Bush Breaks Yet Another Law, and Now Admits It

The Bush administration has admitted that they failed to follow the Presidential Records Act and destroyed emails about official business. Outside email accounts that were supposed to be used only for political activities were also used to conduct official business. These RNC email accounts were emptied every 30 days, unlike the official White House accounts which are immediately archived. This could be an innocent mistake where officials simply treated all of their accounts as if they were personal email accounts and thus used them interchangeably. However, seeing as these accounts were created for the sole purpose of separating political activities from official business it seems like a fairly difficult error to make. Especially since the White House is refusing to release a large amount of information pertaining to the firing of the federal prosecutors and emails were sent from these accounts about the firings. It seems highly suspicious. At the very least I believe the parties who improperly used accounts expressly created to separate official and political uses for official use should be dismissed for their incompetence in adhering to a relatively simple law. Thankfully, Congressman Waxman appears well on his way to shedding light on the situation. Perhaps this was an innocent mistake, but it was a pretty boneheaded one if it was. The more individual's who "accidentally" used the political account for official business and the more official emails that were destroyed the less likely it was an accident and the more likely this is just the kind of situation that the Presidential Records Act was designed to protect against.

Madison