Scott Brown Files Criminal Complaint against MassDems

By GottaLaff

Gloves? What gloves? They're so criminal complaint ago:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
January 16, 2010 617-335-8333

MEDIA ADVISORY FOR TODAY

Dan Winslow, counsel for the Scott Brown for U.S. Senate campaign, will hold a media availability to announce the filing of a criminal complaint against the Massachusetts Democratic Party regarding a recent mailing paid for and sent by the Massachusetts Democratic Party. Winslow will make a statement and take reporters' questions at MassGOP Headquarters in Boston TODAY at 4:00 PM.

Massachusetts GOP Headquarters
85 Merrimac Street, 4th Floor
Boston.

This is getting way too messy:

Republican Senate hopeful Scott Brown has filed a complaint with the State Ethics Commission after a report that a union backing rival Martha Coakley used state resources to urge workers to volunteer for Coakley's campaign.

The report by FOX25 said the Service Employees International Union used state computers and e-mail addresses to direct state employees to volunteer for Coakley, the Democratic state attorney general.

Coakley is referring questions to the attorney general. (corrected)

Brown is none too happy about this mailer, either.

H/t: Hippie_Cyndi

22 million e-mails missing from Bush WH found

By GottaLaff

MSNBC is also reporting:

22 million e-mails missing from Bush White House have been found.

Obama White House Close to Settling Missing Emails Case

By GottaLaff

A settlement is in the works:

The long saga of the missing White House emails may be finally nearing its end. The Obama administration and two nonprofits that are suing it over millions of missing Bush-era emails have called a truce. A joint motion (PDF) and proposed order (PDF) filed by Justice Department lawyers and the plaintiffs, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), call for an indefinite stay of the case so the two sides can continue settlement negotiations. Both the White House and the nonprofits will have to withdraw their pending motions (including a White House motion to dismiss the case) and update the court on settlement proceedings in three months. But the whole ordeal could be over well before that—if contentious issues are resolved in the next few days or weeks. [...]

In January, the Obama administration became the defendant in the case, and at first showed signs of continuing the Bush administration's legal strategy, filing a motion to dismiss the case the day after the new team took office. It's unclear what the Obama White House is now offering. But, no doubt, its more than what the Bush administration ever put on the table.

H/t: BuzzFlash

Obama administration tries to kill BushCo e-mail case

By GottaLaff

Am I missing something here? If this is accurate, then I'll need a talking down. A big one:

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.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

Here is the back story.

Recently, the Bush White House said it had located 14 million e-mails that were misplaced and that the White House had restored hundreds of thousands of other e-mails from computer backup tapes.

The steps the White House took are inadequate, one of the two groups, the National Security Archive, told a federal judge in court papers filed Friday.

"We do not know how many more e-mails could be restored but have not been, because defendants have not looked," the National Security Archive said in the court papers.

"The new administration seems no more eager than the last" to deal with the issue, said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the other group that sued the EOP.

Say it ain't so, Joe... and Barack.

White House press office hit by e-mail outage

By GottaLaff

Blackberryless in D.C.:

President Obama has his blackberry — but his tech-savvy press operation has been without e-mail for most of the day, and it’s not yet clear when they’ll get it back.

Obama press staffers had just made the leap to their official White House e-mail addresses Monday morning when the Outlook server went down. They weren’t the only ones affected by the crash, which also hit the first lady’s office and other White House offices.

I deleted Outlook from my computer. It caused all kinds of problems, and once I got rid of it, my computer ran more smoothly. What I'm trying to say here is, this outage doesn't surprise me.

An apologetic Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at 1:30 pm press briefing that the server meltdown was responsible for the delay in responding to their e-mailed questions. But late Monday, nearly six hours since the server first went haywire, staffers still can’t use their official e-mail addresses — and a press aide could not tell CNN when the press office might be able to start sending and receiving messages again.

I can't even imagine how frustrating and worrisome this would be for them. Maybe they could all just Facebook each other? Sarcasm.

Missing White House E-Mails Traced

By GottaLaff

Presto! Magic! One day after a judge orders BushCo to search for millions of "missing" e-mails, poof! They appear. Just like that. Go figure:

A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer e-mails to the National Archives after spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House computer files.

Civil division trial lawyer Helen H. Hong [...] said the department plans to argue in a court filing this week that the administration's successful recent search renders the lawsuit moot. [...]

Hong said private contractors had helped find the e-mails by searching through an estimated 60,000 tapes that contain daily recordings of the entire contents of the White House computers as a precaution against an electronic disaster.

What would BushCo do without all those private contractors? But wait just a second there. Not so fast:

Meredith Fuchs, counsel for the other plaintiff, a historical group known as the National Security Archive, said, [...] "For the past year and a half, they said, 'Don't worry, don't worry, leave us alone.' Now they say, at the last minute, they have solved it. I want to see the evidence." [...]

Once the e-mails are transferred to the National Archives, federal law allows them to be requested under the Freedom of Information Act after a five-year interval.

Don't trust, but verify.

Court orders White House to preserve e-mails

By GottaLaff

Deja vu:

A federal judge has ordered the Bush White House to preserve its e-mails, just days before a new administration takes over.

How many courts have tried to correct BushCo's thuggery? 5? 10? 20? What does it take?

The court's preservation notice Wednesday stems from a ongoing lawsuit by private groups over allegedly missing electronic messages, and allegations the White House failed to properly monitor its internal communications among staff.

It has been a thorny legal and political issue for outgoing Bush officials, who are in the process of transferring more than 300 million e-mail messages and 25,000 boxes of documents to the National Archives.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy instructed officials to search all White House workstations "and to collect and preserve all e-mails sent or received between March 2003 and October 2005."

Executive office personnel were also ordered to surrender any e-mail from that 31-month period. [...]

The time period in question includes the start of the Iraq War, as well as the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a CIA operative. [...]

"There is nothing like a deadline to clarify the issues," said National Security Archive Director Tom Blanton. "In six days the Bush Executive Office of the President will be gone and without this order, their records may disappear with them. The White House will complain about the last-minute challenge, but this is a records crisis of the White House's own making."

Tip of the iceberg.

Still E-ddicted: Obama says he'll fight to keep his BlackBerry

By GottaLaff

Some time ago, I had a lot of fun with P.E. Obama's addiction to his BlackBerry. Apparently, his flirtation with B.A. (BlackBerrys Anonymous) didn't take:

President-elect Barack Obama vowed a fight to the finish on Wednesday -- not over his economic plan, but to hang on to his BlackBerry. "They're going to pry it out of my hands," he told CBNC about his BlackBerry [...]

He is trying to avoid the fate of President George W. Bush, who gave up e-mail when he took power in 2001 because his lawyers determined any such electronic communications would have to be preserved for posterity as presidential documents.

There are also concerns that presidential electronic communications could be hacked into by the mischievous or the malevolent. [...]

Obama said keeping in touch by e-mail was a way of escaping the trappings of power and staying in touch with regular people. [...]

"I've got to look for every opportunity to do that -- ways that aren't scripted, ways that aren't controlled, ways where, you know, people aren't just complimenting you or standing up when you enter into a room, ways of staying grounded," he said.

As of now, he is hanging on to his BlackBerry.

"This is a concern, I should add, not just of Secret Service, but also lawyers. You know, this town's full of lawyers. I don't know if you've noticed," he said.

Now that I know he's receptive, I really should e-mail him and let him know how much I appreciated those remarks.

George Bush probably thinks BlackBerry is one of his stuffed Teddy bears that shares space with Woody the Cowboy on his bunk bed.

Exit: BushCo... still stonewalling

By GottaLaff

January 20 cannot come soon enough. What passes for the current administration is really nothing more than a remorseless gang of sleazy criminals:

True to its mania for secrecy, the Bush administration is leaving behind vast gaps in the most sensitive White House e-mail records, and with lawyers and public interest groups in hot pursuit of information that deserves to be part of the permanent historical record.

E-mail messages that have gone suspiciously missing are estimated to number in the millions. [...]

The deep-sixed history also includes improper business conducted by more than 50 White House appointees via e-mail at the Republican Party headquarters. Historians and archivists are suing the administration. We should be grateful for their efforts. Entire days of e-mail records have turned up conveniently blank at the offices of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Cheney, of course, retreats from sunshine with the wariness of Alucard; he is fighting to the last the transfer of his records to the National Archives, as required by law. [...]

[T]he Bush team, from day one, has flouted the requirement to preserve a truthful record, ignoring repeated warnings from the National Archives. In government agencies, the public’s freedom-of-information rights have been maliciously hobbled. [...]

It will take years to ingest before historians can truly get a handle on what is missing.

History is truly the poorer for the Bush administration. President-elect Barack Obama must quickly undo the damage by ordering that records be shielded from political interference, by repairing the freedom-of-information process, and by ending the abuse of the classification process to cloak the truths of the presidency.

The Nation of Dick, the Chimpenfuhrer, and their little band of democracy pirates have done more damage in the past eight years than we can possibly process or capture, even in an excellent year-end summary.

As optimistic as I am about an ObamAdministration, I'm queasy about their allowing BushCo to skate.

It's BrownER, not BrownING, Washington Times

By GottaLaff

(Here's a screen grab of the error)

One: If you're going to rip into a public figure, at least get their name right in the headline. Two: Carol Browner was exonerated, but it would send a better message if she came across as transparent as P.E. Obama has insisted he and his administration would be:

Don't bother looking for any electronic records of Carol Browner's first stint as a federal government executive. The soon-to-be Obama administration climate czar intentionally didn't keep many.

In sworn testimony obtained by The Washington Times, Ms. Browner disclosed that she refused to use e-mail when she served as President Clinton's Environmental Protection Agency chief in the 1990s for fear of leaving a digital trail. She also ordered her government computer hard drive wiped clean of records just before leaving office.

"It was a conscious decision not to use a piece of equipment or to learn how to use a piece of equipment because I didn't want to be in a situation similar to what I had been in Florida," she testified about government computers. The testimony referred to her days as an environmental regulator in Florida, where an e-mail message sent to her surfaced in litigation.

"This is why I made this decision not to use my computer," she said. "I was very careful." [...]

The ensuing investigation ultimately cleared Ms. Browner of any wrongdoing, concluding she was unaware of the judge's order. Her former agency, however, didn't fare as well. It was found in contempt of court for failing to preserve government records at the heart of the case.

While exonerated, Ms. Browner's testimony provided a rare insight into her distaste for keeping historical government records in electronic form. It's an aversion that concerns some government watchdogs as she prepares to take the high-profile job of coordinating President-elect Barack Obama's efforts against global warming.

Granted, this is from the Washington Times, but Browner (not "Browning") could afford to at least give the appearance of transparency, if for no other reason than to avoid all the usual innuendo.

Alaska Investigates Racist Obama E-mails on State Government Accounts

By GottaLaff

Before Palin and her $180,000 wardrobe grabbed the spotlight, Alaska didn't seem to have all these scandals, now did it?

Alaska officials are investigating racist jokes about President-elect Barack Obama that have been circulating on state government e-mail accounts.

One of the e-mails obtained by The Associated Press asks what was the outcome of the Democrat's victory after all the time and money spent, and concludes: "Another black family living in government housing!"

State officials were unaware of the e-mails until asked about them by the AP.

Administration Commissioner Annette Kreitzer says she alerted the office of Gov. Sarah Palin -- the failed Republican vice presidential candidate -- about the e-mails.

Palin's office had no immediate comment.

Well, gee, I'm sure that if "state officials" had been willing to cough up $10,000 a pop, they could have made themselves aware of each and every e-mail.