From Josh Marshall's talkingpointsmemo.com

"I feel really bad about the server problems the White House/RNC seems (no, not a typo -- they appear to be a single entity) to be having on the email front. Believe me, I run a small business that is heavily dependent on cranky servers and other gizmos. So I know how hard this can be. But I think this might be a case where that NSA 'terrorist surveillance program' may really come in handy. I'm told the NSA has some very capable data recovery tools they've developed. And even if those guys are too busy hunting al Qaida, doesn't the FBI have some pretty good forensic computer geeks? What happens when, say, a company like Enron (okay, perhaps not a great example) says some emails were 'mishandled' and now are gone forever. I guess that's just the end of it, right? Normally, it's not kosher for a government agency to offer direct assitance to a private entity or political organization. But, hey, we're pretty far down that road I guess. So let's have the FBI go down and take a look at these servers and see if these emails have really disappeared forever."

-- Josh Marshall

I work at a business and when the email gets lost we have IT guys come in and fix it. Now, they can't always find every email. But, what are the chances that a whole batch of emails on a specific topic from a certain time period gets lost? I am always amazed that in the electronic age, even without going to the NSA extent that Josh Marshall jokes about, that people feel that lost emails is an excuse. Get real.

I believe that there are charges such as failure to cooperate with an investigation, obstructing justice and so on that can be brought to bear as a cudgel. How many low level flunkies will allow themselves to be sacrificed in order to get to the head of Hydra (ooops, sorry, this is not Marvel comics). How much fear is instilled by the ruling minions that no one has yet rolled?

The worst part about this is that MSM is not really covering this in depth. Only geeks are reading this sort of thing and the average worker bee does not know how deep or how high this corruption and borderline legality may go. But what this does is reshape any idea the average citizen has about routine rights to privacy and voter rights. The arguments have been pushed so far to the right, favoring a ruling class of honchos that can place you under surveillance, and limit voting that no one knows how much they are being manipulated. Specific rights won in the 60s by minorities are disappearing so fast that "separate but equal" rules could be favored by some and then placed on talk radio and covered in MSM as a serious discussion and then would become part of the general lexicon of the American speech. If you think I am joking, just remember that Ted "Tubes" Stephens kept a job after his gaff and that Tom "Let's Bomb Tehran" Tancredo was not only not laughed out of office, but was reelected! I am sure that Tancredo is a native American name and he does not look anything like the dark-skinned immigrants he is always beating up in speeches. I mean, did not the Italians emigrate from somewhere, Tom? Wittgenstein was right in the sense that redefining words will redefine the thought paradigms of a culture. And dictate the limits of the debate.

The past two U.S. elections have been decided by voter rights manipulation. Ohio election officials have been charged and convicted with rigging the recount which cost Kerry the election. How many lives (Iraq death toll is now over 650,000) have been lost over someone's LUST FOR POWER AND CONTROL?! How many people know that felonies were committed in Ohio? Where is the media outrage? Civic outrage?

And these people have the balls to call themselves Christians? Nice ethics.

rojo