it seems we must put all of this on hold. waxman and his congressional investigative committee are going to be busy for the next month investigating whether or not roger clemens used 'performance enhancing' drugs. if this isn't our congress at its best, i don't know what is. can they prioritize or what? they don't have a table, even though i have offered to supply one, to hold impeachment hearings, so let's put that on hold. they can't explain why funding the schip program isn't more beneficial to america than funding the occupation of iraq, etc., etc...... with all of their stupidity, ineptitude, etc. how is it that they can still find their way to the next lobbyist's dinner party? i am truly at a loss! with hope for a 'new dawn' on 21 january, '09! peace.

starofthesea

Exceptionally well formulated statement. You must have seen the movie 'The Secret' , did You?
If not, it is definitely worth it. The main message is about the law of attraction and how it affects
us. At one point they show a woman that sits in front of her computer frowning over her financial
situation. The more she frowns over it, the more financial trouble she gets. It is what we think and
feel about that will turn into reality for us.
I agree entirely on focusing on what we really want, or whom we really want, instead of the other
way around.
At this point I want to offer genuine apologies to all of You for having let my anger pour out with
remarks about 'justice' and how it could be achieved. I have to admit as well, that I am extremely
preoccupied through first hand witness accounts of my grand parents as to what happened in
Germany from 1933 to 1945. The similarities are frightening.
Even though I try to be a good Buddhist, I am only a human being and nowhere close to be
perfect.
Thank You for the eye opener.

okay everyone, mark your calendars. the white house "has five business days to report" back. by then oil will be over $100.00/barrel and the sheople will have forgotten this. or there'll be another assasination, or the surge will be working, or the focus (how could i forget) will be on whatever is happening next tuesday.

Maybe they'll try recursion here:

If Rove were still around, he might prepare a written statement which very carefully answered the inquiry in every regard. But upon delivering it to the federal magistrate, it would just go missing and he'd say that the response about the missing e-mails is, itself, missing.

It's a pattern known as "Fruitless Hoops". They have it down to a science.

in his historical novel "burr," gore vidal imagines his subject answering a question of law with these words:

"the law, sir, is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained."

and you all thought shrub couldn't read beyond the level of "my pet goat."

Eventually "true reality" will come around and BITE in the BUTT those fools who thought they could fabricate reality. The clock is ticking.

In my humble opinion stronger forces are coming into play.

The "Free Press" website has long maintained that these emails will contain info on the stolen 2004 presidential election in Ohio - might be more mountains behind this veil os smoke and mirrors than we can even imagine! Federal attorney scandal, torture, renditions, secret prisons, lying about causes for war and eventual cover-up, etc. What most everyone now understands is that all of these - literally all - form a substantive basis for impeachment (only amenable to those Dems who did not early-on implicate themselves in some of the same crimes).

Incidently, these forces I referred to are not political. Nor are they "social", but I think they are reverant for all life if that makes any sense. Humanity is in desperate need of some humility when it comes to our place on this planet and the US of A is in desperate need of some leaders who care about all People not just power, profit, and ego. These leaders need to tell it like it is and start treating the citizens of this country with a bit of respect rather than thinking they are pulling all the strings or somehow anointed and superior.

How refreshing it would be for there to be a leader who is unafraid to tell it like it is to the best of thier ability and not just try to tell folks what they think will get them ahead. What we have had though is nothing but politicos with mostly sinister motives not in the interest of the People. Anyhow, if such leaders existed, there would probably be many who would be willing to do likewise and real progress could be made. But as someone indicated on another thread this country is imperialistic to the bone and nobody can make it and thrive in the "federal game" unless they take an oath and vow to perpetuate the story of this country's "greatness", which should be ridiculously evident by now is a MYTH. What a joke.

Time to go rake the leaves. Later.

That picture makes my blood boil. I'd like to see that sneering smirk disposed of with a two-by-four.

Perhaps if there were a bounty for hacking into the servers that are being used to store these "ghostmail" files... or is that just hollywood hype... Maybe we should get Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and John Travolta on the case....
If the emails were leaked, do you really think that MSM would carry the story...
Or we could just take a page from the Rove playbook and makeup a flurry of email and call them "real"....

KCT

I have worked as a system administrator (SA), and the golden rule that is NEVER overlooked is to backup EVERYTHING, multiple times, and store copies off-site should the building be destroyed.

Backups should be done often, usually EVERYNIGHT. Though these nightly backups are recycled (say every 2-4 weeks), copies of the backups are permanently saved every week, month or whatever, depending upon company policy.

Archiving is often done to tapes (often 3592 cartridges), that are not always recoverable. So the smart SA, to protect their job from irate users who deleted an important file on their computer, will make multiple backups. Smart Federal SA's will do more than the minimum required by Federal policies.

I find it impossible to believe that the White House would have a policy that requires only a single permanent backup that is accidentally lost or destroyed. Any SA who values their job will have multiple copies, not only in-house, but stored off-site as well.

Having said that, if there is a concerted effort to destroy ALL copies of permanent backups, that can be done, but it does require effort. If this was done, then this constitutes willful destruction of public property and evidence.

Can we furthermore agree on the fact, that citizens are spied upon for no better reason and that their e-mails end up in a bunker
server deep underground where hundreds of millions of e-mails are stored. And counting. Do You think that as single e-mail of
John or Jane Doe will get lost? Or deleted?
Drag those criminal thugs out of their illegally occupied white fortress of deceit and bash them with baseball bats. Of course
You are 'right' if You smell that this is just another attempt to make the people believe that there is accountability. Is not. It is
once more the impudence of the War Lords in washington, a government only reminiscent of a thin shell of illusion, where in
reality our train into fascism and martial law has left the station already.
There is nobody in the world who will be able to bring those cretins to justice. Nobody. Every attempt to end the reign of the
repiglicon scum assministration will lead inevitably into civil war. Because there are enough descent Americans out there
who have enough of this bunch of incompetent traitors. Mark my words. There will be no more elections at least not if we
are talking about free and fair election like in the few civilized countries on this planet.

Death to all fascists and their enablers, world wide. Now.

WTF:

And more to the point -- check out the various email RFC's. The email protocol from hop-to-hop is PLAINTEXT. Unless they were encrypting everything with PGP, GNUPG, etc. there's undoubtedly multiple email MTA's (mail transfer agents) which also got the messages.

If warrantless wiretapping is a reality, why not question the relevant ISP's, the NSA, etc. Something just isn't right with the fabric of the story. I'm led to conclude that either the investigation is designed to yield no product, or that warrantless tapping isn't all its cracked up to be.

WTF & PAUL B. -- Yes!

I was wishing to add that each email is of itself stored in multiple locations with the server, as source file, and as multiple destination files, as well as drafts, local copies, and those awaiting deletion.

Beyond this, there is the forensic side of fringe electromagnetic traces left on any hard drive, of each and every record ever written into it. It is only through the most thorough and exhausting repetition of thousands of over-writing and re-writing of random patterns that a secure deletion can said to have occurred, and even then it comes down to how much time and money does one have?

Wouldn't it be cool, if each deletion cycle of each file turns out to be a separate criminal offense?

! Sociopathic mass-file murderers must be caught and punished proportional to their crimes !

IF …

4 really big airplanes can fly for hours unseen through a multi-trillion dollar radar system, capable of resolving small nuts and bolts 300 miles away,
THEN …
10-20 million copies of little itty bitty emails, could all have their zeros lie down flat and become “dead ones” (sideways of course)

¿ When will you people learn just how incompetent
the world’s very best that money can buy,
really are ?

Any reason why this investigation is taking so f$@*ing long? Prosecute the bastards!

If they were this incompetent, they'd not have family dynasties maintained for decades or centuries in some cases. Check out Hanlon's Razor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor.

And there's the Webster definition of "conniving":
"1: to pretend ignorance of or fail to take action against something one ought to oppose "

I tend to see ignorance as nothing more than a ruse. We should be so lucky.

I concur with WTF. Even if all traces were destroyed, the very effort expended in deleting the evidence (staff, time, log alterations) would leave clues.

Question the admin. staff, ICT, IT support: how busy they were on the relevent dates, meeting schedules, minutes, etc.

I'd secure and check all users' computers that may have been used to send or receive White House emails; even if these computers were not backed up, copies of the emails that were 'deleted' may be sitting on them; user 'deleted' and actually deleted are two different things, though most users don't know this.

Check White House backups of users' computers and servers; then check backups of users' computers and servers anywhere from which emails were sent to the White House and anywhere to which emails were sent by the White House. It's unlikely that emails sent from or to places like the Congress and the CIA and the Justice Department, and RNC, newspapers, personal computers and the ISPs they use (Gmail, MSN, Yahoo), etc., were all deleted from users' computers, servers and backups as well.

Then check the NSA databases and their backups for any White House or related emails wiretapped and stored there.

There may be hard copies wandering around too; better send a memo requesting them as well. And don't forget the email attachments; they must be everywhere and of every variety, including digitally scanned items.

Just hire a forensics specialist.

Remember there was a bunch of software that was developed for analyzing all the data the NSA collected that was never moved from 'test' to 'production', which would have required legal approval it never received. It was in 'test' mode for five years or so; who knows how much data may have been collected and stored for that purpose as well.

My guess is, actually, someone on the intelligence side of Washington already has these emails or copies of them and a lot more.

When the Democrats took the majority in Congress in 2006 and oversight began someone had to be smart enough to latch onto this data.

Just write up a FOIA request or two to get access to it all or whatever you want; especially now when the FOIA requests have to be responded to judiciously by law.

Expect 'state secrets' and claims of 'Presidential privilege' to limit availability.

RESPONSE IS REDACTED

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

Hanlon's razor is an adage which reads:
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

Also worded as:
"Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice."

Well, judging from the snail pace at which this investigation is proceeding it's clear to me anyway that it's to be dragged out until after November, then buried.

The Dems do that, time and again. As I've said, I'm still waiting for them to investigate Bush Sr. lying about being "out of the loop" on Iran/Contra. Every time the Dems drag these things out, only to forget about them when they later have a chance do to something (Bill Clinton's presidency), they keep showing their hand as enablers, Vichy Dems, crypto-neocons, good Bilderbergers or whatever you want to call it.

"The order by US Magistrate Judge John Facciola comes amid an effort by the White House to scuttle two lawsuits that could force the Executive Office of the President to recover any e-mail that has disappeared from computer servers where electronic documents are automatically archived."

To force them to incriminate themselves?

To force them to incriminate themselves? (ezeflyer)

Recovery would not in itself incriminate anyone.
But ..

"Well, judging from the snail pace at which this investigation is proceeding it's clear to me anyway that it's to be dragged out until after November, then buried." (Paul Bramscher)

Hear ya; hope not.

RESPONSE IS REDACTED
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
(nspire)

HA!

Well,

Let's just get rid of the kangaroo court if it can't order the white house to comply with law. Why even have a federal court if it can't function and the insane "decider" can call a mad-hatter's tea party and do anything he wants.

I am of the opinion that nothing the federal government does is a good thing. We should cut it down by 99% and give those rights back to the states or the people as the tenth amendment of the constitution says.

Paul, I found your comment, "The Dems do that, time and again. As I've said, I'm still waiting for them to investigate Bush Sr. lying about being "out of the loop" on Iran/Contra. Every time the Dems drag these things out, only to forget about them when they later have a chance do to something (Bill Clinton's presidency), they keep showing their hand as enablers, Vichy Dems, crypto-neocons, good Bilderbergers or whatever you want to call it." interesting!

My theory about Dan Quail was that he was Daddy Bush's impeachment insurance. Worked, didn't it?

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency's Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

Another analogy comes to my mind. Imagine You being tied to Your bed, watching how a politician, a judge and a cop break into your house and taking everything away from you. Your freedom, your prosperity and your dignity as a human being.
Whom You gonna ask for help? A politician? A judge? A cop?
This is the real conspiracy. Those three subjects have subconsciously or even consciously and intentionally rubbed our house America. The fact that there are enough morons who can't see it that way and who will always ask You this question I have been asked over and over again on behalf of the dumbest of the dumbest americans.
"Why do you hate bush so much?" Why? That question alone cries for capital punishment.

it's all so futile. all these words and sentences. wasted. all this speculation. wasted.

coco

I guess that's what You get if Your anger management can't keep up with what's happening here. There will be no
accountability.

Sorry I meant 'robbed' not 'rubbed'...

The antidote for fascism is direct democracy.

Civil lawsuits (described in this article) and criminal prosecutions will identify and punish those politicians and their allies who acted outside the law.

We might not be having this conversation except that the Joint Chiefs didn't go along; they said 'no' to attacking Iran, etc.; they said 'no' to the political coup.

Some politicians, Senator Chris Dodd, etc., didn't go along; they said 'no' to ignoring the Constitution; said 'no' to telecom immunity.

Some in the intelligence community didn't go along; they said 'no' to withholding the NIE report.

Lots of people, inside government and out, said 'no'; they continue to say 'no'. They are moving today, in a hundred different ways, to identify these criminals and bring them to justice.

Tell your Senators and Congresspersons that if they put obstacles, like telecom immunity, in the way of justice, you will work with others to remove them from office and prosecute them civilly and criminally.

Stay hopeful; vote wisely.

No matter what happens, put your hopes and dreams, the hopes and dreams of others, your country and your world, first.

Please my friends here on CD---it is hard to imagine much good coming out of the current "power structure" but all the same, unless we offer our attention/energy/vision to something different than what so many have so eloquently described, that is exactly what we will get over and over again. Dare to dream and dare to dream BIG. This is not an endorsement of Obama or anyone, but our own human capacity to make real change. We are angry because the corrupt "powerful ones" will not give us Truth, Justcie or Domestic Tranquility. So what's new there? Let us instead, simply create it ourselves right where we live, and then watch it spread. Let them have their nightmarish existence. We want something else altogethr and we aren't gonna get it energizing the nightmare. Turn from it and look to yourself for the change you are seeking in others. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Beautifully said, starofthesea!

ezeflyer,

Tthe Founding Fathers may have also felt, "The antidote for losing the First Amendment is the Second."

So the white house is now ordered to tell the truth about the lie they told earlier. If you order a liar with no credibility to tell the truth how can you be sure that he is?

Beautifully put, Ken.

Everything that I read is a LIE
Geo the inferior thieving_shrub_in_bu$h!t

Anyone who thinks that those e-mails exist or DID exist within a week after their being sent is living in never-never land. This is another impeachable offense which isn't even worth thinking about. We have let the bastards win from Day 1.