contain.
I say we vote them ALL out and start over.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
To me this is just another example of how much people will try to cling to old ways of doing things and subvert rules that prevent it.
According to the NYTimes article referenced in TFA that kicked off this whole discussion, indicates that the administration has a policy of posting all White House visits and pressures staff to minimize contact with lobbyists. In response, rather than obey the spirit of those directives, the staff instead meets with lobbyists off the record.
This is a story older than government, going back to whenever a parent first told their kids not to do something or earlier: someone makes a rule, people impacted by that rule try to find a loophole, the rule is revised, repeat. Government is an inherently iterative process.
That being said, if doing an investigation speeds up this iteration of the feedback loop, I'm all for it.
Nah, you have to register as a federal lobbyist, the Lobbying Disclosure Act and Honest Leadership and Open Government Act cover this. There isn't any vague area here.
Once you get into a public trust position you are expected to keep your contact with certain people, like lobbyists and contractors, strictly professional. If you have a personal relationship with someone you have to work with in this capacity it will be a problem and you will be expected to break it off or quit your position. There are rules outlining everything from gifts to phone calls. There isn't any room to maneuver here with the "yeah but what about the grandmom that gave us $100" defense. This isn't about her. This is about your "friend" over at Big Oil telling you to keep cameras off the beach in Pensacola because it might look bad, etc. A legit need for oversight.
And, to add, Obama ran into this PRECISE issue when he wanted to use his personal Blackberry after he was elected.
To be fair, I *think* one of the issues was that the device wasn't secure enough. I believe he got a secure PDA for guvmin't stuff, and still uses his personal blackberry for personal stuff?
It's not illegal for him to use personal email to tell his daughters to do their homework. And it's not illegal for him to email the Attorney General some smack talk about a soccer team in the world cup using personal email. It's illegal for him to use personal email to conduct any business that is government related.
Please help metamoderate.
Er, the texts of bills are always available online though, and you can read them, in fact I often do. Not that I'm opposing the rabble rabble vote them out thing.
No wharrgarbl like political wharrgarbl, amirite? Read this. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
Wow, Obama yet again doing the same thing as the guy who came before him. The only difference is that for some reason people might care about it this time.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
all .gov addresses fall under my pornographic filter. Can't let my kids see shit like that!
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Too bad there isn't a party of "government that works." For people who don't care if we have single payer healthcare or not, as long as there is a reasonable plan to make healthcare better. A party that doesn't think printing/borrowing money forever is a viable way to run the government. Forget the ideology, let's just make it work.
Qxe4
"As part of a settlement with CREW over missing Bush administration e-mails, the White House assured the watchdog that its system prevents employees from accessing personal e-mail accounts." So what the White House actually promised was to try and put up a firewall, and people are jumping the firewall. It also promised that, if anyone made a FOIA-style request about goings-on that should have been on the record, that it would respond quickly and without being a douche about it. So, if there was a breach that they tried to prevent, it's now up to them to respond appropriately, and we're still inside a reasonable time to service this request, right? Sounds like normal business for any company, so long as the people responsible for oversight weren't among the offenders.
Frankly, I would consider it an acceptable hurdle to say that entry into public service means severing all personal ties to lobbyists.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Well, I can't say for sure what "Obama-ites" are ignorant of, but apparently liberals are aware of the possible ethics issues. In fact I think that was kind of the point to the article in the first place.
As mentioned before, two email account are pretty much mandated by law. The only question is if there is circumvention of disclosure laws.
That said, wouldn't it be fair to judge on.
1. The results of the investigation - i.e. did anything even happen!
2. What was the extent? Was it purposeful?
3. How well the administration cooperates, according to neutral investigators.
4. Who was doing it- i.e. was it pervasive and/or at the top?
5. And finally, how the administration handles what is found out?
This is a request for an investigation, not a guilty verdict. Someone, somewhere in the Whitehouse may be doing something wrong (frankly, someone somewhere probably always is). Scale and top level involvement matter.
Many of us would love to vote them all out and start over. Sadly, those who would get voted in would be of the same breed as it takes a lot of money. That money tends to come from the lobbyists. Vote for a Teabagger, get an extreme right wing asshole who no doubt cater to the corporate lobby. Vote for a Green Party member, get an extreme left wing asshole who will no doubt cater to the corporate lobby. What we need is a corporation to lobby for the people. I wish there were money to be made in that.
There is absolutely no meat in TFA, just vague speculations about White House personell maybe using their personal email accounts to communicate with lobbyists. There need to be specific allegations about person X doing Y otherwise the article is just a baseless smokescreen. But yeah, *if* personal email accounts has been improperly used, then that is just astonishingly shameful for Obama.
Football Odds
I for one am looking forward to true A.I.
So many posts talk about the problems with all elected officials and promises and broken promises. If we develop AI with a mandatory integrity (truth and honesty), perhaps we can have a government run with AI? At least we will get what we vote for. We could avoid spin at every comment. Only downside might be giving over our children to fuel electricity consumption for the matrix.
In all of government, realize this: hope is what drives us to vote. In order to keep hope alive, an elected official does NOT have to deliver on all promises, just enough of them to keep hope alive. Obama is on the edge and perhaps falling behind in keeping enough promises to keep hope alive. He should have promised FAR less. Perhaps people wouldn't have been as disappointed.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
That is a good question and now I see your point. I'm not sure about the rules there. I think these type of questions should be asked though and I think that's what these groups are saying. They want to be sure no one is skirting the rules and a little inquisitive inspection is probably warranted. In such a position your expectation for privacy is limited, just because the power you wield could easily be abused. It's not asking too much IMHO. They know this going in.
I say we vote them ALL out and start over.
No, what should be done first is set term limits on congress seats. Its ridiculous that we have elected officials in the same seat for so many years.
Wow, I guess politics truely does make strange bed fellows.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The allegations , first reported last week by the New York Times,
Fixed that for you.
If one actually bothers to read the original NYT article, one would know it still only talking about allegations. And a limited number of incidents reported by unnamed lobbyists at that. Because there are allegations, CREW called for an official investigation to determine if there is truth to the allegations.
The bigger issue discussed was that coffee-shops being used as meeting places, which again is neither illegal nor necessarily a sign of corruption. It's not a strange and terrible thing for people to meet outside the office. I'd personally be more worried if they were meeting in a private hotel room rather than a busy coffee shop where they can be overheard by reporters.
You're right, there's no excuse for this administration to be caught regularly violating official records laws and ethics rules. But it's kind of important to realize they haven't yet. It's sad that so many in the Slashdot crowd aren't capable of seeing the distinction between sensational headlines and reality.
No, what should be done first is set term limits on congress seats. Its ridiculous that we have elected officials in the same seat for so many years.
In the general sense, I think there are about as many good arguments against term limits as for them. (And to be clear, I don't deny that there are good arguments for them.)
If I'm having heart surgery, I don't want to be told that they have a new guy doing it for the first time because all their experienced surgeons had been at it for X years already. Someone has to put the time in to understand policy and law enough to make good decisions on complex issues that most people don't have the time or inclination to dig deeply into; (also note... I'm not arguing that all or even most congressmen do this) why is someone with less experience better than someone with more experience.
That's mostly a rhetorical question; I could argue the other side of it as well. Like most things in politics, there's not a clear cut right answer of the best way to do it.
as well as an ethics pledge created by Obama upon taking office last year."
ROTFLMAO!!!!
Yes, but you don't vote on them. The problem is that the people who are paid to read them and vote on them don't. So uh, rabble rabble vote them out. :)
Please don't read my sig.
Only in public.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
And this is different from any other administration how?
That is all.
Too bad there isn't a party of "government that works."
Well, you have a choice between a party that has some people who think that government should work and another party that says "Government doesn't work and we'll do everything we can to prove it." You're going to have a government either way; but I'd think the choice of which you'd want in power would be obvious.
That is all.
Nah, that's a strawman built on a misperception. There are people in both parties who want to make a government that works; it's just they are outnumbered by those who would rather get what they want.
Qxe4
Then we don't have people who know how things work in Washington. What we should do is eliminate the appeal of sending a Byrd or Thurmond back to Washington. Committee chairs should be assigned randomly from the people assigned to the committee.
When the "powerful Chair of the Armed Services Committee" or the "powerful Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee" isn't automatically given to the guy with seniority, then that guy won't be automatically able to bring home the bacon. Then her election will depend on the strength of her arguments.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
If staffers are reqiured to have a second or separate cell phone to do personal and political business, then they will get iPhones or some other smartphone. Email access is built-in.
Can't stop that with hardware. Even policy will fail. And today, you can't tell them with a straight face that they can't have email so their wife can ask them to pick up takeout on the way home. Or their best bud wants to invite them over for another showing of Gladiator, whichever social stereotype you prefer.
Don't even bother to tell me about the firewall. It is meaningless. Make it a condition of employment that, due to the sensitive nature of their position, any emails sent during working hours, personal or not, are subject to disclosure.
Rotsa ruck with that. These people ultimately don't tolerate oversight very well. If they did, they would have taken a job somewhere else.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
That is exactly the problem in Government right now. These HUGE bills that no one knows what they contain.
Only because they don't appear to know how to use THOMAS, where activity up to floor actions from the day before are available. It's the web version of the Congressional Record and has been around since the Clinton Administration. If you want things before they even leave the committees, you may have to look somewhere else, but everything else is available there.
One of the main problems in our federal government right now is that we have millions of armchair quarterbacks who don't properly understand the rules of the game.
Reid doesn't bring anything to the floor unless he has the votes ahead of time. Plenty of legislative items (like the dozens of bills that have passed the House) have stalled in the Senate if you had bothered to check. But of course, you didn't because you don't care.
And Republican obstructionism doesn't stop there - if a hold is made it takes three days to plow through the procedural hurdles to get to a vote... which frequently ends up being rediculously lopsided (99-1). That's all fine and good for the odd nominee and here but when Republicans have put holds on over a hundred routine political appointments, otherwise utterly uncontroversial appointments whither on the vine because the Senate would have to spend an entire year doing nothing but wading through Republican obstructionism.
Your unwillingness to acknowledge basic facts and reality is why we can't have nice things so take your talking points and shove up your ass you lying piece of shit.
What happens when Congress pushes through a bill without a single business day for public review? A bill introduced on Saturday afternoon is voted on at 1 AM Sunday morning. That's not too open now, it is?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If they did this, they should go to jail.
Bush did it too. Also should have gone to jail.
(also: White House email backup system has been non-functional since the Clinton era. Bullshit they can't afford to get that working. So fucking illegal. Their communications in doing business on MY behalf, while I'm paying them - is MY lawful property. Do the job right, or go the fuck home.)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
What happens when Congress pushes through a bill without a single business day for public review? A bill introduced on Saturday afternoon is voted on at 1 AM Sunday morning. That's not too open now, it is?
You are one of those armchair quarterbacks.
The vote you're complaining about, 385, was a cloture vote on an amendment (SA 3276) to an amendment (SA 2786) to the health care bill (HR 3590). (Incidentally, that amendment itself had an amendment.)
SA 3276 was introduced on 12/19 and passed on 12/22, three days later.
SA 2786 was introduced on 11/21 and passed on 12/23, over a month later.
HR 3590 was received by the Senate from the House on 10/8, was discussed ad nauseum for almost three months, and passed on 12/24.
All of this, each version of each of the amendments and bills, is printed in the Congressional Record and is available via THOMAS.
Go and read some of it, please.
I swear reading this article thread is no better than reading a thread on 4chan.org /new/s.
Here's an article calling for an investigation (which ethics violations may not exist) and most of the comments are nothing but hatred for the administration and lack of transparency. Then you get upset that backroom deals are made yet you still hear the deals made on the news and see them in the bills proposed ONLINE.
Does the definition of transparency mean you want to have influence in the conversation?
How can you claim that Obama took over healthcare when the other side is claiming the Healthcare bill does very little?
How can you claim that Obama took over the auto-industry when the other side is upset that government doesn't have total control of production and management?
How can you claim that Obama does nothing when in fact he's covered a great percentage of his campaign promises which very few politicians can?
This is just the pain before the love, this is what transparency feels like. Everyone was quiet several years ago about the government because of the lack of visibility.
Take a step back and think about it for once ... please?
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
Most cut out the middle man. the insurance company and have the money go straight into the health care. From there it gets stolen, abused, and so on, but direct health care eliminates an extra layer of that. Do the math: how many policies does it take in one year with zero reimbursements to pay for just one insurance executive's 500,000 per year salary?
Now throw in buildings, company cars, executive salaries, executive bonuses, executive perks, administrative staff, investigators, health insurance for *their own* employees, and so on.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
That's fucked up to equate health insurance with health care. They are two very separate concepts.
The assumption is that the nation can't afford to let people go without health care. How that is achieved is what is controversial, mostly due to the big bucks spent by the health insurance lobby. Health insurance can be dropped like a hot rock because it provides no value added and because it wastes billions of dollars achieving that lack of value added.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.