As we wait for the subpoenas to be served on Smartech (and their backup servers at Coptix) Chattanooga TN, we wile away our time exploring the universe of the illegal use of behind-the-scenes, not covered by the Presidential Records Act, hidden from the National Archivist email network variously called "RNCHQ.com" and "gwb43.com."

While we'd like to know what all was said, there is another source which allows us to look at who was saying what to whom. A most creative party has taken the statistical universe of the emails sent by accident in 2004--smack in the summer of the high Bush-Kerry campaign as it happens--to the address "[INSERT-ANYTHING-HERE]@georgewbush.org" and posted way back then by "whitehouse.org." While they may be a satire/parody site (hey, at least they ain't porn any more) but these mails were real. They called that section "The DEAD LETTER OFFICE: GeorgeWBush.org: Bush/Cheney in 2004!"

Our mystery compiler calls his dissection of this data The Missing Link. We do not, that I could see, have a name for this heroic compiler/correlator, an omission presumably inspired by the fact that he or she did this work on the website of George Mason University where the party is either employee or student. We suggest our readers copy all the files, data and lovely, lovely pictures to sites elsewhere, as GMU is likely to find the material embarassing and make it go away. I've got 'em stashed but you get copies too--accidents happen.

Now once you have them stashed away--or if you want to live dangerously and

No, we hadn't forgotten about this. We just laid low to wait for some more promising game to come up the trail to the waterhole. Huntmaster Josh Marshall is doing the drive, and a fellow hunter found this in the new Department of Justice document dump very quietly released last night:

From: Jennings, Jeffee S.
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 10:17 AM
To: ~KR@georgewbush,com'; Fielding, Fred F.; Sullivan, Kevin F.; Perino, Dana M.;
tkyle [dot] sampson [at] usdoj [dot] gov'
Cc: 'Sara Taylor'
Subject: NM USATTY - urgent issue
Importance: High -
I just received a telephone call from Steve Bell, Sen. Domenici's CoS, who urgently reported the following:
1. Outgoing USATTY David 1glesias.i~h olding a press conference at 11:30 Eastern this
morning. I
2 . He is allegedly going to say that he was contacted by' two Members of Congress last Fa11

Ya know how there are some really rotten people, who do ghastly and awful things but about whom "some will say" things like "That was a really awful thing he did, but dayam ya gotta admire how well he did it?"

Rove is not one of those people. How did we ever get the impression he was some kind of Evil Geenius? If this HuffPo piece is accurate, Kwazy Kawl has not only guaranteed his own occupancy of a room at the Graybar Hotel in the fairly near future, he's pretty well assured that his pals at SmartTech, GovTech and Coptix will be in the next few rooms down the hall. This is just beyond stupid:

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.