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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it can't provide emails sent between 2009 and 2011 that were requested by congressional investigators because of hard drive crashes. The agency said that emails stored on dead drives were lost forever because its email backup tapes were recycled every six months, and employees were responsible for keeping their own long-term archives. The IRS had a contract with email backup service vendor Sonasoft starting in 2005, according to FedSpending.org, which lists the contract as being for "automatic data processing services." Sonasoft's motto is "email archiving done right," and the company lists the IRS as...

Friday at the daily briefing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest repeatedly dismissed concerns over Internal Revenue Service claims that two years of Lois Lerner's emails are lost forever as "conspiracy theories." "Turns out that there have been 13 months of multiple congressional investigations, including 14 congressional hearings, 30 interviews with IRS employees, 50 written congressional requests, and 750,000 pages of documents, and all of that has done nothing to substantiate false Republican claims of a broader political conspiracy," Earnest said.

Indeed, in the aftermath of this absurd assertion, the response from experts was overwhelming: The story makes no sense. IRS emails were not permanently stored on Lois Lerner’s computer alone (of course) but on servers that preserve records. They would remain there even if Lerner decided to do something outrageous like light her computer on fire in an effort to hide her criminal activity. Ideology trumps the Constitution. That appears to be the Obama administration’s political doctrine in four simple words.

A statement released from the office of Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, says what’s good for the government should be good for taxpayers. So there might come a time in the future when a letter starting out, “Dear IRS, The dog ate my tax receipts,” would be a perfectly acceptable response to a government inquiry about those “health cost” deductions for a hot tub and the trips to the Bahamas. The word came from Stockman’s office on Friday after a contentious hearing in Congress where the chief of the IRS said there was no apology due for the agency’s loss of...

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Wednesday that the prominent Drudge Report website "hurts" the White House's message because of its dominating effect on the news cycle. Pfeiffer said that he was "ambivalent" to what Matt Drudge links to on his website, but he lamented that the site led to a "Pavlovian response" from reporters. "Anyone saying anything can get caught up in the spin cycle in a way that is very damaging," Pfeiffer said at a Politico Playbook breakfast with Mike Allen. "It hurts what we’re trying to do, but then it is very damaging to that individual...

HELENA — As Sen. Max Baucus has taken the lead on health-reform legislation in the U.S. Senate, he's also become a leader in something else: Campaign money received from health- and insurance-industry interests. In the past six years, nearly one-fourth of every dime raised by Baucus, D-Mont., and his political-action committee has come from groups and individuals associated with drug companies, insurers, hospitals, medical-supply firms, health-service companies and other health professionals. These donations total about $3.4 million, or $1,500 a day, every day, from January 2003 through 2008. Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee that is drafting a major...

DALLAS -- A judge blocked the Texas Department of Public Safety on Thursday from continuing to enforce new rules that prevent some legal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses and identification cards. State District Judge Orlinda L. Naranjo in Austin issued a temporary injunction and found DPS acted outside its scope of authority when it adopted the policy last year. "This case is not about illegal immigrants obtaining driver licenses, it is about legal residents who have been denied or have been threatened a denial of a driver license," Naranjo wrote.

Former Vice President Al Gore brought a stark message to the Senate on Wednesday: A new climate change treaty is critical to continuing human life on Earth. The Nobel Peace Prize winner urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to push for a U.S.-brokered treaty in December in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the United Nations will host a climate change conference. Only the United States can lead such an effort, he said. “This is the one challenge that could completely end human civilization, and it is rushing at us with such speed and force,” said Gore, who won an Oscar for the...

Tallahassee, FL (AHN) - Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is ahead by five points in the first poll of Sunshine State voters since the GOP convention last week. According to the Public Policy Polling, McCain leads Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) 50-45 percent, up from his 47-44 percent advantage last month. McCain has the support of white voters, 61-34 percent, men, 51-42 percent, and all age groups except those younger than 29 years. He leads seniors, 57-38 percent. Obama holds the edge among Hispanics, 49-42 percent, blacks, 88-10 percent, and young voters, 52-44 percent. Women are essentially tied between McCain and Obama...

And their explanations, from ‘Yikes!’ to ‘They’re all in somebody’s pocket’ The following 143 journalists made campaign contributions from 2004 through the first quarter of 2007, according to Federal Election Commission records studied by MSNBC.com Television: (D) ABC News, Mary Fulginiti, "Primetime" correspondent. Click for details. (D) ABC affiliate in Boston, WCVB, Sangita Chandra, producer. Click for details. (D) ABC affiliate in Wichita, KAKE, Susan Peters, anchor. Click for details. (D) CBS News, Serena Altschul, correspondent for "CBS Sunday Morning." Click for details. (D) CBS News, Edward H. Forgotson Jr., producer, "CBS Sunday Morning." Click for details. (D) CBS affiliate...

UPDATE: I have now heard from more than one source that CBS is going to talk to 86-year-old Marian Carr Knox, former secretary to Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. Hey, I think it's great to hear CBS might quote someone who says the memo is fake (other than Marcel Matley, their first expert, who said he could not authenticate it).

From Newsmax.com comes this from Terry McAulffe - and based on the McAulffe/Clinton defination of truth this could mean that the person had gone home for the day, think about it - depends on what the meaning of here is."No one here at the Democratic National Committee had anything at all to do with any of those documents," McAuliffe told reporters. "I can unequivocally speak for the Kerry for President Campaign Committee, nor do they have anything to do with these documents. Absolutely not." DKK

By KIM HOUSEGOThe Associated PressFriday, May 16, 2003; 8:43 AM PARIS - Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said in an interview aired Friday that France wants "lies and calumny" published in both the U.S. and British press to stop.To that end, Paris is taking an inventory of press accounts about France with plans to show they are untrue, de Villepin said in a France Inter radio interview taped Thursday night and aired Friday.De Villepin stepped forward to personally address what France claims is a campaign of disinformation against it, revealed to U.S. officials this week in a letter from France's...

If you are like me you've been inundated with campaign brochures and if you live on the edge or inside of a Democrate wasteland like me then you've seen some very despicable things in your mailbox this year. Please share it with us here!

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla., April 14 — The Bush administration has “muddied our moral clarity” by pressuring Israel not to protect itself against terrorists after the United States aggressively responded to the Sept. 11 attacks, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday. Democrats also used the Florida conference to rally around better election controls after the 2000 election fiascoANOTHER DEMOCRATIC presidential hopeful visiting the Florida Democratic Convention — Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts — criticized the president for taking too long to get involved in the conflict. Their comments suggested that foreign affairs won’t be immune from the partisan political debates that...