All You Need To Know About The Email Scandal
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, Technology
WASHINGTON â€â€? Karl Rove and other White House employees were cautioned in employee manuals, memos and briefings to carefully save any e-mails that might discuss official matters even if those messages came from private e-mail accounts, the White House disclosed Friday. [..]The documents included a memorandum from then-White House General Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, who is now attorney general, cautioning employees that “any e-mail relating to official business … qualifies as a presidential record.”
The instructions dwell on the importance of separating political from official acts. But they also explain that all e-mail sent “to your official account is automatically archived as if it were a presidential record.” The manual adds: “If you happen to receive an e-mail on a personal account which otherwise qualifies as a presidential record, it is your duty to insure that it is saved as such by printing it out and saving it or by forwarding it to your White House e-mail account,” the manual said.
I don’t know about you, but this “No Accountability Ever!” example the administration is setting seems like it could be pretty damaging to our collective behavior overall. I mean, it’s gotten beyond ridiculous at this point. Now we’re into surreal territory.
At the very least, Rove and staff should be fired for incompetence.
Something tells me that ain’t gonna happen.
Good times.
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 14th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
See a pithy tongue-in-cheek visual that skewers Karl Rove and the Bush administration’s disregard for accountability…here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
April 15th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Uh didn’t the POTUS obstuct justice when he fired US Attorney Fred Black in 2002? Jack Abramoff demanded Black be fired, and the POTUS did it?
Is the POTUS being blackmailed? Have you ever googled Jack Abramoff and Mohammed Atta? Didn’t Susan Ralston work for Rove AND Abramoff?
April 15th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
What amazes me is the complete, absolute, and, quite honestly, shameful ignorance of technology on the part of our so-called representatives in government.
By requiring only paper copies/print-outs of electronic communications email, without either specifying that the full message delivery ‘headers’ be included, or challenging the validity of those produced without them, Karl Rove could have provided the documents for about $250 and 4 hours spent at his local ‘Kinko’s Copy Center’.
Sure, “lots of people don’t know about email ‘headers’…”, but that’s no excuse. In fact, it’s even more shameful for a “private” citizen to be ‘as ignorant of technology as a Washington politician…’