What time is it? Subpoena Time!!!

Subpoenas!

Subpoenas!

Subpoenas!

Whoo-hoo!!!

Tim Griffin and the Caging List Scandal, or How I Learned To Start Worrying And Fear The GOP

Tim Griffin, aide to Karl Rove, had caging lists developed for swing states of voters who were thought to vote Democrat so that, in removing them, the GOP change the outcome of the election.

He emailed the actual caging lists to Karl on the RNC email server. ["missing email scandal"]

The caging lists were apparently brought to the Civil Rights Division, which had been packed with GOPbots who would not question them, and thousands of names were removed from voter rolls in swing states. What happened in this stage of the game will surely be uncovered as the investigation continues. ["political hiring scandal"]

To avoid being caught, the Attorney General removed 8 to 10 US Attorneys (in the swing states where caging lists were being used) who had demonstrated an unwillingness to "play ball" politcally and might get wind of these caging lists and prosecute. ["US Attorney Firings Scandal"]

One of their replacements was Tim Griffin. He did not have to go through Senate confirmation, and so could not be questioned under oath and have his caging list crime uncovered. He was then a US Attorney, the prosecution, and the only one who could prosecute him would be the Attorney General, who was certainly part of this conspiracy at the level of firing the USAs, if not in other areas as well. ["change to the Patriot Act Scandal"]

Greg Palast wrote about this in his book. Senator John Conyers has caught wind of the story and is openly investigating. When that news broke, Tim Griffin resigned and is in the wind.

This is a crime committed to change the outcome of an election and establish a permanent GOP majority, and a conspiracy to cover up that crime. It is also the best example of how all these disparate stories (which smelled bad on their own but didn't seem to go anywhere) added up to a system in which this conspiracy, and possibly others, were permitted to occur.

Missing Email Scandal

This is another vague, amorphous "scandal"... ish. But it has shocking ties right into the caging list scandal.

White House staff (and who knows who else) used the Republican National Committee email server to communicate about political machinations.

This is against the Hatch Act, which governs the political vs. public aspects of the White House. The more familiar aspect of the Act is to say that politicians aren't supposed to use their office, their official vehicle, or any other resources of the White House to do political business. For example, if Karl Rove wanted to find out the polling numbers for the GOP in Iowa, he couldn't use his WH email account for that. This keeps those in the administration from wasting government resources on their own re-elections.

But the other side of the Act also dictates that official business can't be done outside the office. While the flip side is about preserving resources, this side is about preserving all documentation about an Administration. Rove can't use his RNC account to discuss amendments to a bill, for example. Doing so would not only violate the Hatch Act, but also allow him to hide presidential records from the National Archives.

Hiding records by using an outside email account goes against the Presidential Records Act, which regulates how all the "paperwork" (in quotes because now it's virtual too, of course) generated by the Administration will be handled. Under the PRA, everything has to be saved until the National Archives says it's OK to throw it out (usually done during the sorting process for the Presidential Library, I suspect).

Which brings us to the next part of this story. When the Congressional committees who were holding hearings on various political machinations of the Administration, they found that when they subpoenaed all the records and emails, many, many were missing. Inquiries revealed that the WH officials and staff had been using the RNC server for both political and policy matters.

Yes, it is true that times have changed. Yes, it's true that not so long ago, no one had ever heard of email. Yes, it's true that those of us with multiple email accounts get confused too. However, emails that have been recovered show this was intentional:

Susan Ralston, who was Karl Rove’s executive assistant, invited two lobbyists working for Jack Abramoff to use her RNC e-mail account to avoid “security issues” with the White House e-mail system, writing: “I now have an RNC blackbeny which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH email.” [ThinkProgress]

However, when Congress attempted to subpoena the emails from the RNC, they had been deleted. Four years worth of emails, approximately 5 million, were missing from the RNC servers. This is yet another assault on the PRA; had the emails been carefully preserved, the WH might have only gotten in trouble over the Hatch Act ("What were the emails doing on the RNC server in the first place?") but in this case, they have effectively destroyed administration records.

Or, are all the emails missing? At least 500 of these emails were victims of yet another mistake, this one for real: the sender typed in "rnc.com" instead of "rnc.org". (In fact much of what we know comes from similar mistakes in addressing.) Fortunately for history, "rnc.com" was a parody site that was owned by a friend of BBC reporter David Palast. As Palast describes in his book, Armed Madhouse, some of the incriminating emails Congress was looking for were in these 500, including the smoking gun of caging lists. Senator John Conyers is now investigating these emails.

UPDATE: While we can't get the MSM to pick up on this story, at least CNN today is finally mentioning that some emails are missing (altho it's buried in their politics page)...

We've decided to be the Good Guys after all!

Well, maybe this crazy ol' world is swinging back towards sanity. Whether this swing will be enough to keep the GOP in power, it's hard to say at this point. But whatever their motivations, we can all sleep a little easier tonight.

The Department of Defense has issued a directive that every single person held by the military, no matter where, and no matter who he or she is, is entitled to and will receive the treatment outlined in Geneva Conventions.

The memo instructs recipients to ensure that all Defense Department policies, practices and directives comply with Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions governing the humane treatment of prisoners.

"You will ensure that all DOD personnel adhere to these standards," [Deputy Defense Secretary] England wrote. [CNN.com]

You may remember that the Administration's somewhat twisted plans for people detained by the US Military was struck down by the US Supreme Court. (I say "twisted" because the rules seemed to be all tangled-- this guy gets this treatment in this place, but if he gets moved here or if he's a different kind of guy he gets this kind, etc.)

That BTW was such a cool exercise in the way government operates, shown in real time. I'm not being sarcastic! If I had been a teacher, I would use this story in my class to explain how the three branches deal with each other. Basically, the Executive made up some rules, the Judiciary reviewed those rules and said that the Executive couldn't do that under current law; however, it directed the Exec and the Legislative to work together to draft a law that would allow it. Now, if this weren't such a dangerous and important thing for our National Character, I would have liked to see the story play out: the other two branches hammer out a law, the Congress passes it, the Exec signs it, and the Judiciary is satisfied. If only it were a little stamp tax or something.

But instead, thank the Good Lord above, the Exec came to their senses and realized that if they went to the Congress, even one held by their own party, and worked out a deal whereby they could torture people, arguing in committees whether this or that horrible thing is torture, that would look really, really bad. Instead, they went back to those good ol' Geneva Conventions-- you know, the ones where another group of people many years ago already hammered out those details "so you don't have to". It's my understanding this means that there won't be a law drafted by the Congress because now there doesn't need to be. Although the McCain "torture amendment" already passed the Senate 90-9, I'd like to see Congress use this time to cement this DOD directive into law and set up some protections in US law that would keep another "War President" from going haywire again.

On the other hand, WH Press Sec Tony Snow was quoted in that CNN article as saying "We look forward to working with Congress on this," so that would imply just having a DOD directive doesn't mean it's all squared away. Of course, he also said, "This isn't a policy change," and it clearly is, so I'm not sure it's worth listening to him anyway.

These are just my observations based on reading one article on this, and I can't see a downside. But as I get to research this more fully and read other points of view on it, I might come back and update this post or do another.