Empty Heads
by shep
Most Friday mornings, if I’m near a radio, I listen to the Dianne Rehm show’s News Roundup. I don’t expect to learn anything new (about a week ago, they spent an entire hour discussing the merits of the science behind the theory of global warming) except what the centrist-establishment political wisdom (it’s just an expression) has to tell the “liberal” NPR audience about what’s going on in the world.
This morning, the esteemed panelists, including Jim Angle (Fox), Eleanor Clift (Newsweek) and Anne Kornblut (WaPo), eventually worked their way to the subject of possibly thousands millions [yup] of missing White House e-mails sent by as many as 22 50 political aids (featuring Karl Rove) over non-approved, unsecured outside email servers at the Republican National Committee.
I don’t transcribe (Mom told me to take typing in HS but, as usual, I ignored her wisdom) and I won’t waste the time and money on a transcript (feel free to check my take) but I swear to you that the universal opinion was that the problem was that there had been poor guidance from the White House on how those aids should manage their e-mail. That’s it, nothing to see here folks, move along.
This was the WaPo article on the “lost” White House e-mails yesterday:
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to discuss whether the political aids were driven by a desire to conduct business outside of potential review.
This was from the Post’s Dan Froomkin, also yesterday:
But when I asked Stanzel to read out loud the White House e-mail policy, it seemed clear enough to me: "Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff," says the handbook that all staffers are given and expected to read and comply with.
And this is from the NY Times today:
It also exposed the dual electronic lives led by Mr. Rove and 21 other White House officials who maintain separate e-mail accounts for government business and work on political campaigns — and raised serious questions, in the eyes of Democrats, about whether political accounts were used to conduct official work without leaving a paper trail.
Now I know that these are just editors and far-too-highly-paid bobbleheads but, I have to ask, shouldn’t they at least know what their own newspapers are writing before they are all called around a microphone and paid to tell other people what’s new?
Late breaking: Karl Rove gets a lawyer.
Yum.
check out this KOS Diary: NPR blows US Attorneys story wide open.
Was this the same thing you were listening to?
(PS. there's an audio link there too.)
Nope. That was about 4 hours later. I laughed my ass off when I heard it.
Yup, how could anyone (especially a "journalist") imagine that a swell guy like Karl Rove, well known for his sense of fair play and respect for the rules, might set up a communications system to conceal his actions and leave no paper trail?
F*cking morons.
Right now the missing email story looks like a bunch of ducks gliding on a lake: everything looks calm and peaceful, but under the surface there is a hell of a lot of paddling going on.
As usual, the traditional has bought the idea that there are two sides to the story. But it's pretty clear what the rulebook says and what Rove et. al. did. In other words, there is no plausible "other side" to this story.
Correction: much of the traditional is viewing this as "the Democrats again going after Rove." David Brooks, among others, is floating that balloon.
Corollary to this theme: "We just don't know what really happened." Duh. That's the whole point! That was, as you recall, the whole point in the Plame scandal/Libby prosecution as well. Fitzgerald said it best: "They threw sand in the umpire's eyes." That's what obstruction of justice is, for crying out loud.
Crikey -- so many scandals so little time.
It's a sh*tstorm:
"And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."
They're good to their word in that respect. Why do I think that they felt confident that there was no institution or organization with the balls to investigate and report on their "creativity"? Go figure.