First, it was the military record of a sitting president that went "missing" (much as the president was missing from action). Then, we heard of $8 BILLION "missing" in Iraq. Then, it was the Padilla vidoe that went "missing." Now, the e-mails of the crooks, liars, and thieves of Bush Country are "missing."

Tomorrow, we'll hear that democracy is "missing."

"Missing" is a brand name with these counterfeits, much as "I can't recall" is the result of their IQ tests.

So? did anyone expect any different action out of this regime? and what will be the outcome? Nothing, nada, nil.

Truth be known, as it hardly ever is, subpoenaing the hard drives should have taken place immediately if the government was sincere in trying to ascertain the truth. This, that, and the other thing would be superfluous. Period.

There is no evidence that the RNC e-mails have anything to do with government policy.

There is no evidence of wrong doing.

In fact, since they are gone, there is no evidence at all.

Let's see.....my guess is nobody.

The democrats have no balls and the republicans know it. They can do absolutely anything they please because we still have no oversight and no one cares.

What a fuckin country we have!

the off-the-books e-mail accounts were set up "on a model based on the prior administration"

Which prior administration - The Nixon administration?

Waxman is trying to recover the emails deleted by the RNC and the BuSh Cheney campaign by combing the records of other government agencies. He's betting that the white house officials using those unofficial accounts emailed someone in a government agency. His committee's statement says that they have already found evidence of this. It's not surprising that they've already found examples. How easy is it to slip up and miss one email address in a long email distribution list? Especially on a Blackberry.

Another example of this kind of mistake came to light during the Abramoff investigation. They found an email from Abramoff where he had accidentally written to a government representative's oficial email address as opposed to the extra-official one. Someone close to the official scoled Abramoff (in writing) that to ask, through official channels, minimized his chances of securing what he wanted.

There are going to be dozens of similar examples. Who will get picked up by this drag net is the interesting question. I bet they all do.

Waxman and the oversight committee have requested email records from 25 federal agencies. What they're trying to do is recapture the emails that the RNC and the campaign have deleted. Several have already been recovered.

All they need in order to demonstrate that the former White House counsel, Alberto Gonzalez, was aware is a response from him to one of the non-official accounts.

In other words, if Alberto "replied all" to an email from Rove's RNC account and included someone inside one of those 25 federal agencies, Waxman will have proof that he was aware of the non-official email accounts.

This is the kind of thing that makes castles made of sand crumble in to the sea.

While it is true old Emails don't just "dissapear", they can be written over. If the server uses the space they are stored on for something else they are gone, if you don't beleive me just ask your IT people.

It's got to be possible to find those emails. Subpoena the RNC's mail servers, send the Feds in to seize them, and have a data retrieval expert comb through the hard disks. They'll be in there. The Democrats just need to get on the stick and issue the subpoenas.

If it's the Department of Justice that carries out such things, that'll be a pain -- but there's got to be a lot of people there who would be only too happy to see the law properly carried out, for once.

I'm sorry, but all this back and forth between an unelected employee who is in violation of the law in the White House and the investigating commitees of the House and Senate has gone on long enough. Subpeona the servers and computers. Get computer forensic experts in to dig out the erased emails. While they are at it, figure out who did all the erasing. Bring them all to court, in chains please.

If the governement says it can hold somebody without evidence or charge... until those laws are overturned, let's apply them to those who invented those laws. I don't think that anyone will miss Karl Rove if he is held indefinitely as an terrorist threat.

E-mails posted through the RNC accounts -- by definition from the Hatch Act -- must be political in nature or they would have used the government e-mail accounts. If any of the RNC e-mails describes the DoJ firings, that will be confirmation that the process was political.

The Bush administration initially created the Information Awareness Office (IAO), defunded by Congress in 2003. They then replace it with the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program, subsequently renamed the Terrorism Information Awareness Program, also defunded by Congress. Nonetheless, various classified programs of this exact nature still continue unabated, presumably without oversight. The Bush administration has been secretly collecting information from every conceivable source, including email. I'm sure nothing has been deleted that has been collected via those programs; perhaps House investigators might look there for the deleted emails from those off-the-books RNC accounts.

One tantalizing question: What did Alberto Gonzales know, and when did he know it? Waxman's staff cites evidence that the attorney general has known about the RNC e-mail accounts since at least 2001 but didn't stop White House officials from using them.

Even if he knew, wouldn't it take at least an ounce of competence and knowledge about the law to determine it's something they shouldn't be doing. You're giving the AG too much credit and not acknowledging he's in over his head and nothing more than a pawn with a rubber stamp.

No suprise here. Assume the worst and you will seldom be dissapointed.

My concern is towards the Senate Judiciary Committee. What are they going to do know? At a minimum, they should subpoena the RNC server. Get a computer specialist to see if the "missing" emails can be retreived. If they are "lost", it could only occur after a plan was executed to destroy them.

If this fails, go to the Iron Mountain, Pa. storge facility to see if any of these documents are there.

Finally, subpoena Karl Rove.

Guess the MSM feels this is a non story and will not be reporting on this any time soon. Too bad. They have essentially fiddled while Rome burned.