I am a techie for a small business and I can tell you that while we don’t run our own e-mail servers the really important business that is done by e-mail by the president of our company is archived once a year and the archives backed up on CD. Anything the CFO considers important is copied to the president of the company so it will be backed up. Our regular backups are relatively simple in that we run a full backup every weekend and differential ones every weekday. The weekly full backups are kept for three months. Then at the end of the year another full backup is done that is archived. We are revamping our system so that all important files on client machines will soon be captured as part of the overall network backup as well as individual backups. I’m also currently researching the most cost effective method for us to make this system more extensive and reliable. And this is just for a very small privately held company. It’s not nearly as extensive as I’d have to make it if we went public.

If there is a cover-up or failure, it is not with Rove’s e-mail accounts, it is must be deeper and more involved.

I think the Bush administration is really on the cutting edge of innovation in duplicity and bullsh*t artistry. I really had no idea how far you can go with simply not testifying and/or giving whatever response was most convenient for you despite its utter implausibility. Every time I think they’ve managed to move the bar to a new and unconquerable height, they surprise me again.

I mean really, they have been blowing off Congress for years by just not admitting to anything. Can it be that easy?

Sam’s got it right. OJ’s Dream Team has nothing on these guys.

I blame the Patriot Act for about half of it – proof of the Congress’ eunuch status and abandonment of their Constitutional duties – and every single senator owes Feingold an apology for voting for that crock.

They _can_ to a degree remove the disk and see what it may be able to retrieve via forensic type actions. However if any of said servers applied DOD specified _wiping_ than that would render what they got to be worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Remember there are millions of emails passing through those servers. And your looking for what probably amounts to a key handful.

Technically speaking, Rove could be quite correct. Not many techs have the big guy come to them to ensure that email duplication is properly archived. They _do_ yes – however that is normally when they’re either interested in keeping an eye on someone; they want to see if an employee had malicious intent; or just read some article somewhere.

My impression, based on all that I’ve read about the email deletions, is that forensic investigators might be able to ressurect some of the emails. Or that some might still be found on recipients’ servers – or on servers that relayed the emails. The trouble with any of these ideas is that they would have required the Congressional investigators to move fast before more destruction was done – and they haven’t; SFAIK, they haven’t even actually served all of the subpoenas.

Unless there’s an untouched cache somewhere… or the document dumps include replies that contain the original messages, or printouts someone inadvertently didn’t destroy.

Maybe one of the committees will strike an immunity deal with Goodling. Maybe we’ll know more next week, when some deadlines run out and Gonzales is supposed to testify (unless that’s been rescheduled).

If the pattern of behavior regarding a matter of document discovery is that pertinent documents are consistently ‘lost’ or ‘erased,’ then it’s very hard to honestly conclude that each individual instance of a particular document being lost or a particular email being erased are inadvertent.

This is particularly true when the law requires certain document and email retention as a matter of standard, routine practice. It’s difficult to accept the idea that the highest offices in the land – among them, the highest law enforcement office – don’t know what those laws are.

At which point, the investigators are correct to assume there’s something more to investigate.

Rove and the DOJ obviously have had no intention of cooperating with the Congressional inquiry. They have their loyal AM radio hosts and Friends of the Administration at FNC who keep the talking points circulating- and ordinarily smart people repeat them back word for word. Its as though the Bushies were part of a cult, whose leader keeps feeding them all kinds of crap to pacify them. And it works.

I mean really, they have been blowing off Congress for years by just not admitting to anything. Can it be that easy?