Right. And Harriet Meiers is gonna be in Playboy. Yawn.

I guess I could have just written: “The White House says a VAR lost 5 million e-mails. Some VARs and some other people say that didn’t happen. The End.”

Nice.

Some Guy;

I’m waiting for the day when they start to order hit jobs on Democrats.

IIRC, that was 1968. ’63 if you want to go there, but every time I try, people start commenting upon my headgear. Is it wrong to be at the height of metallic fashion?

M. Bouffant;

Answer: Not absolutely sure about the White House,

Actually, the Presidential Records Act is pretty specific about what gets kept and how, which, of course, is why this is a big deal in the first place. Dear Leader, however, really doesn’t like record keeping. Witness the first thing he did when he planted his ass in the Oval Office, re-classified all his daddy’s documents that were slated to be made public, circumventing the law. Only last week have the courts finally decided that this ain’t kosher. Maybe they’ll do something about those emails ’round about 2013 or so.

Jillian;

There are exactly 18½ minutes of missing emails?

No, that’s the U.S. Attorney scandal emails, which have an 18 day gap. History, as Mr. Twain said, does not repeat itself. It rhymes.

And nobody thinks this is unusual? Mr. Bush, if you are innocent, why do you worry about evidence?

The messages are out there.

Vandelay Industries?

There are exactly 18½ minutes of missing emails?

“How the hell does this affect Homeland Security? And even if it did, what’s the point of a newspaper story reprint w/o any advice/context/something from DHS?”

Presumably they are surveying the open source infrastructure to find out where it is and who controls it. I can think of any number of ways that information might prove useful – in a suddenly announced ‘national emergency’ perhaps?

We’re still lacking an actual casus belli for Iran…

To control something you must know where it is. At the very least this report tells DHS operatives what addresses to send the National Security letters.and Presidential Orders to.

As for the specific info re the local vote being posted: it may be well be advantageous for the government for the tower to be approved:- for all we know, T-mobile may be one of the companies cooperating in the Great Warrantless Wiretap. What better way ffor local DHS to know who to put presssure on except by sharing this kind of seemingly innocuous info?

From the article we now know that Jim Davis, student services director for the Lansing School District, Councilman Bill Matt and resident Ann Kostin-McGill are opposed. a quick google tells me the opposing attorney also does a lot of litigation for big telecoms corps like Nextel and who have rolled over for government spying. Do your own math.

And after all, all DHS did was put a link in. It’s up to the individual how they use that info. They were just reporting.

They may be incompetent weasels, but never misunderestimate their essential weasality.

Answer: Not absolutely sure about the White House, but I know that Congress exempts itself from some laws & regulations that otherwise apply to virtually all other gov’t. departments & agencies, as well as private sector entities. Wouldn’t be surprising if some sort of “executive privilege” is applied to the White House.

I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email.’ `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.

but when the emails ah don’t write get written ah make sure they’re not stored, if you get my meanin’…hehehe

Okay, so they DIDN’T lose the e-mails. They’re still there, and the White House is flat-out lying that they’re not.

1. Manny.
2. Joba’s achilles heel? Small winged invertebrates.

Okay, sorry for that. About those emails: wasn’t Duke Cunningham’s pal Mitchell Wade involved in providing porktastic IT services to Cheney’s office? Wade-provided storage services for the Pentagon also proved susceptible to sudden “losses” of data. Wouldn’t surprise me if Wade’s shop provided expert advice on how to make White House data disappear.

I’m running on the assumption that a large number of these are internal emails, ie White House and OEOB. I’m pretty sure that my TI-83 could perform as a fairly reliable e-mail server, so I don’t see any reason why the information couldn’t be hubbed and stored in a Pentium II machine in a closet somewhere on the site.
*shrug*
But yes, actually, seriously, LOSING data is bullshit. It’s about on level of “I was running. In an ally. And then I tripped. And feel on a bottle.” excuse to the ER nurse as to why you need the Budweiser surgically removed from your colon.

You gotta be kidding me. The government farms out everything related to IT these days. A certain agency charged with going to other planets on a tiny budget has farmed out it’s I.T. to Lockheed Martin.

Question though. Given that LM is held accountable for backup and recovery of NASA-owned information BY STATUTE…why wasn’t the White House e-mail provider held to those federally mandated minimums?

Someone’s in a lot of trouble here. If those e-mails are well and truly gone, it took intentional and ongoing intervention to make it all go away.

Something smells. Bad.