Constant Opinions

It’s really bothersome reading about the degree of secrecy the current administration is trying for sometimes. Some is necessary; there’s no doubt about that. But they often seem to be overdoing it.

The current issue has to do with using non-White House emails, which are considered official records and are required to be preserved, to do official business. The excuse is that these email addresses are used to separate official business from political.

Of course, this falls a little flat when one considers that the highly controversial firings were discussed through these emails. Unless you want to say they were indeed politically motivated.

Don’t get me wrong about those firings. They aren’t the real topic here. I don’t like how they were handled, but President Bush was within his rights.

Getting back on topic about the emails, I don’t feel that any of the emails should have gone through the outside system. I don’t care about official versus political business. Those tend to get pretty tangled up. I also don’t care which political party you do this to. I’d be quite happy doing the same to the entire Senate and Congress. Could be interesting.

This would apparently be a change from what has been done in the past, as separating the two appears to have been common practice, at least as I understand this quote:

Stanzel said that procedure was modeled on “the historical practice of previous administrations.”

But whether that is what happened here has been challenged. But as I said, I don’t care for the practice of separating the official from the political. I’m not dreadfully concerned about the privacy of our politicians’ ability to do their fundraising and whatnot with limited scrutiny. Their private lives can be private, but politically, the more open, the better.

Technorati Tags: white house emails, President Bush

Filed under: Politics