From what I've heard, the use of RNC e-mail accounts violates some Federal laws regarding archival records and communications, and it'll be interesting seeing the L'il Rascals lawyers from Regent University trying to convince the Supreme Court that e-mails sent thru the RNC should be kept from public scrutiny by the public's representatives in Congress.

The RNC will destroy the evidence, make no mistake about that. But computer records take a bit of work to totally scrub. So... here's the proposition: Your party is going down in flames. The Bushists have made fools of all of you who voted or believed in him. If you want to save your party, find these records...Publish them in Salon and the NYTIMES.... Cut the cancer from your body. Your party is depending on you! Be a hero! Besides doing the right thing, you will certainly be the most sought after speaker and guest... which could mean millions of dollars a year in appearence fees. Think about it! If not for your country, for the financial security of yourself and your family.

What the wingnuts believe is that there is some kind of blind adulation of Bill Clinton kind of like, well, like what they have for Bush and Company. Therefore with a reminder that "Clinton did it", whether the comparison is accurate, relevant or not, they expect us to nod our head and agree then that it must be okay. Other options are "Reid did it", "Pelosi did it", etc.

What they miss, over and over again, is that most of us (especially independants like myself) do not tolerate malfeasance from either party. If it looks like we're hammering republicans more than democrats lately it's only because there is more to hammer.

So: If Clinton did it and it's wrong, it's still wrong.

If Sandy Berger did it and it's wrong, it's still wrong.

Any democrat who breaks the law should go to jail.

If Bush did it and it's wrong, it's still wrong.

If a republican breaks the law, they should go to jail

And if Wolfowitz is doing something wrong, it's still wrong.

See how simple the math is when you aren't making up bogus excuses and exceptions!

Just because Clinton "did it" then it becomes an excuse by the neocons that somehow it's OK if Bush, or anyone else, does the same. What a hairbrained ideation. They use it like some school yard taunt: Clinton did it, Clinton did it...One might recall Clinton also had oral sex with an intern. We don't see anyone using that ditty to explain why it is "OK" to have oral sex with interns do we?

I'm sick of hearing the TV pundants ranting Clinton did it, Clinton did it! Enough! Subterfuge is subterfuge plain and simple. If Clinton pulled this kind of crap he was just as big an idoit as Bush and should have been held just as accountable.

There's a big difference with what Clinton's admin. did on this issue.

The R's were screaming about politics, not policy, being done on the government dime. Someone had made a phone call or two regarding campaigns and/or donations from the White House and thus another huge Clinton "scandal" was born. Clinton's team then had cell phones and computers separate for these kind of functions, I believe they left the building, too, if calls were to be made. There were no email accounts and department to department communications were NOT done this way.

The Bush administration, seems to be approaching this issue in a different way.

From the document dump we've seen, the Dept. of Justice and Rove have contacted each other regarding official business on RNC accounts. This prevents their emails from being official records.

I see a big difference here. And since when is Clinton the end all, be all ethical bar for Republicans?

Election tampering? Secret records of communication? Attorney purge? My God, it's like a Wal-Mart version of Watergate.

So many Bushies came of age in the Nixon White House and now it looks like they're going to fall into the same trap. Secret back-channel RNC email system is the 21st century equivalent of secret Oval Office surveillance tape recorder. All that's needed is one, just one, truly juicy misstep, and this White House will slide down the trash chute into the dustbin of history so fast, it'll make your head spin.

Sadly, in twenty or thirty years, all the young rarin'-to-go Bushie Republicans will then come into positions of power (I hesitate to say "mature"), and we'll have to salvage American democracy all over again, as they fight to "prove" their Leader was actually correct.

I'm certainly not alone in the War Room as a person who regularly tries to rip Dubya, the GOP and assorted others well-deserved new assholes over various issues. Still, many (most? all?) politicians deserve it somewhere along the line, not just the Current Occupant et al.

In the interest of fairness, a couple of questions.

How long has it been known that the Clinton administration also had a "separate communication system"? Who knew this, when did they know it, and did ANYONE publicize it? If not, why not? Did any other administrations similarly circumvent the existing and official White House system, either out of expediency or secretiveness?

We should all be appalled at attempts to hide and obscure the real record of official actions, no matter who does it. We should all also be irate that the media has evidently done a shockingly poor job of reporting on this topic, since these secret communications systems aren't widely known.

As the back-channel communications network was

"paid for and maintained by" the Republican National Committee

and the RNC is a private organization, I wonder if Uncle Karl wasn't a little too clever.

Messages that were sent using this newtwork are absolutely readable by court order and I doubt that executive privelege can protect them. And if government-owned PCs were used to access that back-channel network, wouldn't the provisions of the Hatch Act still apply?