More on the RNC non-government email system

It is clear that the email system provided to 22 current top White House aides was intended to provide a method of doing political work that the Hatch Act states cannot be done on government equipment. But it is also a lot more. It has primarily been an email system designed to be used that was not open to audit or subpoena in lawsuits. Here is what Paul Kiel wrote at TPM Muckraker today on the subject:

it's apparent from emails that the White House avoided the governmental email system because it was vulnerable to investigators. The Hatch Act just provided a good excuse. In 2003, for instance, a lobbyist for Jack Abramoff Kevin Ring wrote him that emails about Abramoff's clients shouldn't be sent to White House addresses because "it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." That warning, Ring told The Washington Post, came from Jennifer Farley, a deputy in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Susan Ralston, Rove's personal aide, used RNC provided email accounts when corresponding with Abramoff, her old boss.

And remember that Karl Rove reportedly uses his RNC-provided account for approximately 95% of his communication.

In other words, it was an open secret at the White House that the parallel system was to be used for everything you didn't want coming out later -- an understanding that was most likely never made explicit, but a situation that was carefully preserved by not providing apparently any parameters for what sort of communication should be done via the White House system.

The apparent loss of a large number of emails was not an accident. It was the reason the system was used as extensively as it was, especially by Karl Rove, and the reason why clear guidance on how to use the system properly was never made explicit.

This was political. In spite of all the incompetence the Bush administration has displayed in other arenas of government, the one thing they do well is political activities and planning. The lack of clear guidance for using the RNC email system was not accidental. The misuse of the system was not accidental. And most especially, the reported loss of many emails has not been accidental.

This was political, planned and conducted by highly experienced political operators with specific political goals in mind. Anything they tell us to the contrary should be assumed to be a lie - a lie that was planned from the beginning as a cover for the system itself.

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Addendum 10:52 AM CDT
Atrios says it so much better than I do.

Voter Suppression

It's probably a hopeless task, but perhaps someone other than dirty fucking hippie bloggers can understand that Karl Rove's efforts to use the tools of the state to suppress the votes of poor and minority voters is, you know, profoundly wrong in a way which makes him a extremely bad man.