Focus Fails and Is Recovered

There are days when the ciliary muscle fails me; the eye cannot follow-focus.

Suicide Bomber at Parliament Kills 8 Iraqis

Among the dead were at least two lawmakers, both from Sunni Arab parties. Of the 23 people wounded, 11 were parliamentarians, the United States military reported.

Millions More Missing White House Emails

To be clear: these are emails controlled by the White House — not emails on RNC servers, like those other lost emails.

Oceans Vomiting Green Slime

Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This ‘rise of slime,’ as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.

And this only begins it. There’s Imus and the larger moonscape of mass media enabled radio war on non combatants. There’s the girlfriend promotion stunt by Paul “We’ll be Greeted as Liberators” Wolfowitz. There’s the big gorilla CO2 and it’s attendant phalanx of rising oceans, withering drought, deluge, depopulation and resource wars.
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Vertigo sets in. I lift my eyes and find a tree-top. Perhaps that singing finch will come into view. Distracted into steadiness I recall a fine remembrance of Kurt Vonnegut, re-read it and know anew that even those in despair contribute much, and often. Then I listen to Yo Yo Ma’s Butterfly’s Day Out [click on “Play as playlist”] to lighten my gloom, and decide for the e-mail news from the capital for my daily focus.

There’s a triple play going on here:

1) White House staffers were instructed to use non-White House e-mail for certain messages. The WH says this was for campaign work since it is illegal to use government accounts (equipment/time?) for political campaigns. Others claim the accounts were used for any off-the-record communications, such as directives to get rid of certain US Attorneys. Karl Rove had at least 4 separate accounts. The Republican National Committee hosted the accounts in most cases.

2) These off-the-record communications were not revealed to the Senate Judiciary committee when it made a request for all records pertaining to the hiring and firing of the US Attorneys. Now that they have been revealed, many are claimed to be unavailable: deleted, lost, whatever.

3) A separate claim has been made by CREW that, besides the off-the-record missing e-mail, there are millions of legal, on-the-record White House e-mail that are missing.

Tied to the US Attorney scandal slowly heating, these e-mail loses — and potential recovery — could be the ball bearings which send the Administration Hummer off the road, the equivalent of the Nixon burglary — the little, stupid thing that brings the big, arrogant thing down. This is bad-news wrapped around good, methinks, not bad on bad on bad like Iraq and Oceans…

Meanwhile, the missing mail is setting up a mighty clash over Executive Privilege between the Congress and the White House. Long overdue, as the Executive Branch has used the argument of never-ending war to usurp prerogatives and hide its actions in ways Richard Nixon could only dream of, the Senate looks as if it’s ready to rumble. Mild mannered Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont seems lately to have found his inner bulldog.

Go after this Dems. Of all the places to attack, this may by the soft under-belly. Go hard, get a good grip, and don’t let go.

The best place to follow the e-mail / USAttorney typhoon is at talkingpointsmemo.com and its sister site TPMmuckraker.com