<p>OK, so the Republican National Committee set up e-mail accounts for Rove and others to conduct business not subject to the laws requiring preservation of Presidential communications.</p>
<p>The House Judiciary Committee has notified the RNC to turn over all RNC e-mails pertaining to the fired US Attorneys.</p>
<p>This week, White House counsel notified the RNC that they must turn over the e-mails to the White House for review before complying with the Congressional request. They invoked a new consitutional authority, “Executive Interest”.</p>
<p>Of course, there’s one snag. When this reaches the courts, it will be decided by the US Attorney for D.C. Yep, political appointee, under the provisions of the Patriot Act, with no Senate confirmation.</p>
<p>Right. Somebody has to enforce a Congressional subpoena. That somebody would be a US Attorney, which we now know must be a Federalist Society member and do the political bidding of Karl Rove as a condition of employment.</p>
<p>Not to mention that the courts are stacked by the same administration that appointed Alberto “Alzheimer” Gonzales to the Texas Supreme Court and said that Harriett Miers was the most qualified hack…er judge…in the country to serve on the US Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Remember, this whole US Attorney flap is ultimately about filing (or not filing) voter fraud and corruption cases for partisan political gain.</p>
<p>On another note, a variation on the count the jellybeans in the jar contest: How many times will Alberto Gonzales say “I don’t remember” in his Senate testimony tomorrow? I think that the count for his underling, Kyle Sampson, was one hundred twenty-two. </p>
<p>And, of course, we have another Justice Department official taking the fifth, allegedly out of concern for a perjury trap. Smart girl. She knows that if she tells the truth, Karl Rove will instruct the US Attorney for the District of Columbia to indict her for perjury. And, who in the Department of Justice, would step in to prevent it? She knows that she’ll just be the next Scooter Libby fall-guy as a US Attorney follows orders to protect the big cheese, just like Fitzpatrick did.</p>
<p>id, do you really thing that Fitzgerald was following Rove’s orders? He was actually on the list to be fired at one point. From everything I’ve read, he is incorruptible and the best of the best. He said that Libby’s obstruction prevented him from bringing charges on the underlying crime (“throwing sand in the eyes”). He made it quite clear that he thought the outing of Valerie Plame was a serious crime, and that Cheney was behind it.</p>
<p>It is what it is. Of course it was a serious crime and the widespread nature of the “leaks” clearly shows that it was a systematic outing. None of the principles could recall anything. Fitzpatrick didn’t file charges. At the end of the day, everything else is just noise. I’m done giving any of Justice Department people the benefit of the doubt.</p>
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<p>Exactly. For failing to file enough voter fraud cases for Rove, if I recall. “Voter fraud cases” being a euphemism for suppressing the Democratic vote. Would Fitzpatrick have remained a Special Prosecutor after being fired from his US Attorney post? Is that why Rove floated the idea of firing all 93 US Attorneys? So many questions, so few memories and saved e-mails.</p>
<p>Libby was the designated fall guy. He took it like a good soldier because he knows there will be a Presidential pardon in December 2008.</p>
<p>If they were conducting government business at the RNC then they were skirting the Presidential Records Act.</p>
<p>If they weren’t conducting government business, then the White House has absolutely no right to block Congressional access to the e-mails.</p>
<p>What we are seeing is one gigantic fog machine with a goal of running out the clock in 2008. Everybody in the administration is playing “Mickey the Dunce” with a nice side dish of Alzheimer’s. “We might have misplaced some e-mails”. “Rove might have deleted some e-mails because he thought they were being archived…”</p>
<p>It’s kind of a shame it’s the US Attorney issue, because far more troubling is the Mickey the Dunce routine on authorization for torture and unauthorized access to private communications and financial records. Best suggestion I’ve seen in case Alberto Gonzales has memory difficulties tomorrow: waterboard him live on C-SPAN in an effort to jog his memory. After all, he ruled that it isn’t torture.</p>