Evil Thoughts on RNC E-mails

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has an evil moment of schradenfreude concerning the past six years erosion of civil liberties and the politicization of the governmental bureaucracy coming to bite the RNC and George W. Bush in the ass:

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.......

I am not a computer guy, but I know enough people who are dedicated Class-A geeks to know that very few things are ever completely erased. So please, pass the popcorn as this could be enjoyable.

UPDATE Raw Story is reporting that Senator Leahy (D-Vt) has the same exact respect for general geekery:

Now we are learning that the “off book” communications they were having about these actions, by using Republican political email addresses, have not been preserved. Like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes, it appears likely that key documentation has been erased or misplaced. This sounds like the Administration’s version of the dog ate my homework. I am deeply disturbed that just when this Administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information" AND

"They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" he proclaimed. "You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers."

Leahy threatened further action in response to the news, too "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."

Update 2 Melissa at Shakesville says Leahy is correct, for many reasons but there is one over-riding consideration:

The last thing the American populace needed was a diminishment of their already inadequate expectations, which is nevertheless precisely the one thing that the Bush administration has been spectacularly, consistently competent at delivering.

...What’s left is the Congress.

They can hold the Bush administration accountable for its many sins. They stand between an America in which its people take a stand and demand more from their government, or an America in which its people jadedly resign themselves to second-rate governance by first-rate criminals. They will determine whether the Bush administration will serve as the benchmark for the worst we ever let happen, or the best we can expect.

And yet more from Faiz at Think Progress - White House spokeswoman Dana Perino doesn't lie, she just makes stuff up - "you have to admit that when I said a handful I was asked based on something that I didn’t know."