We take a break from your nonstop election coverage to reflect on another victory for Melanie Sloan's Citizens For Responsibility in Washington (aka CREW).
A federal judge agreed Monday to allow a private group to delve into the operations of an office at the White House as part of a controversy over whether large amounts of e-mail have disappeared....
...The judge said she will allow Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to gather a "very limited" amount of information from the White House Office of Administration, which is in charge of preserving e-mail.
No smoking guns yet. No missing e-mails yet. But it's progress. Progress that the Bush Administration has fought tooth and nail to stop at every turn.
Much has been written about the missing e-mails.
** That there are two scandals, involving both the missing e-mails as well as illegal RNC-funded accounts on a curiously named gwb43.com server;
** That Abramoff and Plame Wilson details may be hidden among the missing emails;
** That Karl Rove may have compromised national security by using an illegal RNC e-mail account;
So what's gonna happen here? Well, we'll see. The Bush Administration is going to somehow have to prove that the White House Office of Administration (OA) is not independent from the political operations of the White House. That should be pretty hard - considering that OA used to respond to FOIA requests like other "independent agencies" (before the Administration changed the rules), OA was able to hire and fire career civil servants like other "independent agencies." And I'd guess that the painters, computer techs, mail runners and office furniture movers never had a "confidential advising" role with Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney. Of course I could always be wrong.
No, I think CREW is going to get to delve deeper. See more files. Peel back more layers.
Will they get answers? Who knows. But it is George W. Bush who has been reflecting long and hard on history these days:
"As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don't know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach."
Needless to say it's taking a longer time because all the evidence has been stashed away.
Next steps, again, we'll have to see. But be sure to tune into the House Oversight Committee's scheduled hearing on Tuesday, February 26:
Full Committee Hearing on Preservation of White House E-mails
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Tuesday, February 26, 2008, TBA at 2154 Rayburn House Office Building
And let me leave with a personal thought. Karl Rove's SOOOO guilty. Even the political operatives know it:
Standing alone in that soundproof chamber was Karl Rove. It was an impressive sight, that behemoth flailing his arms while barking into a headset, surrounded by a vast blinking array of laptops, desktops, telephones, and monitors (noticeably all of the computer gear was Apple rather than PC). He clearly saw himself as a field general with his all-seeing eyes on every last troop. The effect was something out of James Bond, or the first time you glimpse Darth Vader in his life-support pod, the bald head revealed just before the helmet comes down.
Allen Raymond, "How To Rig An Election"