(underlining mine)
If these emails contain information “in which there exists a clear and indisputable Executive Branch interest”, then it is equally “clear and indisputable” that these emails are covered under the PRA, right?
Why does the President even need to review them, then?
LilShieste
By claiming executive privilege for the RNC emails, aren’t they admitting violating the Hatch Act?
This is exactly what’s confusing me, too. (It goes hand-in-hand with my earlier post.)
I’m assuming that they’re trying to come across as saying, “We need to review these emails to determine whether or not they actually dealt with the federal issue at hand.” But that part has already been implied, by the written request for the emails:
(underlining mine)
So, the WH is saying that they need to review these particular emails, before they are handed over to Congress. And I don’t see any legitimate reason why this should be allowed.
LilShieste
The RNC has answered to the voice of its master:
The RNC is determined to commit itself to future irrelevancy to protect this administration, apparently.
Time for Congress to turn that request into a subpoena. The RNC won’t be able to refuse to turn over the emails based just on a letter from the White House; the White House would presumably have to go to court to quash the Congressional subpoena.
The WH will simply fire Archibald Cox and stand on executive privilege.
Ooops. Sorry. Flashback.
I think it was speculated upthread that the only reason Bush has for keeping Gonzales around is so that he can be the fall guy for an upcoming Saturday Night Massacre. The longer this goes on, the truer that sounds. Of course, they have to realize that at that point, everybody realizes that they’re engaged in a huge coverup.
Either way, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that this administration has been operating under the assumption that their actions would never be seriously scrutinized. As people say, the coverup has been more damaging than the original transgression. They just don’t seem to be able to lie well when the people they’re lying to aren’t willing to swallow up obvious bullshit.
I’m betting the reason the WH and the RNC are going to the wall on this one is that what’s in those is one or more emails linking Karl Rove to the DA firings, in a smoking-gun kinda way. Might even have been some indications that Rove has consulted with this with the Deciderer, who doesn’t use emails (that’s for consiglieres like Rove). Might even be some emails that directly point out the true motivation for the DA firings … to aid in the 2008 elections of course.
Am I the only one who interprets the WH asking for the RNC emails before Congress gets them as: “OK, so you caught us trying to sneak around the Presidential Records Act. Before we turn over all the stuff we tried to hide, can we go through it first so we can hide the stuff we really need to hide?” It sounds like the suspect asking for first crack at the evidence locker before the DA gets to it.
Am I missing something?
It’s roughly equivalent, actually, to the computer repair shop having a box they’re working on subpoenaed for kiddie porn, but giving it back to the owner to wipe before letting the police have it.
I really hope so… but I doubt it.
LilShieste
The only conclusion to draw is that they actually believed that they would have a “permanent majority”. They actually believed it.
I asked on here once why they seemed SO confident - after all, they were so determined to strip away any and all restrictions on Executive power. The best answer anyone came up with was ‘shortsightedness’, but I really think they had a lock on things - or at least THEY thought they had a lock on things.
I wonder if Diebold fucked up? Oops.
-Joe
I wonder if Diebold got nervous about all the scrutiny and closed a backdoor.
Why is the RNC even being asked which emails to submit? I think the committee should have said “RNC, we’re taking all your emails. Our geeks will get together with your geeks.” Asking them to review them all and having them submit those that might be incriminating doesn’t sound very effective. It would have been like the LAPD asking OJ to pretty please hand over any bloody knives he might have with his fingerprints on them.
What I find frustrating is that the last 2 weeks worth of national news has been devoted to grade-A sensationalism, and in the meantime, all of these shenanigans have been going on.
When John Stewart is the only person covering this on TV, you know there’s something wrong with the media.
No foolin’! As much as we might feel bad about the Rutgers team or the VTU massacre, they aren’t as signifcant as the incompetence/corruption/criminal behavior in the White House.
Bush missed two golden opportunities to cut Gonzales loose- if he had done so last week or this week it would have gotten buried in the back pages.
Is anybody listening to or watching Gonzalez’s hearing appearance right now?
It’s gut-twistingly painful. He is blatantly avoiding answering a single question directly. It could not possibly be more obvious that he’s engaging in a coverup. Of what, we don’t yet have the full picture. But the tap-dance is, I don’t know, ludicrously clumsy. He’s like a bug pinned to a board, wriggling frantically, squealing, “What pin? There’s no pin!”
I never thought I’d say this, but I actually feel a little bad for Gonzalez. Clearly he’s been instructed to shlep a huge bucket of shit into the Senate and attempt to convince the lawmakers to take a healthy bite.
Okay, I’m done feeling bad. Crucify the fucker.
Here’s a link to the live hearing feed.
http://www.c-span.org/watch/cs_cspan3_wm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS3
And why the hell is this the only place I can watch this? Why isn’t CSpan covering this? How many people get CSpan-3? Why isn’t this on every broadcast network? Why aren’t the cable news networks covering this? Faux News is talking about the friggin Branch Davidian standoff from years ago!
Exactly. The Congressional committee should send their geeks over to the RNC with a subpoena and a backup server, copy everything over from the original to the backup, replace the orignal with the backup, and bring the original server back to Congress.