Patrick Leahy

This is a big one for Obama.

And now we have an Attorney General who is in lockstep with the White House:

In his second day on the job, Attorney General Michael Mukasey leaped into the political fray, telling a key Democratic senator he opposes his electronic surveillance plan and would recommend the president veto it if it is passed.

In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on the eve of crucial committee votes to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Mukasey was adamant in opposing Leahy's plan for changing the law.

Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell co-signed the letter released Wednesday night by the Justice Department.

"We strongly oppose the proposed substitute amendment. If the substitute is part of a bill that is presented to the president, we and the president's other senior advisers will recommend that he veto the bill," they said.

And what is it Mukasey is actually opposing? Well that would be Leahy's amendment to strip out immunity for the telecom companies. I guess we can thank Chuck and Di for this one also.

Leahy is not buying the White House line for one minute that the emails used on GOP accounts have been deleted and are "lost for ever" and neither do I (Think Progress has the video of Leahy's speech). As someone who has worked on data retrieval, there is a great chance the data is still available on the  GOP servers. If not then they should be available via other servers. The White House is again trying to obstruct justice. The White House is again trying to cover up a crime.

This brings up another point. I wonder what evidence was not given on the Valerie Plame case. White House emails had a big part to do with this, but now we have reason to believe that there may be other emails. Perhaps Karl Rove was emailing Novak with his GOP account. Perhaps Patrick Fitzgerald should reconvene a jury and go after subpoenas of his own.

Update:

Glenn Greenwald has documented the trend of "lost information" from this White House. Of course all the information has been key items. There is a trend going on. How is that for accountability in the White House?

From the Muckraker:

“I was glad to meet Mr. Fielding and I welcome the fact that these issues have his full attention.

“I don’t accept his offer. It is not constructive and it is not helpful to be telling the Senate how to do our investigation, or to prejudge its outcome.

"Instead of freely and fully providing relevant documents to the investigating committees, they have only selectively sent documents, after erasing large portions that they do not want to see the light of day. Testimony should be on the record, and under oath. That’s the formula for true accountability.“I hope the President will agree to be forthcoming. The straighter the path to the truth, the sooner we will finally know the facts.”

Let's get ready to rumbleeeeeee!!!!!!