Why Do We Have Rules?
April 14th, 2007Karl Rove’s emails are missing.
Yesterday, congressional Democrats denounced the White House after administration officials acknowledged this week that e-mails dealing with official government business, including the firing of U.S. attorneys, may have been lost because they were improperly sent through political messaging accounts. Twenty-two White House officials — and a total of about 50 over the course of the administration — have been given such accounts to avoid doing political work on government equipment. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, accused the White House of lying about the matter. He was joined by the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), in calling on the White House to join Congress in setting up a “fair and objective process for investigating this matter.”
“You can’t erase e-mails, not today,” Leahy said in an angry speech on the Senate floor. “They’ve gone through too many servers. Those e-mails are there — they just don’t want to produce them. It’s like the infamous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes.” White House officials rejected that explanation. “What we have done has been forthcoming, honest,” spokeswoman Dana Perino said. “We are trying to understand to the best of our ability the universe of the e-mails that were potentially lost, and we are taking steps to make sure that we use the forensics that are available to retrieve any of those that are lost.”
Dana Perino says, “We have done [is] forthcoming,” but what he really means is, “We’re going to stall and pretend that all’s well until the public has a shiny new toy to play with.” It’s so dishonest and obnoxious and wrong, I hate it, not just because I feel they’ll get away without impeachment, which Bush deserves, but because I know that Karl Rove won’t be fired. What he did, what he does, is with the complete consent of the President.
The other day I wrote about pets and the pet food recall. I’m glad to read that the Senate, including Robert Byrd, feels the same. I half-expected him to start saying, “You can’t just have petfood that kills animals. It’s wrong, and that’s why we have rules, that’s why we have rules, that’s why we have rules!!” (Wink, J.)
Although now that I think of it, Why do we have rules? Nobody ever enforces them.