There’s Nothing To See Here, Move Along…

IT’S NICE TO see the Bush Administration taking their Presidential Records Act so seriously, now that they are all on the down slope of a lame duck presidency. In a blatant move to avoid any embarrasing investigations or congressional subpoenas the lads at the Whitehouse have taken it upon themselves to delete or ‘misplace’ any potentially dangerous emails (in other words, evidence) to great effect.

In theory the Presidential Records Act orders that all White House emails are stored forever; that’s it. Forever. I think you would agree that this is a fairly clear statement of requirements which would lead one to suspect that deleting emails is you know, bad. However Bush’s team has been getting around this by using their Republican National Committee accounts instead of their Whitehouse accounts, which of course can be deleted – even though this is in complete contradiction to standard White House email policy which states that ”Federal law requires the preservation of electronic communications sent or received by White House staff”.  

And even if the above was not clear enough for some poor and confused souls in the Whitehouse, the offical handbook also states that “commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements.”

Still, as we all know annoying things like Federal law and Executive Office of the President rules don’t apply to the men and women of Bush’s Administration. They are beyond the law, not just above it, but completely beyond it.

As with all other things Bush related when it comes to trying to get to the truth of things it’s a case of “There’s nothing to see here, move along“, more so now that all evidence which may ever have been even remotely related to some truth has been systematically deleted and ‘misplaced’ in order to avoid any dodgy questions or complications in the future.

I think that picture above says it all really; it’s Bush’s stance on Freedom Of Information. Then again he’s probably much too busy destroying the middle east and pretending that climate change doesn’t exist to care about this kind of stuff; sure that’s what he has flunkies for right? I’m surprised he even lifted his own finger!