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Thousands of White House E-mails Deleted
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Apr 12, 2007 02:55 PM
from the they-have-also-misplaced-their-homework dept.
from the they-have-also-misplaced-their-homework dept.
kidcharles writes "The Washington Post reports that in the midst of an investigation by the U.S. Congress into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys by the Department of Justice, numerous White House e-mails have been lost. Among them are communications from presidential adviser Karl Rove. Parallels are being drawn with the infamous '18 minutes' missing from the Nixon Watergate tapes. Also at issue is the use of Republican National Committee e-mail domains (such as gwb43.com and georgewbush.com) rather than the official White House domain. This is a violation of the Presidential Records Act."
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Netcraft Shows Smartech Running Ohio Election Servers 688 comments
goombah99 writes "Netcraft is showing that an event happened in the Ohio 2004 election that is difficult to explain. The Secretary of State's website, which handles election reporting, normally is directed to an Ohio-based IP address hosted by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp. According to the American Registry on Internet Numbers, Smartech's block of IP addresses 64.203.96.0 – 64.203.111.255 encompasses the entire range of addresses owned by the Republican National Committee. Smartech hosted the recently notorious gbw43.com domain used from the White House in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act, from which thousands of White House emails vanished." Update: 04/25 01:24 GMT by KD : ePluribus Media published a piece called Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again on election eve 2006, when a similar DNS switch to Smartech occurred. They have been investigating the larger story of IT on Capitol Hill and elsewhere for two years.
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Your Rights Online: White House Must Answer For Missing Emails 256 comments
Lucas123 writes "A District Court judge this week ruled in favor of a Washington-based watchdog group, allowing them to question White House officials about missing emails involving controversial issues. The subjects include the release of the identity of a former CIA operative, the reasons for launching the war in Iraq and actions by the US Department of Justice. The group had filed suit [PDF] last May against the White House Office of Administration, seeking access to White House email under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The discovery ruling is bringing to light issues of email retention in businesses and other private organizations. We've previously discussed the White House's difficulties with email."
[+]
Your Rights Online: Judge Demands Information About Missing White House Emails 209 comments
Lucas123 writes "A District Court judge has ordered the Executive Office of the President to tell the court by May 5 whether any e-mail server backup tapes were kept for a period from March to October 2003 to cover controversial issues such as reasons for starting the war in Iraq, the release of a former CIA operative's name and the US Department of Justice's actions. The White House has been working for months trying to fend off a lawsuit filed last May in federal court in Washington by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. The judge cited what he called an apparent contradiction by White House CIO Theresa Payton as to whether backup tapes had been preserved. He also recommended that White House employees be ordered to turn over any flash drives or other portable media that may contain e-mails. The White House missing email scandal has been developing for some time now."
[+]
Your Rights Online: Bush Administration's E-Mail Deluge May Overload Archive System 169 comments
Lucas123 writes "The Clinton administration generated 32 million e-mails. Bush's administration has generated 50 times as much data — 140TB, 20TB of which is email — which soon will have to be archived through a new government-built records management system. The new system may not be up to the task because the technology behind it may not be able to handle the sheer volume of data along with the fact that the Bush administration has been slow in providing the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) with needed information about the records, according to a Computerworld story. Questions have also been raised about millions of missing e-mails from between March 2003 and October 2006. 'It wasn't until this summer that an intensive effort began to share information,' said Ken Thibodeau, director of NARA's Electronic Records Archives."
[+]
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DesScorp writes "The AP reports that the Obama administration has picked up where the Bush administration left off on the missing White House email issue by trying to have a lawsuit dismissed that would have kept investigating whether or not email was still missing. Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President expressed disappointment with the Obama administration's actions. Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, noted that President Barack Obama on his first full day in office called for greater transparency in government. The Justice Department 'apparently never got the message' from Obama, Blanton said."
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Does this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Does this... (Score:5, Interesting)
If they do manage to hide those emails, that'll be a first for The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight.
Their consistent MO has been to spout brazen nonsense, then rely on the sheer effrontery to keep the truth hidden until it is covered in a pile of bullshit so deep it will never be brought to light. And the damned thing is that it worked -- a least for a while. Seriously, who has time to think about the truth behind the Iraq WMD lie? It's buried in a strata of crap so deep you'd need a team of archaeologists to find it.
I think the reason this works is that regular people, the people who vote, have no way to know directly whether something is true or not. That's the power vacuum in which money is supreme. Then these guys blew it by telling two big lies that the public could see for itself were lies: that the Iraq war is succeeding and that they cared what happened to the victims of Katrina. Katrina was the watershed event. Before you could get away with lying if you were glib enough. Afterward it was much more dangerious.
But they're still doing it.
Take the US attorney firing. I'm not a lawyer, but even I know enough never to tell an easily refuted lie when you can get by with a uselessly vague truth. I'd have been saying things like "It was time for new blood." or "David Iglesias did a fine job, but a shakeup will keep everybody on their toes, and Larry Gomez deserves his chance to show us what he can do."
Instead they concocted a pile of utter horseshit that is easy to disprove and which by the way impugns the reputation and service of a group of people who happen to be -- wait for it -- high power lawyers. Don't they even watch TV? The way prosecutors get you is they let you talk and talk until you've buried yourself in your own crap and you'll do anything they ask if they'll just please, please throw you a rope? It's a wonder these guys can make it from the shower to the breakfast table in the morning without being indicted.
It's never been a surprise these guys are liars. I knew they were liars before they even came in -- and I don't say that lightly. I don't think people are evil because they disagree with me. I don't see eye to eye with Bob Dole, but he would have been a strong and honorable president. But this guy was obviously a pathetic liar from the start. They didn't exactly try to hide the fact they ran a whisper campaign against John McCain in South Carolina. Anybody with even a whisp of decency would had the person responsible fired in disgrace. It's a disgrace to the Republican party they didn't kick W out right then and there.
It goes to show you there are worse things than losing.
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Printed, shredded then burnt! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: the Iraq WMD lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if you go back to early 2003 and look at the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq, you'll see that the Bush gang pretty much gave up on the WMD argument during the last month or so. The reason was that it had been so thoroughly debunked by so many people that they realized they needed a new pretext. They had pretty much run through all that were even remotely credible, so they pulled out their trump card: They had to stage a pre-emptive attack to prevent whatever Saddam's government might do in the future.
This pretty much stopped the attempts to debunk their arguments, because this one can't be debunked. Unless you are blind, deaf and quadraplegic, you could be planning an attack on anyone, no matter who you are or how peaceful you've been in the past. It's a challenge-proof excuse for attacking anyone anywhere anytime.
This is still remembered by a fair number of people in the world. It became clear that the people running the US government weren't joking when they used the phrase "sole remaining super-power". They did consider themselves in charge of the world, and they were prepared to attack anyone who challenged them. Or even people who didn't challenge them. They don't need evidence; all they need is to think that you might attack them.
A lot of us still remember this. And we remember that roughly half of the Americans who bothered to vote in 2004 voted to give these people four more years.
(The WMD concept does keep rearing its ugly head, of course. This is partly because of the discovery that, despite several more years of debunking, around half the voting American population still believes it. But it's also routinely used by American comedians, so it's not so good as a theme song any more. The real future is in worrying about what you and I might do in the future if we're not stopped now.)
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Re:Does this... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Does this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Does this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Does this... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always a mistake to think you can run government like a business. It's a double mistake to vote for a politician who claims they can; they're either lying (most politicians) or stupid (take your pick).
Three out of ten businesses go bankrupt within the first year. When a government goes bankrupt it destroys an entire country. Immediately you see there is a difference; you can't run a government like a business and simply hope you're not in that bottom 30%. Governments need to be far more risk adverse.
Governments work with much larger time frames. They need to think in terms of decades. Businesses barely think in terms of years. I think one of the problems with the current administration is that they do only think in terms of years. That works fine in business where you can always bail before the stock tanks - the new investors take the loss instead of you - but it's disastrous for a government.
The US government handles significantly more money than any single US business. This means there are more opportunities for corruption so there is a corresponding stronger need for oversight and accountability. This is one of the reasons why government works so slowly; the public service structure has been designed to obstruct and detect and resolve corruption.
Governments have significantly more power than businesses. Businesses only have to follow the law; governments can create them. Governments can declare war. Government can imprison people. Government enforces the judiciary. These responsibilities make government both more powerful but also more difficult to manage. A businessman is not trained for that sort of responsibility.
And I can't end without taking an easy swipe at the current administration. GWB is a terrible businessman and perhaps the worst choice for "CEO of the USA". He managed to financially cripple three oil companies before finally making money on the Texas Rangers; and IMO his profit from the Texas Rangers had nothing to do with his skills as a businessman. Despite having a huge family wealth and an MBA from Harvard, he was worse than mediocre. His track record has spoken for itself. I'm not surprised you wanted the government to be run like a business - it's a common desire amongst free market advocates - but I'm very surprised you chose GWB as the champion for your ideology.
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Re:Does this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Does this... (Score:5, Informative)
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Not thousands of e-mails -- OVER FIVE MILLION (Score:5, Informative)
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Oh come now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh come now (Score:5, Informative)
Quoting Leahy [yahoo.com]:
"You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."
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Re:Oh come now (Score:5, Funny)
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Miraculously.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Miraculously.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Miraculously.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Miraculously.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Miraculously.. (Score:5, Funny)
Hell no, and I'll tell you why: He just doesn' have the patience (or stupidity, take your pick) for the job. As a "go-to" guy who operates behind the scenes and gets shit done, he's probably the best in the world.
But, doing press conferences, diplomatic trips, all the usual banal crap the Prez has to do on a daily basis, I think would either drive him towards his final heart attack or a murder spree in the West Wing.
So yeah,bring on President Dick. He'll stab an intern through the heart with a fork before his first week is done.
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Re:Miraculously.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, impeaching Bush does not automatically mean he is removed from office. I remind you that Clinton was impeached for similar reasons (perjury) and remained in office.
At this point I don't even think it matters whether or not the White House is being honest with the investigation committee. If they are being honest, then they are incredibly inept and don't deserve to run this country. If they aren't being honest they are a bunch of filthly liars who don't deserve to run this country. Same thing with all the intelligence goofs with the Iraq invasion. It doesn't matter much if they were lying about the intelligence or intentionally misleading the Senate. Either way, they are either dishonest or inept.
Choosing not to impeach and seek justice based on the "next guy" is incredibly silly and un-American. Even if the decision is made to remove Bush from office, let Cheney be the President and let him be under the same scrutiny I say. This administration should not get away with being inept or dishonest, and they certainly shouldn't get away with being inept at being dishonest.
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Re:Miraculously.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Criminal trials routinely have more than one defendant. An impeachment takes the form of a criminal trial so there should be no problem impeaching both the President and Vice-President simultaneously.
I don't see that happening over the emails though. The Democrats are not going to impeach anyone unless there is a high probability that they can convict. At the moment it is doubtful that there would be more than five Republican Senators that have even serously thought about backing impeachment.
Gonzalez is another matter entirely. Unless he resigns soon he will be impeached. In his case the arithmetic is very different. A trial in the Senate would inevitably turn into a proxy for the impeachment of Bush. If the outcome of that trial was a 60:40 vote to convict the press would spend the next 18 months asking if the Democrats had found the seven votes they need to convict Bush. That is such a downside for the administration it cannot be allowed to happen. Gonzalez will go the minute Democrats start impeachment procedings.
The only situation in which Bush is likely to be impeached is if he launches an attack against Iran. That is more likely than not to end up an even greater fiasco than Iraq. Iran has more military hardware in the region than the US can call on. They have highly effective Chinese anti-ship missiles.
If the vulcans persuade Bush that bombing Iran would be a cakewalk it is sure to be another poorly planned fiasco premised on the idea that the enemy is a bunch of ingorant cowards who will roll at the first sign of a fight - yeah just like they did in the Iran-Iraq war when they lost a million lives.
If Bush bombs and the Iranians respond by sinking the Nimitz, closing the straits of Hormuz and launching a ground attack against Basra an impeachment becomes a very real likelihood. Short of that level of stupidity it is not likely to happen.
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That's pretty much where I was going... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nonononono (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:That's pretty much where I was going... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Sexually irresponsible"? What the hell does that mean? Asking about a consensual sexual act to try to establish some pattern for a supposedly nonconsensual sexual act is utterly unfounded. It's unrelated.
I'm saying that it's justified by the fact that he was being questioned by a grand jury, which denies you your constitutional right to protection from self-incrimination. Not that our constitution ever meant that much, being just a piece of paper, but there seem to be exceptions to every "right" that the constitution supposedly guarantees us.
He was denied his fifth amendment rights. You don't think that is wrong?
Here's a concept for you: You cannot be held to an oath made under duress of force. The force in question is denial of constitutional rights.
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Re:Miraculously.. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la
Firing US Attorneys in term is another matter. That has happened only a few times over the last century, and always due to malfeasance or criminal activity on the part of the US Attorney in question. The Hatch Act (the subject of this discussion) expressly forbids political activity or partisan interference in both the Judiciary and the Justice Department (it also demands full records keeping for all Federal activities).
It would appear our President and his advisers have committed felonies.
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Re:Miraculously.. (Score:5, Informative)
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N.S.A. Restores BushCo Syndicate Mail: +1, Fun (Score:5, Funny)
This one's a no-brainer.
The NSA has been monitoring and logging all US domestic phone and email traffic for a few years now, thanks to Bush and Cheney.
So subpoena the "lost" WH emails from the NSA. Put the domestic spying operation to some practical use.
If they don't have the emails, they aren't doing their job, and it will be time to get rid of the NSA.
Annoyed Canuck | 04.12.07 - 3:57 pm | #
I hope this helps the Federal criminal prosecution of the world's largest crime syndicate [whitehouse.org].
Patriotically as always,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
Typical outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
And, as usual, no one will be held accountable for it. If it looks like someone may, they will claim "National Security" and halt all proceedings. It would seem that "Slick Willy" has some competition.
Re:Typical outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Typical outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
OMG. Your head must be so far in the sand you hear Mandarin.
"many democrats were privy to the very same information the president was and they chose to support the war. Did they lie? The UN believed Saddam had had weapons of mass destruction. Did they lie? Europe also believed Saddam had those weapons. Did they lie?"
No, there mistake was thinking Bush had some inegrity and believed him.
~
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
- George W. Bush, speech to UN General Assembly, Sept. 12, 2002
There was no evidence of this, at all.
~
The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq.
- George W. Bush, Nov. 23, 2002
No, many nations wanted evidence, they wanted to know where Bush was getting his information because they couldn't confirm what he was saying.
~
We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, press briefing, Jan. 9, 2003
WHen you are the top dog, what your spokeman says counts as coming from you.
~
What we know from UN inspectors over the course of the last decade is that Saddam Hussein possesses thousands of chemical warheads, that he possesses hundreds of liters of very dangerous toxins that can kill millions of people.
- White House spokesman Dan Bartlett, CNN interview, Jan. 26, 2003
UN inspectors never said such a thing.
~
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
- George W. Bush, address to the U.S., March 17, 2003
Again, false.
Intelligence "analysts never said there was an imminent threat" from Iraq before the war.
- CIA Director George Tenet, speech, Feb. 5, 2004
~
I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein - because he had a weapons program.
- George W. Bush, remarks to reporters, May 6, 2003
Not a lie, but an interesting statement from a man in 2002 said that the definatly had them.
~
Motivation:
From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go. Going after Saddam was topic "A" ten days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.
- former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, CBS' 60 Minutes, Jan. 11, 2004
~
My resientment and disgust towards our president is not party based, it is based soley on the action of this administration.
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Re:Typical outcome (Score:5, Informative)
Because firing them all when you take office is standard practice. Firing some of them in the middle of your term for political reasons (eg, they are in the process of investigating certain Republicans), is NOT standard practice and actually falls under a little something called "obstruction of justice".
Pardon me, but your hypocrisy is showing.
Your ignorance is.
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Blame the spamfilter (Score:5, Insightful)
Deleted? What about the redundancy? What about the (Score:5, Interesting)
so... (Score:5, Funny)
Nixon (Score:4, Insightful)
Bush administration totally corrupted (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush needs to hang Rove out to dry -- let a special prosecutor send that guy to a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, can Gonzalez and seal the door to Cheney's office.
Re:Bush administration totally corrupted (Score:5, Informative)
That is factually wrong. Laws were broken. A CIA agent was outed without proper clearance. The barrier between those who were allowed to know vs. the general public was crossed.
Libby has been convicted of saying different things at different times about what he remembers about when he recalls talking to people about something that wasn't a problem and didn't cause any problems, except for himself.
This is factually wrong. Libby was convicted of perjury. Perjury is purposefully lying under oath, in this case to a grand jury. Moreover, the "something that wasn't a problem" as you call it clearly WAS a problem, namely a CIA agent who had been working on counter-terrorism in the area of weapons of mass destruction was outed. Problems WERE caused-- not only the CIA agent was outed, but her entire network, including fake companies and other contacts were outed.
She wasn't covert
Factually wrong. Read her testimony [washingtonpost.com]. And I quote,
the White House didn't leak her name
Again, wrong. Although Armitage leaked her name first, her name was ALSO independently leaked by Rove and others to members of the media.
Pretty straightforward to me.
her husband's silly take on things has been roundly and thoroughly debunked, and he's been pointed out as lying about (or just being oily about) the whole thing from the beginning
not sure which "silly take on things" you're referring to, but he was 100% correct about yellowcake in Niger and that he had been targeted by Rove and others in the White House has been confirmed in Dick Cheney's own handwriting.
Perhaps you're thinking of the White House Press Secretary Scott McClellen's account that no one in the White House had leaked, which HAS been thoroughly debunked. Or maybe you're thinking of Bush's claim to that effect, and that anyone who had leaked would "no longer work" at the White House. Another lie.
Where's the corruption in this?
Where to begin... it could be in the White House's complete lack of support in finding the truth, lying to cover it up, lying about what the consequences would be if a traitor were found, lying to get us into a war, and then attacking an individual who was trying to get the truth out to the public. Somewhere in there.
the special prosecutor, who knew the whole story almost immediately, worked this in an entirely political manner?
Sorry, the special prosecutor had a theory (which turned out to be correct) about who the leaker was, but went to additional sources to confirm that this was in fact the leaker, the first leaker, and the ONLY leaker (which he was not). This requires interviewing more witnesses. Dick Cheney's 2nd man decided to lie under these circumstances, and to NOT bust him for this would endanger the legal process just as much as say, hiring a yes-man as the Attorney General or firing DAs for political reasons.
Pull your head out of your ass, stop listening to Rush/Hannity for your news, and quit spreading such bald-face lies.
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Tradition (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_tapes [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Enro
Wiretapping? (Score:5, Funny)
Presidential Records Act? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given these facts, you're surprised he thinks the Presidential Records Act doesn't apply to him? You're joking right? You think these people want to be held accountable 5-10 years from now? Put it in the memory hole, so we can have one of those swell state funerals like they had for Ronald Reagan, put on the rose-colored glasses and talk about how greatness of this catastrophy of a President. America wins the war on intelligence!
Executive privilege (Score:5, Insightful)
On the plus side, I bet it will be tough to claim executive privilege on those e-mails.
Disconnect between WH statements and law (Score:5, Informative)
Yesterday he said this:
Here are the specifics of what is required by the Hatch Act [osc.gov]. It is clear that
A) Politicization (partisan activities) within certain Federal Agencies, such as the CIA or the Justice Department, is a felony.
B) All records relating to government business MUST be retained for investigative purposes, and later historical preservation. To destroy these documents is a felony.
This law is clear, has been on the books since the 1930s, and has passed several Supreme Court affirmations. There's no wiggle room here. This is a clear violation of the law. And note A) in relation to the Federal US Attorney firings. To fire is legal; to fire with even just partisan intent -- never mind apparent Obstruction of Justice -- is a clear felony.
We're walking right into another constitutional crisis. Comparisons to Nixon's firing of Archibold Cox (The Saturday Night Massacre) are spot on.
Waiting for FOX News' take on this... (Score:5, Insightful)
------
On a similar note, I read this quote today by Lee Iacocca regarding the Bush administration:
"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."
Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have."
Some people (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the penalty for violating internal White House policy, I asked? "I don't believe the staff manual contains penalties for failure to preserve," the lawyer said.
Stanzel, possibly unwittingly, offered one possible explanation for why the rule on preservation was flouted so widely: Because there was apparently no prospect of personal consequences. "There are no personal violations of the Presidential Records Act, but you can have a personal violation of the Hatch Act," he said.
The lawyer criticized the crystal-clear (to me) ban on using non-White House e-mail for official purposes as being "too concise" and described a new, more extensive White House policy
Our government has become everything that the first settlers to America were trying to get away from.
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Re:Some people (Score:5, Funny)
Right now I'm homeless. If I owned a gun the police would've taken it long ago and probably made me a felon for carrying it.
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Re:Some people (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me an example. I don't dispute that presidents are always trying to grab more power, but I disagree that this has increased over time, as you claim. Probably the most dictatorial president ever, the one that eliminated more civil rights than any other, was Abraham Lincoln. Bush's Guantanamo is nothing compared to Lincoln's suspension of habeaus corpus for US citizens and the arrest and detention of anyone even suspected of sympathizing with the South - with no trial, speedy or otherwise. Most of the 'rights' that people claim are being taken away didn't exist 100 years ago the way we think of them. Torture of criminal suspects was legal. Anyone expressing a dissenting opinion could be arrested.
Sure, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but it always has been, and there is nothing particularly worse about the times are living in -- it's just that we are here to see it first hand.
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Re:Some people (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, Lincoln did not have the power to suspend habeas corpus, so he should have been impeached and removed from office.
The scary thing about that period of time is that the executive branch would simply ignore court decisions they didn't like. In Ex parte Merryman, the SCOTUS ruled that the suspension was not in consultation with Congress, and was therefore unconstitutional. If the tribunals come before the SCOTUS again and are ruled unconstitutional, Bush can really ignore the decision. I highly doubt there are enough Republicans to break rank and remove Bush in an impeachment proceeding.
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Re:Is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Parallels... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What a total outrage!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
What is not customary is firing 8 of them - the same ones you appointed, no less - in the middle of your term, for dubious reasons which may have included, but not been limitted to the fact that many of these 8 attorney's apparently either refused to back off on investigations of Republicans, or refused to vigorously persue investigations of Democrats - probably because in both scenario's they acted based on what they felt was warranted by the available evidence. In other words they acted as they were supposed to, as unbiased officers of the law, not as political shrills which is what Bush wanted them to be.
By the way, has anyone besides me realised that with 8 of the 93 attornies fired for not doing enough to go after the Democrats or too much to go after the Republicans, that leaves 85 who, by implication, are doing plenty to go after the Democrats and ignoring the mis-steps of the Republicans. Shudder.
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