The Bushies are going to fight the subpeona; they have to. There’s no way in hell they can let those documents and emails see the light of day. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that the Bushies are done, deader than doornails, if they obey the subpeona(s).

So what will they do? Seems to me the WH only has two options:

1. Just ignore the subpeonas, which would mean finding the WH/DoJ in contempt. Does Congress go to the court then? Or send the Sargeant-at-Arms to enforce the subpeonas?

2. Comply in dribs and drabs. This seems a likelier scenario, since it avoids a legal showdown. Unless the Committees call them on it – but can they? They’d be working with an obvious but unprovable assertion that the response is dilatory. Can they issue a contempt order for foot-dragging?

Assuming either one, where does that leave Gonzales’ appointment to testify on the 17th?

If the WH delays or ignores the supbpeonas, would Congress reschedule his testimony for after the showdown over the subpeonas? Or would the hearing go forward, and the subpoena fight continue at the same time?

CaseyL–I don’t see how they’re going to fight this. If they miss the deadline, I think Conyers is just going to send the Sergeant-at-Arms over there to confiscate the computers. This has â€last chance†written all over it.

I’ve got to wonder how many of these computers are up for ’updating of software’. You’ve got to know the WH is spraying the scrubbing bubbles.

It seems to me that jacking around with these guys allows time to eliminate evidence. Why don’t sopeana’s fly out to any and all host companies, the RNC, anywhere data may be? The players will never, ever give it up. NFW

Urging â€â€¦the Department to image forensically the work stations, laptops, and/or other personal computers…†is like asking a snake to jump, again ain’t gonna happen.

It just seems to me that a â€drag the feet, scrub a bit, drag, scrub, drag, scrub, play dumb as needed†will be very effective against the approach the committe is taking at the moment. They need to start strong arming these folks, sooner, not later.

Congress is still being to cautious. Start slinging hammers – take control of the narrative. That’s what the American people want.

Conyers’ people came across something big. They have Abu by the short hairs, and they showed just enough to let him know he’s screwed no matter what, and big time. And so the subpoena is really just an invitation to get him a little bit off the hook. He’s still going to be hooked. If this goes to the Supremes, and it surely will, the DOJ will lose. And though people still talk about running out the clock, remember, it’s April 2007, and the clock will run to around September 2008. They’ve got lots of time, and lots of time to Impeach Bush in December 2008 to cut off the pardons.

knut

We don’t have that much time. At least in my state (one USA purged, the other seemingly bought off), the voter purge they’ve got planned will already be well under way.

They need to get Gonzales and Bush out by July 2008 at the latest if we really want to ensure the USA purge doesn’t have its desired effect.

Oh man, I’ve been waiting for them to ask for this. I wonder if they’ll release the files on their website. If not, I’ll happily volunteer to help with the forensics.

I’ll go for the let it out in dribs and drabs option. It seems to be the one the White House counsel, Fielding, has been going for so far in an effort not to appear to be completely stone walling. Delay, delay, delay, until the clock runs out.

Thanks, Kagro; that’s exactly the information I was looking for.

Assuming the Senate and House do issue contempt orders, is that when the Sgt at Arms has to go serve/enforce them?

Does he take law enforcement officers? Assistants? Dollies and a Mack truck?

Does he have the authority to enter the building, and offices, and take file cabinets, computers, Blackberries, etc.?

Seems to me that Conyers and his staff have been ahead of the blogs suggestions. Is it possible that we should consider how exactly the Sergeant At Arms would go about his/her business? How does that work. Apparently they have the right to arrest and detain even the POTUS. If Conyers doesn’t like dicking around, and we have emails proving the gumming to death strategy is in full force, why would he go to the courts?

Also, on the subpoena, at the end it said that the person delivering the documents (is that Alberto?) is â€not to depart without leave of said committee or subcommittee.†So maybe if Gonzo doesn’t produce, they can just lock him away in the House.

It might be a good idea to run the Abramoff stuff through again, looking for USA and voting stuff. (I just did a quick pass through).
Susan Ralston was using addresses at rnchq.org in 2001-2002 and georgewbush.com in 2002-2004.
There’s also an e-mail from Abramoff complaining about something getting into the WH e-mail system in 2003 (932_001 p 14 of 52, or p 16 of 52 – I was sticking it in a Notepad file and the system hung before I could save or post.)

I realize we’re a ways yet from the point where this is a concern, but might not the RNC have a slight problem of its own, you know, potentially, if e-mails discussing obstruction of justice schemes show up on servers it let people use? Especially since they seem to be holding the beneficial end of a lot of those schemes. At least, might they not have to explain some things in public about how they determine who uses their stuff and what kinds of business-like monitoring they do?

I wonder if the party has missed their chance to cut these guys loose—if that were possible.

ew,

I’ll say this. Conyers has a good technical staff. I especially like the bit requesting the DOJ to image the computers of folks in the White House and at the RNC. The only bit I’m unclear on is whether he actually requested the physical computers of the people who left the DOJ (Sampson, Goodling, Battle). If I were running this show, I would definitely want those.

It’s obvious from the document dumps so far that several important pieces of the puzzle are being held back. For example, we clearly don’t have the first version of Sampson’s Word document (USA Replacement Plan.doc) because in the earliest version from the document dump, Iglesias has already been tacked on at the end (out of order).

By the way, I’m absolutely serious about volunteering. If Conyers wants help, I’ll take the time off from my day job and go to D.C. Piecing this stuff together can be tedious, but it is more rewarding that finishing the Sunday NYT Crossword.

It just dawned on me why Conyers is suspicious of bcc’s. There are at least a few occasions where Kyle Sampson forwarded an email his own account. The only reason I’ve ever seen to do that is so you can bcc somebody else (although in more recent versions of Outlook you don’t need to do that, you can bcc somebody without anyone in the to: field). Again, somebody working for Conyers has been around the block a time or two.

re WO at 10:30:

I’ve done that, and so have other people I know: you want a copy of something you’re sending out, so you put your own e-mail address in the ’to’ field and the other addies in the ’cc’ or ’bcc’ field, depending on whether you want them to know who all is getting the mail. (Usually I cc or bcc to me.)

PJ

Oh, thanks, now I get it. I’ve done that too.

WO

Or, at the very least, AGAG. After all, one or the other scenario is what happened with the other forwarded email we were talking about.

In other words, either ROve or AGAG were informed of every step of this process. But they don’t want us to know taht.

ew,

I don’t think AGAG uses email much. On a slightly related note, I think Conyers, et. al., might want to start a conversation with RIM (the Canadian firm that runs the Blackberry Service) to see what they may have in the way of responsive documents.

I don’t comment much here now, but I do peruse the next hurray every few days to just see what you folks are up to.

I won’t bother with the politics, but there are all sorts of technical things that there is a lot of loose thinking here about.

Say Joe sends email43 to Jim, and cc’s it to Jane, and bcc’s it to Jerry.

In Joe’s sent (if saved) box will be an email43 indicating that Jim was direct receipent, that Jane was cc’d. Nothing on the email indicates anything about Jerry.

In the email 43 that Jim received will be the sender Joe, the cc’d Jane, but nothing about Jerry.

In the email43 Jane got will the the sender Joe, the direct receiver Jim, and nothing about Jerry.

In the email 43 that Jerry gets will be the sender Joe an no reference to anyone else.

If you send all bcc, the old way was to adress it to yourself, and then you would have a copy, otherwise you could send it, but you didn’t get a copy. However there will be no reference to any of those bcc’d.

Now the code may not work properly and /or there may be info somewhere on a server or mailing unit.

But normally as designed, the systems will not have any references to anyone bcc’d, except on the receipents computers there will be the email itself, if it is saved.

As for congress going over to the WH and grabbing computer, that is kind of silly. If they could get past the secret service, there can be State Secrets, and top secret correspondence etc., on those machines. I don’t thing that will get any further than some one’s wild imagination.

As for keeping emails. Well, periodically emails are purged by most corporate systems these days, as well as other documents, unless you make an effort to keep them. in fact we have to put purge dates on our documents. All this is quite legal as long as it is standard.

I speak of private email and servers, like the RNC, etc.

Well you can thank Tokyo Jodi for being misinformed because she thinks she’s smarter than she actually is. Jodi, if you were twice as smart, you’d still be stupid.

I mentioned that the server or mailing unit might have the bcc within the total sending stream if this is kept. I doubt it is. It depends on the software, and the settings.

Again, many companies including mine periodically â€cleanse†their systems.in the mainstream systems by adding purge dates to the files. If you want to keep things, you can classify it as a more permanent file.

As for what the Government offices that are of interest do, I don’t know. I would assume if it is just chitter chat they will purge their documents providing it is not on the system that archieves government documents.

In fact to permanently keep documents at my company you have to have a priority. This is to keep the Government or someone suing us from getting our chitter chatter.

Lets be plain here. These accounts outside the government system were for personal and ’political†communications not related to history archivable information. You can argue that they shouldn’t have done that but you are barking up the First Admendment tree.

If they want to they can go on the internet to yahoo, or google and use their mail box there. Never ever pop the mail down to their desktop. My personal mail stays on my domain and never comes into the company servers, and it is not in any way illegal.

And William if you use Outlook Express then you get the opposite results you spoke of by default. Again what ever you wish can be attained.

There is a way to keep the original email before being sent if you wish. Actually several.

Just to cite a real case where loose bit of information could be presumed to be dangerous. At a company I was with where a buyout of a competitor was proceeding the Government came and actually took the desk blotter off the CEO’s desk and kept it. We don’t leave stuff lying around.

â€A clean desk is a safe desk.â€