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Obama administration tries to kill e-mail case

This reminds me of the Watergate tapes that got erased,same B.S. different day.
 
The one you can't get yourself out of? Clinton also had an email problem.
 
The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.
Wow, never heard of that happening before...:rolleyes:

Every day there is something new that Obama is either keeping or expanding from the Bush era. The Obama regime is going to be the most secretive regime in U.S. history, there is little doubt of that.
 
Politicians covering their asses... this is hardly a partisan issue.
 
Transparency is the front which I feel is his most significant failure so far. In truth, I would consider it his only substantial failure at this moment, the only area where I find myself frequently dissapointed. Be that as it may, he has fallen far short of the chalk line he drew for himself here. He still has the opportunity to redeem himself, but it's seeming less and less likely.
 
:lol: i think I remember this being a huge issue when Bush was about this. What happened to the outrage? :lol:
 
:lol: i think I remember this being a huge issue when Bush was about this. What happened to the outrage? :lol:

Yeah I remember that too. What happened to it? Their guy won. Different ox being gored now.
 
Who's going to sift through millions of emails? I can't even clean out my inbox.
 
I don't get it.

Aren't some of you the same people who were pissed off that the emails from the Bush Administrations were trying to be found and restored?

I think the Democratic party is split when it comes to discovery and prosecution of the Bush Admin. Some want it, others want to move past it. Obama appears to be one who wants to move past it.

Personally, I think they should be recovered otherwise it will turn into another conspiracy like 911 and JFK.

NVM...it probably will anyway.
 
I don't get it.

Aren't some of you the same people who were pissed off that the emails from the Bush Administrations were trying to be found and restored?

I think the Democratic party is split when it comes to discovery and prosecution of the Bush Admin. Some want it, others want to move past it. Obama appears to be one who wants to move past it.

Personally, I think they should be recovered otherwise it will turn into another conspiracy like 911 and JFK.

NVM...it probably will anyway.

I have to say that I'm disappointed that Obama does not want to pursue this. Same with the dismissals of the DOJ lawyers. I feel it's most important to keep government as honest as possible, as do most Americans.

If I were a reporter, I'd ask him why this is not a priority.
 
I have to say that I'm disappointed that Obama does not want to pursue this. Same with the dismissals of the DOJ lawyers. I feel it's most important to keep government as honest as possible, as do most Americans.

If I were a reporter, I'd ask him why this is not a priority.


Setting its priority has me scratching my head. Have you taken a look at the pile of crap that needs priority attention? :2razz:

Seriously though, I'd like to the wheels turning on it too. It's going to take some manpower to read through those emails but it can and should be done. I don't want the government to sweep it under the rug.
 
Setting its priority has me scratching my head. Have you taken a look at the pile of crap that needs priority attention? :2razz:

Seriously though, I'd like to the wheels turning on it too. It's going to take some manpower to read through those emails but it can and should be done. I don't want the government to sweep it under the rug.

Without a doubt he's got so much on his plate, I don't envy his position. But I thought that this was an important issue to him. There was possibly some funny business happening under Bush, and it needs to be looked at. No one should be above the law, and that needs to be held in a most vigilant way in a government ruled by the people.
 
There was possibly some funny business happening under Bush, and it needs to be looked at. No one should be above the law, and that needs to be held in a most vigilant way in a government ruled by the people.

Of course there was funny business and no it does not need to and will not be looked at. You people simply refuse to get this. We are and have been engaged in a war that is more covert than conventional. This means spies, shady collaberations, less than honorable acts, etc. Obama was never going to be any different once he became privy to the intel and the world he was inheriting. Bush didn't make this. He merely dealt with it. And so will Obama. It was only fashionable to criticize Bush for it, because Americans have been made to feel that they have to answer to the world's hypocritical and unfair criticisms. How much funny business went on throughout the Cold War? Know about it all?

"No one is above the law" certainly makes us feel warm and equal and in charge of our government, but this is not the reality. American presidents are above the law. They always have been. We have Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, etc. all with examples of criminal possibilities and probabilities. Yet, none have been charged or jailed? Do you know why? Because in order to run this country and be watch dog over the entire world, they absolutely, to a degree, have to be above the law. They have to be able to make shady decisions and be able to know that the benefitting citizens they are charged to protect won't stick a noose around their necks to show the world that "no one is above the law" (of course under the security that was provided by the lynched).

It's a shady world and a "black and white" leader will only lead us into big trouble. Here's an example of this shady world..... Did you know that if the UN declares a genocide in a country, that the U.S. and the UN, by international law, is required to act? The U.S. is seperated from the UN in this international law. This goes back to Korea when the UN blessed the "Truman's Police Action" policy. Ever wonder why Rwanda and Sudan wasn't declared a genocide in the 90s? Or why the UN has taken a gross and neglectful view on Darfur and had to be pushed to even send investigators to "get to the bottom of the situation?"

There's a lot of "funny" going on, because this is a shady world. The shade exists on the national and the international stage. We have silent and unspoken agreements to ignore genocide. This is a crime in which no one is held accountable. We have wars we haven't fought, because American presidents have made back door deals and such, in which no one is held accountable. We have the most sophisticated spy network in the world and it is full of secrecy and less than honorable behaviors. Again...no one is held accountable.

I just don't understand why Americans feel that they are supposed to be privy to everything that goes on and that Presidents are faced with only black and white issues that have simple puritan answers.
 
...I just don't understand why Americans feel that they are supposed to be privy to everything that goes on and that Presidents are faced with only black and white issues that have simple puritan answers.

I'll take a stab at this. Sure, we do things that most Americans think only other countries do. Why do most Americans think this. Because our leaders tell us this. We grew up hearing how evil the KGB was with their spying on their citizens and beating them in secret prisons. I remember Fascists and Nazis being demonized becuase they kept files on every citizen and paid citizens to spy on one another.

Our leaders claimed that we had the moral high ground. It's not too difficult to understand that people get upset when they are lied to. I don't think it's fair to blame the American constituency for leaders appealing to their ethnocentric sensibilities. Being the instant gratification society that we are, black and white logic is the most appealing. We don't like to get bogged down in the details.

It's an inherent flaw of democracy that our leaders pander to the simplistic soundbites and bumper sticker mentalities. They make promises that "We don't torture." and "We will be more transparent." It's not hard to understand that people would desire to hold them to that. The politicians don't dare tell us the truth. It would end their careers.

Then there are people that do think a little more complexly and consider the blowback for our secret means to achieve our ends. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Given the reality you are pointing out, I would assume that we have yet to have a "solution" that didn't create another problem down the road.

We can't claim to be a society of principles if we don't hold our leaders to the principles of honor, courage, integrity, and honesty. I know you value these principles. It's a political paradox. But I hope this can help you understand where many of your fellow Americans are coming from.
 
Here's some explanation on exactly what this is about.

Basically, when emails are archived by a large business, they are put onto backup tapes. These tapes hold ****tons of material, but they can be very difficult to restore and get the old information off of. In this case, there were 14 million emails that were not preserved properly, but still may exist in some form on some sort of backup tape. A good government group is suing to try to force the government to take a bunch of extra steps to restore these emails, which I believe would then require the government to sort through all of them and determine what is and is not privileged. The reason that Bush and Obama both opposed this is not because of any desire to keep something hidden, but because it would take a ****load of money and time to restore all of these emails and sort through them, and without any indication that they would ever be relevant to anything.

It seems pretty reasonable to me.
 
Here's some explanation on exactly what this is about.

Basically, when emails are archived by a large business, they are put onto backup tapes. These tapes hold ****tons of material, but they can be very difficult to restore and get the old information off of. In this case, there were 14 million emails that were not preserved properly, but still may exist in some form on some sort of backup tape. A good government group is suing to try to force the government to take a bunch of extra steps to restore these emails, which I believe would then require the government to sort through all of them and determine what is and is not privileged. The reason that Bush and Obama both opposed this is not because of any desire to keep something hidden, but because it would take a ****load of money and time to restore all of these emails and sort through them, and without any indication that they would ever be relevant to anything.

It seems pretty reasonable to me.

I understand your explanation. But it seems to me that it boils down to we can't afford to hold them accountable.
 
But I hope this can help you understand where many of your fellow Americans are coming from.

Most Americans come from lazy ignorance and choose to remain ignorant. This is why the media is supposed to supply them their clarity. Why a politician is supposed to make them understand what a book would have already done and they get angry when the politician doesn't deliver. Why Americans are "aghast" at the prospect that the leader of the free world may need a bit of discretion and secrecy to conduct his affiars for their well being.
 
Most Americans come from lazy ignorance and choose to remain ignorant. This is why the media is supposed to supply them their clarity. Why a politician is supposed to make them understand what a book would have already done and they get angry when the politician doesn't deliver. Why Americans are "aghast" at the prospect that the leader of the free world may need a bit of discretion and secrecy to conduct his affiars for their well being.

If this stuff is done in secret, how are Americans supposed to learn about it?
 
I understand your explanation. But it seems to me that it boils down to we can't afford to hold them accountable.

Errrrr, scratch that. I read another article that clarified. This isn't about the 14 million emails that they've found, it's about whether there are supposedly any more that are missing.

Basically, they went back and searched for all the emails that had gone missing and found all of these. Now, these groups are trying to force the government to spend millions more searching for and restoring additional emails that they don't even know are missing. The government is opposed to that, arguing that it expended a more than reasonable effort and found pretty much everything it could be reasonably be expected to find.

This same argument occurs in pretty much every major lawsuit between corporations. Usually, the party seeking to force the other party to do more discovery needs to show that there are actually important things that will be found and that the cost is not excessive. It sounds like neither of those has been shown here.
 
Errrrr, scratch that. I read another article that clarified. This isn't about the 14 million emails that they've found, it's about whether there are supposedly any more that are missing.

Basically, they went back and searched for all the emails that had gone missing and found all of these. Now, these groups are trying to force the government to spend millions more searching for and restoring additional emails that they don't even know are missing. The government is opposed to that, arguing that it expended a more than reasonable effort and found pretty much everything it could be reasonably be expected to find.

This same argument occurs in pretty much every major lawsuit between corporations. Usually, the party seeking to force the other party to do more discovery needs to show that there are actually important things that will be found and that the cost is not excessive. It sounds like neither of those has been shown here.

I can understand this. No matter how much money we spend we'll never find the missing 18 minutes of tape.
 
If this stuff is done in secret, how are Americans supposed to learn about it?

Because the media always weasels a story or two, which gathers steam via the individual citizien who "has a right to know." And then the politicians take over and fight for the individual citizen's "rights" whenever an opposing politician can be dragged about over it.
 
Because the media always weasels a story or two, which gathers steam via the individual citizien who "has a right to know." And then the politicians take over and fight for the individual citizen's "rights" whenever an opposing politician can be dragged about over it.

How does the media obtain this secret information?

Is "weaseling" more effective than torture? ;)

This is being black and white by demonizing the media. Government leaks have been around as long as the media.

It seems on one hand you want people to recognize the reality of the world, but on the other hand you resent sunlight being shown on that reality because it's not popular with the public.
 
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