^{So the Bunning blockade is over. For days, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky exploited Senate rules to block a one-month extension of unemployment benefits. In the end, he gave in, although not soon enough to prevent an interruption of payments to around 100,000 workers. But while the blockade is over, its lessons remain. Some of those lessons involve the spectacular dysfunctionality of the Senate. What I want to focus on right now, however, is the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties. Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.}

^{Take the question of helping the unemployed in the middle of a deep slump. What Democrats believe is what textbook economics says: that when the economy is deeply depressed, extending unemployment benefits not only helps those in need, it also reduces unemployment. That’s because the economy’s problem right now is lack of sufficient demand, and cash-strapped unemployed workers are likely to spend their benefits. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office says that aid to the unemployed is one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus, as measured by jobs created per dollar of outlay.}

^{But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” In Mr. Kyl’s view, then, what we really need to worry about right now — with more than five unemployed workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment at its highest level since the Great Depression — is whether we’re reducing the incentive of the unemployed to find jobs. To me, that’s a bizarre point of view — but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.}

^{And the difference between the two universes isn’t just intellectual, it’s also moral.}

^{Bill Clinton famously told a suffering constituent, “I feel your pain.” But the thing is, he did and does — while many other politicians clearly don’t. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that the parties feel the pain of different people. During the debate over unemployment benefits, Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat of Oregon, made a plea for action on behalf of those in need. In response, Mr. Bunning blurted out an expletive. That was undignified — but not that different, in substance, from the position of leading Republicans.}

^{Consider, in particular, the position that Mr. Kyl has taken on a proposed bill that would extend unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless for the rest of the year. Republicans will block that bill, said Mr. Kyl, unless they get a “path forward fairly soon” on the estate tax. Now, the House has already passed a bill that, by exempting the assets of couples up to $7 million, would leave 99.75 percent of estates tax-free. But that doesn’t seem to be enough for Mr. Kyl; he’s willing to hold up desperately needed aid to the unemployed on behalf of the remaining 0.25 percent. That’s a very clear statement of priorities.}

^{So, as I said, the parties now live in different universes, both intellectually and morally. We can ask how that happened; there, too, the parties live in different worlds. Republicans would say that it’s because Democrats have moved sharply left: a Republican National Committee fund-raising plan acquired by Politico suggests motivating donors by promising to “save the country from trending toward socialism.” I’d say that it’s because Republicans have moved hard to the right, furiously rejecting ideas they used to support. Indeed, the Obama health care plan strongly resembles past G.O.P. plans. But again, I don’t live in their universe.}

^{More important, however, what are the implications of this total divergence in views?}

^{The answer, of course, is that bipartisanship is now a foolish dream. How can the parties agree on policy when they have utterly different visions of how the economy works, when one party feels for the unemployed, while the other weeps over affluent victims of the “death tax”? Which brings us to the central political issue right now: health care reform. If Congress enacts reform in the next few weeks — and the odds are growing that it will — it will do so without any Republican votes. Some people will decry this, insisting that President Obama should have tried harder to gain bipartisan support. But that isn’t going to happen, on health care or anything else, for years to come.}

As I looked at the graphs, I thought they needed to be accompanied by the overall population for comparison. After I did them [World Population and U.S. Population], I found them less interesting than I planned. The shape of the U.S. Population graph was bland. It just went up. And it wasn’t the same as the World Population - neither its shape nor its "wiggles."

So, I expressed it as the U.S. Population divided by the World Population. It made a graph plenty worthy of perusing.

^{Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!}

And they came. And didn’t we have a time of things for a while? Until we didn’t [around 1929]. With the coming of the Great Depression our contribution to the world population actually declined. We became "huddled masses" all on our own. Then, in 1940, we got back on the go again outrunning the world in population growth. But this time, rather than immigration, a lot of our contribution was from what is called the "baby boom." And a boom it  certainly was. It’s obvious that it was more than just a return to the pre-war fertility. It exceeded any extrapolation of previous fertility trends. But our usual way of thinking about it may be a bit distorted. We think that the soldiers came home and there was a period where people made up for lost time, then settled down. Well it sure went on for a long time - the twenty years from 1940 until 1960. We came close to doubling the fertility rate in those years.

So the notion of the "baby boom" resulting from returning soldiers settling down and breeding seems simplistic. It started before the war. It is more reasonable to propose that the post-Depression prosperity was an important factor. And what stopped the "baby boom" in 1960? I was alive then, and can give eye witness testimony to the fact that there was no great national consciousness at work. We recall the "sixties" in a very different way - as a time of sexual liberation.

• 1960: birth control pills introduced
• 1960’s: intrauterine contraceptive devices
• 1973: abortion - Roe v. Wade

^{Click on the map to see the original [which allows you to see the actual numbers for each country].}

^{World Catholicism}

^{World Islam}

^{World Population Density}

^{reformated to make the scales [R to L] comparable}

He shows another graph of pregnancies by age for White, Hispanic, and Black women that makes it clear that teenage pregnancy remains quite high, particularly in the minority populations.

My own thoughts about abortion are pragmatic. First, there are no consistent  human predators, so our growth has marched forward unchecked. There comes a point where "enough is enough." I frankly think we’re already on the wrong side in human population, so I see abortion by choice as a factor in limiting our over-growth. Second, I attended too many teenage deaths from illegal abortions. It’s not pretty, and it’s not right. Finally, the most reliable predictor of mental health is being a "wanted" child. I’m sure that’s right.

But I’m curious if voluntary abortion by women who do not want to carry the pregnancy is even close to enough to stem population growth. I kind of doubt it. So, whenever real numbers come my way, I find myself poring over them to see if that question can be answered. And Paul includes a table with a column I’ve never seen before - % at conception who wanted to be pregnant:

from which he extrapolates the "wanted total fertility rates." In all cases, the percentage of "wanted pregnancies" fell between 1996 and 2003 [White -4.0%, Black -7.1%, Hispanic -6.4%]. In 2003, the percentages of "unwanted pregnancies" was White 10.7%, Black 26.2%, Hispanic 16.8%. Interestingly, the abortion statistics are higher that the "unwanted pregnancies" in all three groups [White 12.5%, Black 37.4%, Hispanic 19.1%].This difference is likely more reflective of the different sources for the numbers than some real statistic. Whatever the case, I felt encouraged by the fact that the women who don’t want to be pregnant seem to be using abortion as a method of waiting until they choose to have children. The graph shows the expected low abortion rates for the predominantly Catholic Hispanic women.

I got to wondering two things: What was this high birth rate among Hispanics going to do to the racial make-up of the country? And if voluntary abortion was making enough of a dent in the population growth. After trying for a while to use these birth rates and the general population statistics to make that kind of projection, I called on a higher power - the Census Bureau - obviously better equipped. Here are their population projections. The graph on the left is in thousands. The graph on the right is in percentages.

We’re still breeding like rabbits. The population has doubled in my lifetime. Nothing on that graph suggests that the population growth is slowing. At the best, at least our growth looks closer to linear than geometric or logarithmic. And they project the obvious, that the Hispanic growth is real. While that’s all very interesting, it’s the first fact that is the cause for alarm. Without legal abortion, our growth rates would be skyrocketing. They’re already too high. Even with legalized abortion, our time is numbered. At some future time, that graph on the left will have to level out. When I look at these numbers, I wonder what the anti-abortion, anti-birth-control people are actually thinking. Are they crowding the world for Armageddon? [surely God gave us minds to use to figure out such simple things as population control].

What’s the hurry? Because it takes a long time to curb population growth. The experiment is already underway on the other side of the globe. This is the birth rate and total population of China since their Revolution in 1949.

After Mao had them breeding like sheep, they saw the writing on the wall and decided to limit childbirth to one child per couple in 1979 - a fairly radical intervention. As you can see, the total population curve is just beginning to "rise less fast" after 24 years [compare with the left US graph immediately above]. The graphs below are their government’s projections through 2050:

1. Recession: Get out of Debt, Save. Not very good advice, actually. That’s what people do by reflex, and it essentially shuts down the economy. It’s what FDR meant by, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." On his first day in office, he declared a Bank holiday to stop runs on the Banks. People were hording money in coffee cans, thinking like Beck would have us think.
2. Depression: 1. + Fruit Cellar. Store up food for the coming Armageddon. That shuts down commerce. Stores sell off their inventories and don’t restock. Further grinding the economy to a halt.
3. Collapse: 1. + 2. + G, G, G [God, Gold, and Guns]. One of the ways FDR got us out of the Depression was to outlaw ownership of gold. Again, hording gold was shutting down the economy further.

On the November 23, 2009, the New York Times published an article warning about the “wave of debt payments facing the U.S. government.” Later that day, on his Fox News show, Glenn Beck used the article as a jumping off point to discuss “the three scenarios that we could be facing: recession, depression, or collapse.” In the case of potential “collapse,” Beck recommended his audience follow “the 3G system” of “God, gold and guns.” Watch it:

The “3G” show was hardly the only time Beck warned of total breakdown of the U.S. economy. On June 5, 2009 Beck declared that “if we don’t come to some common sense, we’re facing the destruction of our country.” Weeks later, he predicted that “we’re all going to be living under a bridge soon, fending off bums with a beer bottle.”

Unfortunately, the Fox poll did not ask whether the gold and gun-buying respondents watch Beck’s show. As ThinkProgress has previously noted, though Beck’s shows often combines economic fearmongering with gold advocacy, he rarely mentions that he receives financial support from gold companies.

I still don’t get it. I mean I get why Glenn Beck is hawking gold. That’s how he makes his living. Can’t blame the guy for making a buck here and there. But his warnings of financial collapse don’t lead to God, Gold, and Guns.

It seems like this is a repeat of whatever Y2K was supposed to be about. People were buying generators, bags of rice, canned foods, Guns, and I think Gold and God were in there too. But I genuinely don’t get this particular line of thought. It has something to do with the likes of the tea-baggers, the militias, the left-over Y2Kers, the Aryan Nation, creationists, the NRA, survivalists, some fundamentalists, some right-to-lifers, and other sorts - but I still don’t get what it’s about, what the point is. Whatever it’s about, Glenn Beck is to these people as Jimmy Bakker and Pat Robertson were to the fringy christians that watched them on television. Maybe it gives structure to the emptiness, or substance to their fears. I wonder if Glenn Beck is planning to open a time-share theme park like Jimmy Bakker did [He could probably get Heritage USA for a song]…

^{BAGHDAD - Ahmad Chalabi - a one-time Pentagon favourite whose faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction helped pave the way for the Iraq war - was a secular politician groomed by his U.S. backers to replace Saddam Hussein. After falling out with the Americans, the MIT graduate has reinvented himself - again. He is now a top candidate in an alliance led by an Iranian-backed Shiite religious party.}

^{Chalabi, 65, has bolstered his Shiite credentials with a push against former Saddam loyalists from the helm of a committee that banned nearly 500 candidates linked to the ousted Baath Party from running in the March 7 election. The move has angered Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority and jeopardized U.S. efforts to promote the parliamentary vote as a chance to reconcile the rival Islamic sects following years of violence. "The Iraqi people have ousted Saddam but the Baath Party is now trying to barge into the political arena again despite the clauses in the constitution that ban the party," Chalabi said as he addressed a crowd of about 200 tribal leaders and other Shiites Sunday at a campaign rally in northern Baghdad.}

^{It’s testimony to his ability to adapt and to the influence of religion on post-Saddam Iraqi politics despite a backlash against sectarian parties in provincial elections held last year. Chalabi has joined forces with anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC, in a coalition called the Iraqi National Alliance. That raises the possibility that he could emerge as a compromise candidate for prime minister if the alliance wins the largest number of seats in the new 325-member legislature. He would be an unlikely choice, but the Sadrists might choose Chalabi since he’s more able to secure the support of other groups to join a coalition government…}

^{As part of his latest political orientation, Chalabi has been making regular public appearances at major Shiite religious occasions, donning mourning black, for example, at ceremonies dedicated to the seventh century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, one of Shiism’s most revered saints when participants weep and beat their chests to show their sorrow. "Pray for [Islam's Prophet] Muhammad and the family of Muhammad," was how Chalabi began Sunday’s address, using a phrase that’s more often used by Shiite clerics than a U.S.-educated politician in a dark business suit and a purple tie. The crowd liked it and recited a prayer out loud…}

^{He also was at total ease laying out campaign promises that ranged from jobs, cheap housing, better education, fighting corruption and a transparent government. Of the wide range of topics he quickly touched on, he dwelt the longest on reinstating in government jobs Iraqis fired during Saddam’s rule for their political convictions or sectarian affiliation. It’s another favourite with Shiite voters. "He is an old fox," Kazim al-Muqdadai, a political analyst who lectures political science at Baghdad University, said of Chalabi. "He is only thinking of his personal glory."}

Iraqi National Congress
From SourceWatch

^{In May 1991, following the end of Operation Desert Storm, then-President George H.W. Bush signed a presidential finding directing the CIA to create the conditions for Hussein’s removal. The hope was that members of the Iraqi military would turn on Hussein and stage a military coup. The CIA did not have the mechanisms in place to make that happen, so they hired the Rendon Group, a PR firm run by John Rendon, to run a covert anti-Saddam propaganda campaign.}

^{"The Iraqi National Congress, and its most famous spokesperson Ahmad Chalabi, are entirely the creation of a media strategy company [Rendon Group] doing the bidding of the United States government."}

^{In 1998, however, the U.S. Congress authorized $97 million in U.S. military aid for Iraqi opposition via the Iraq Liberation Act, intended primarily for the INC. In April 2001, the Iranian government allowed the INC to open US-funded offices in a plush northern suburb of Tehran. It marked the first time since the Iranian revolution in 1979 that Washington allowed government funds to be spent inside Iran…}

^{In March 2002, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that "exile groups supported by the I.N.C. have been conducting sabotage operations inside Iraq, targeting oil refineries and other installations… Hersh added, "A dispute over Chalabi’s potential usefulness preoccupies the bureaucracy, as the civilian leadership in the Pentagon continues to insist that only the INC can lead the opposition. At the same time, a former Administration official told me, ‘Everybody but the Pentagon and the office of the Vice-President wants to ditch the INC.’ The INC’s critics note that Chalabi, despite years of effort and millions of dollars in American aid, is intensely unpopular today among many elements in Iraq. ‘If Chalabi is the guy, there could be a civil war after Saddam’s overthrow,’ one former C.I.A. operative told me. A former high-level Pentagon official added, ‘There are some things that a President can’t order up, and an internal opposition is one.’" Notwithstanding these concerns, Hersh reported that "INC supporters in and around the Administration, including Paul  Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, believe, like Chalabi, that any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand."}

^{In December 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported that the administration of George W. Bush actually preferred INC-supplied analyses of Iraq over analyses provided by long-standing analysts within the CIA. "Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency.," he wrote. "The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq. … Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war."}

^{Much of the pro-war faction’s information came from the INC, even though "most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country’s tumultuous politics consider the INC’s intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil. … The Pentagon’s critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC’s leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else."}

^{"The [INC's] intelligence isn’t reliable at all," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counterterrorism expert. "Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi’s own presidential ambitions. They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, [creating] cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches."}

^{In February 2003, as the Bush administration neared the end of its preparations for war, an internal fight erupted over INC’s plan to actually become the government of Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Chalabi wanted to "declare a provisional government when the war starts," a plan that "alienated some of Mr Chalabi’s most enthusiastic backers in the Pentagon and in Congress, who fear the announcement of a provisional government made up of exiles would split anti-Saddam sentiment inside Iraq."}

^{A classified study prepared by the National Intelligence Council in early 2003 found that only one of Chalabi’s defectors could be considered credible, The New Republic has learned. A more recent investigation undertaken by the DIA has found that practically all the intelligence provided by the INC was worthless. Despite this, it was revealed that in March 2004, the Pentagon continued to pay the INC $US340,000 a month for "intelligence collection". "We’re still getting good information from the INC … There are a lot of insurgents that are doing bad things and they have a lot of contacts and [are] making better ones every day," an unnamed Pentagon official claimed.}

^{Knight Ridder reported that the false INC intelligence fed to the US intelligence agencies was also distributed to news outlets in the United States, Britain and Australia. "A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress’s Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq… The assertions in the articles reinforced President Bush’s claims that Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with Osama bin Laden, was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding biological and chemical weapons," Knight Ridder reported.}

It’s a pitiful story. A megalomaniacal sociopathic expatriot lead our President and Vice President around through the nose, and they only backed off from him when he planned to install himself as Iraq’s new President after the invasion. But he did get a position in Iraq’s government and was, I suspect, behind the deBaathification that helped stoke the "Insurgency." As is apparent in my last post [hook, line, and sinker…], he’s still at it. His life is chronicled in a biography, The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi, currently on its way from Amazon.com to this very place…

Ahmed Chalabi’s renewed influence in Iraq concerns
Washington Post
By Ernesto Londoño and Leila Fadel
February 27, 2010

BAGHDAD — Ahmed Chalabi, the onetime U.S. ally, is in the limelight again, and his actions are proving no less controversial than they did years ago. On the eve of Iraq’s parliamentary elections, Chalabi is driving an effort aimed at weeding out candidates tied to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. Chalabi is reprising a role he played after the U.S.-led invasion - which many critics believe he helped facilitate with faulty intelligence - and, in the process, is infuriating American officials and some Iraqis, who suspect his motive is to bolster his own political bloc…

"Even if it kills him, he’s going to stay in Iraq to try to become prime minister," said Ezzat Shahbandar, a Shiite lawmaker from a competing slate who has known Chalabi for more than 20 years. "This issue is the only tool he has, because he has nothing else going for him." Chalabi fell out of favor with the Americans in 2004, after they accused him of spying for Iran. The year before, though, he had been appointed to head a U.S.-formed commission to rid the government of officials tied to Hussein’s regime.

The hasty, wholesale purge that the commission conducted is now widely seen as a catalyst of the insurgency and Iraq’s sectarian war. Today, however, Chalabi remains at the helm of a similar "de-Baathification" panel, the Justice and Accountability Commission, because parliament has not appointed new members. When the commission recently announced the disqualification of nearly 500 candidates from the March 7 parliamentary elections, critics noted that candidates from Sunni-led and mixed secular coalitions were disproportionately targeted. Many of those ousted were rivals of Chalabi’s bloc…

In campaign posters, Chalabi, a onetime Iraqi exile, bills himself as "the Destroyer of the symbols of the Baath." Placards for other candidates on his political slate, the Iraqi National Alliance, are graced with the words "No space for the Baath," written in crimson letters that suggest blood. The alliance is a Shiite coalition of parties whose most prominent figures are former Iraqi exiles in the current government. Those parties did poorly in provincial elections in January 2009…

He has long had a strong relationship with Iran. But he became close to the CIA and the Pentagon in the run-up to the invasion, as U.S. officials used his group to muster opposition against Hussein. The U.S. government funneled millions to his group, which provided it with intelligence reports that later proved to be erroneous. In 2004, Chalabi was a guest of President George W. Bush at the State of the Union address. Many Iraqi Shiite politicians have little regard for Chalabi because he left in the late 1950s, avoiding authoritarian rule. Many of his peers were imprisoned, tortured and forced into exile.

Despite his lack of popular support, Chalabi has remained relevant. Even his rivals allow that he has keen political instincts, a sharp mind and a knack for influencing powerful people. He also does not shy from controversy. This week, his deputy on the commission, Ali Faisal al-Lami, said hundreds of officials in Iraq’s intelligence, army and police agencies are subject to dismissal for links to the Baath Party. "We believe there are thousands of others who will be found," he said in an interview. "These measures will seriously enhance security in Iraq by dismissing any bad elements that carry the Baath ideology"…

If that effort gains traction in the weeks ahead, U.S. officials say, political violence could very well follow. U.S. commanders could also suddenly lose key Iraqi officers who they have trained and mentored over the years. "They will try to get rid of pro-U.S. generals, but more importantly, they are stacking the deck with pro-Iranian officers, which will damage U.S. long-term interests in the long run," a senior U.S. military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk to reporters. "This is why many neighboring Arab countries aren’t so happy about us modernizing the Iraqi military with some of the latest equipment"…

Ryan C. Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 until last year, said Chalabi is no one’s "agent." "He’s an opportunist and he’s a nationalist," Crocker said, "and he will use whatever vehicle or platform that presents itself to further his own agenda."

Senior Democrats and watchdog groups demanded Friday that the Justice Department investigate the disappearance of e-mail messages by Bush lawyers who drafted memos blessing harsh interrogation tactics, saying their absence cast doubt on an ethics report that cleared the lawyers of professional misconduct. The lost e-mails cover a critical period in 2002 when Justice Department attorneys labored under heavy pressure on a memo that gave the CIA a green light to use simulated drowning, sleep deprivation and other since-repudiated interrogation techniques against al-Qaeda suspects.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, at a hearing Friday, pressed authorities for answers. "Why were these critical records deleted? Why were they kept from investigators?" he asked. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government accountability group, called on the Justice Department this week to launch a criminal inquiry into the disappearance of the e-mail messages, which could violate the Federal Records Act. The National Archives, which stores government documents, also reached out to the department to ask why it had not been notified about the missing messages before the release of the ethics report late last week.

Yet Another Letter Asking about Lost Bush Era Emails
by emptywheel
February 26, 2010

The National Archives has noticed what we all did: somehow the emails via which John Yoo coordinated with [I’m guessing] the White House on the Bybee Memo disappeared. They’ve written DOJ to get some answers. Here’s the letter. In response, as Michael Isikoff reports, DOJ is mouthing the same kind of blather that Gary Grindler did at the SJC hearing earlier today.

^{A Justice spokeswoman said the department was “reviewing the letter” and declined further comment. The department is seeking to determine what department policies and procedures were in place at the time to archive or otherwise preserve employee e-mails, according to a source familiar with the department’s review who asked not to be identified because it is ongoing.}

^{The Federal Records Act states that “no federal records may be destroyed” by agencies without first getting approval from the Archives to dispose of the material. E-mails have long been considered “records” if they involve substantive government business. The Archives, which has responsibility for maintaining a permanent archive of government records, has imposed rules on federal agencies, requiring them to take steps to preserve such material—either by archiving the e-mails on computer tapes or by printing them out and preserving them.}

^{Under those same rules, federal agencies “must report promptly” to the Archives “any unlawful or accidental removal” of federal records. But Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the Archives, says the first time Archive officials became aware of the missing e-mails is when the OPR report was released last Friday night.}

^{“We want some answers,” says Cooper. “Why were they destroyed—and why weren’t we notified?” Cooper emphasized that the Archives has no evidence there was any willful destruction.}

At some point, people have to stop giving Bush era officials the benefit of the doubt. Every single major scandal of the Bush Administration – except, technically, the warrantless wiretap scandal, but if I were NARA I’d start asking about those emails – has included disappeared emails. I mean, it’s time to stop pretending this is anything but intentional.

I mean, it’s time to stop pretending this is anything but intentional.