Since you don’t criticize anything except that which you already oppose, there’s no reason to think that “beginning to think” carries any credibility to speak of.

“Show me the Emails!”

There are already plenty of clues that indicate the emails are there — emails don’t die — and that the administration is simply not providing the emails.

If you can’t grok that part, maybe you need to sit this out.

Congress needs to put teeth in the PRA; certain violations should be felonies.

That’s hard to work out. The buck stops with the President. Even the Hatch Act is toothless, as Cookies Doan proved.

The Archivist needs to be empowered, that’s for sure, with ongoing oversight powers. But I honestly think that the PRA is unenforceable against someone wanting to bury the archives unless it either a) is stipulated as an impeachable offense; b) allows an ex-president to be charged. And even b) can be negated by plenary pardon power.

Backup tape is cheap. The Presidential Records Act is clear. An ‘industry’ that ‘recycles’ its backup tapes is one working in the field of ass-coverage. If a Fortune 500 co. said this to investigators, people would be heading to jail.

Another private group suing the White House in the e-mail controversy sees the White House’s conduct as odd.

‘‘They changed their practice in 2003 to start saving the backups, but four-and-a-half years later they still have not yet figured out whether or what e-mails were deleted,’’ commented Meredith Fuchs, general counsel of the National Security Archive.

‘‘What has the White House been doing for two years?’’ asked Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. ‘‘Two years after the special prosecutor publicly identified the problem, the White House still doesn’t seem to have a clue.’’ On the recycling issue, Fratto, the White House spokesman, said that despite the practice, some tapes should contain e-mails from before October 2003.

‘‘Of course the disaster recovery backup tapes were, at one time, recycled,’’ said Fratto. ‘‘However, since October 2003, the Office of Administration has retained and preserved its disaster recovery tapes. The disaster recovery system is set up to regularly back up everything on the network for the Executive Office of the President.’’

CIA leak e-mail possibly erased
January 16, 2008 FROM AP

I maintain simply that no one has yet presented them after all this time, and thus it is becomes safer and safer to simply say that they no longer are available.

Like the movie. “Show me the money.”

Rayne, show me the emails!

Well, at least it should be obvious by now.