Rove email scandal heats up- time to pick a side?

The Republican National Committee has now told congressional investigators that White House senior political advisor sent or received more than 140,000 emails between 2002 and 2007. According to former Rove assistant Susan B. Ralston, Rove used his political email account (not his official white house account), "most of the time".  This is legally dubious, because there are rules that require White House staff to conduct business through official communications channels that will leave an official record.  Rove did not like those rules, and therefore he apparently used the RNC email accounts as a way to hide his fingerprints when communicating. But Rove has not been a mere political consultant for GWB, he has collected a White House salary.  By the way, Ralston used to work for Jack Abramoff before she signed up to work for Rove. Sheesh.

You may argue of course that this is a harmless oversight. If you belong to the "set Libbby free" crowd, you will argue that perjury does not mean that anyone is trying to actually hide something. But really now, isn't it more likely that there may be fire under the smoke of Rove's extreme secrecy effort?  What was it, Rove was actually the instigator of the Swift Boat veterans for Truth at the same time his boss was calling John Kerry an honorable man? Please, that's not a secret. But it is true that common knowledge is one thing, but provable in a court of law is another.  I would expect that the content of these emails, if made public, would quickly usher Rove out of his job.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) chairman of the House Committeee of Oversight and Government Reform, has no plans to offer immunity to anyone in investigating this obsessive and possibly illegal behavior. He is critical of what he sees as "complete disregard" for the Presidential Records Act. Well, sure, Rove is not some guy that just fell off the turnip truck. He is well advised of what is legal and what is not. He just prefers what is not.  Now, does Waxman have objectivity in this matter? Probably not, since the thing that probably would make him happiest would be to crucify Rove very slowly. But wait- it's not just Rove who did this odd and probably illegal thing. There were 88 White House officials with Republican National Committee email accounts including Chief of Staff Andrew Card!!!! They didn't work for GWB, they worked for the Republican Party, apparently. Or could it be that as far as they were concerned, there really was no difference between the two.

We need to see the end of the "permanent campaign" that Rove has polished to an art form. We need to de-activate political campaigns when the guy or gal walks into the White House, and spend the next 4 years trying to accomplish something with staff who actually have some competence in something beyond politics even if it means no second term.

By the way, Alberto Gonzalez seems to have known about the email accounts and that they were being used for official communications and chose to do nothing about it. Surprised? 

Sources: Washington Post, June 19, 2007, "Bush Aides' misuse of E-Mail detailed by House Committee"   &  'Investigators find secret White House email accounts" by John Oates, The Register (United Kingdom)