GOP Scandal Overload!!!

The number of scandals coming out these days is insane. Who can even keep track? And, as one blogger said, every GOP tree the Dem dogs have barked up since January has had a cat in it. And it's only April. 2007. God only knows what else will be revealed in the next year and a half.

You can also tell how damaging a scandal by reading the major conservative blogs (National Review, Michelle Malkin, Powerline). The less it's mentioned, the bigger a deal it is. As of this writing, I haven't seen any of the stories mentioned below acknowledged on those sites. It's radio silence. So let's dig in...

The big news is the fallout from Wednesday's report that "The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business." These emails were being sought for the investigation into the firing of the U.S. Attorneys.

Then came news that the White House may have lost as many as 5 million emails. This is, of course, illegal. As Salon's Tim Grieve explains, the Presidential Records Act requires that all such communications be preserved.

The White House had a difficult time defending how this email thing was handled.

Then there were further revelations that as far back as 2004, White House officials (ie. Karl Rove) were told by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald not to delete any emails, and they agreed to comply. Except no one can seem to find Mr. Rove's emails. Oops!!

On a related note, the NY Times has a followup story on how the Republican party had exaggerated and overplayed voter fraud threats for political purposes. How they forced U.S. Attorneys to pursue these bogus cases-- and how some refused to play the game-- is at the heart of the U.S. Attorney purge scandal.

And The Atlantic's Joshua Green reminds us that scam is one of Karl Rove's oldest tricks.

Moving on to a completely different scandal, we come to Sam Fox, the GOP donor and Swift Boat bankroller whom the President recess-appointed as ambassador to Belgium even though his nomination had been formally withdrawn. Mr. Fox says now that his new ambassadorship position will not stop him from donating to 2008 campaigns. Seems like he's taking his new position very seriously!

And the White House's ambassador to the Sudan crisis says... genocide? What genocide?

Finally, remember Paul Wolfowitz? One of the founding neocons who helped create the Iraq war and assured Americans it would be cost-free and who later admitted the WMD thing was just used as the justification because it was the "one issue that everyone could agree on"? He left the White House after the first term for a cushy job running the World Bank... but now he's in trouble again! Turns out he got his girlfriend a job at the State Department where she made $10,000 more then even Secretary Rice (amidst other scandalous behavior). Calls are growing for him to resign.

So.... Did any new scandals pop up while I was typing all this?