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Thursday, April 12, 2007

The dog peed on my homework
Posted by Jill | 6:00 AM
Well, now we know what the "The Adults Are Now In Charge" administration really is: a bunch of spoiled brats who don't think they have to take responsibility for their own actions. The law doesn't apply to them because they are rich and powerful, and when they get caught, a lame excuse ought to qualify.

This shouldn't surprise anyone; this is the story of George W. Bush's life. But one would think that these guys would at least make an effort to NOT sound like Paris Hilton on a DWI:

Some White House staff wrote e-mail messages about official business on Republican Party accounts, and some may have been wrongly deleted, the administration said Wednesday in a disclosure tied to the inquiry into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

The White House said it could not rule out the possibility that some official e-mails relating to the firings had been deleted and are lost.

Democrats in Congress have been seeking copies of e-mails from the Republican National Committee as part of an investigation into whether the firing of the prosecutors last year was politically motivated.

"Some official e-mails have potentially been lost and that is a mistake the White House is aggressively working to correct," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters.

Asked whether some of the lost e-mails could be related to the firings of the U.S. attorneys last year, Stanzel said: "That can't be ruled out."

Democrats reacted with scorn.

"This sounds like the administration's version of the dog ate my homework. I am deeply disturbed that just when this Administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Stanzel said 22 White House officials had been allowed to maintain e-mail addresses through the Republican National Committee. They included President Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and several of his deputies.

Democrats have been seeking information that might tie Rove to the decision to fire the attorneys.

Some White House aides trying to avoid violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government property for certain political activities, may have used the political account to communicate about official White House business, Stanzel said.

Some of those official e-mails may now be lost because the RNC had a policy of deleting e-mails about every 30 days. That policy was changed in 2004 to exclude White House officials, who are required to retain records and correspondence. Everything e-mailed from a White House account is automatically archived, Stanzel said.


What we have here is a clear and brazen attempt -- can we call it a conspiracy yet? -- by White House officials to skirt federal requirements for archiving White House e-mail by using Republican National Committee accounts for "sensitive" (read: corruption) correspondence so that it can be deleted and not leave a paper trail. And why was this necessary? Because the White House, with the help of the Justice Department and the Republican National Committee, was embarking on a widespread effort to disenfranchise minority Democrats as a means of assuring perpetual Republican power:


Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.

In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.

One ex-convict was so unfamiliar with the rules that he provided his prison-issued identification card, stamped “Offender,” when he registered just before voting.

A handful of convictions involved people who voted twice. More than 30 were linked to small vote-buying schemes in which candidates generally in sheriff’s or judge’s races paid voters for their support.

A federal panel, the Election Assistance Commission, reported last year that the pervasiveness of fraud was debatable. That conclusion played down findings of the consultants who said there was little evidence of it across the country, according to a review of the original report, according to a review obtained by The New York Times and reported on Wednesday.

Mistakes and lapses in enforcing voting and registration rules routinely occur in elections, allowing thousands of ineligible voters to go to the polls. But the federal cases provide little evidence of widespread, organized fraud, prosecutors and election law experts said.


How positively Nixonian. Nixon was brought down by a covering up a break-in to Democratic National Committee headquarters to find ammunition against a 1972 opponent he was likely to beat anyway. The stakes for Bush were somewhat higher, because despite what the lapdogs in the press have said, Bush has never, ever had a mandate, having "won" both elections through disenfranchising people unlikely to vote Republican and unlikely to kick up a fuss about said disenfranchisement. So how better to try to save the Republican party from the damage done by this towel-snapping moron than to rig the justice system to institutionalize disenfranchisement?

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