Missing e-mails. As SNL's Church Lady would say, How convenient . . .

I work at the Government Accountability Project, the operative word being "accountability." This isn't just a little computer problem. It's a systematic pattern and practice of evading justice for some of the worst--and criminal--scandals that have tarnished our nation. For those of you who want to geek out on the criminal basis, see 18 U.S.C. § 2510; in particular § 2517, http://www.law.cornell.edu/.... This disappearing act also violates the Federal Records Act.

Enough is enough. Isn't it just rich that the Justice Department cannot find critical e-mails, in the most recent example, between the Justice Department's John Yoo & Co., CIA and White House about the development of torture policy? The Justice Department can borrow my 12-year-old. He could probably point them in the right direction.

Or, it can hire a computer forensics expert to recover the missing e-mails, and just as important, expose who deleted them and when.

"Missing e-mails" sounds so innocuous, so accidental (the sole witness at yesterday's hearing, Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, said the whitewash ethics report "does not suggest there is anything nefarious.") But in case anyone needs further evidence of the bad faith here, consider that the Justice Department didn't bother to notify the National Archives--whose very mission is to collect such information--before OPR's ethics report was released last week. If John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales and countless others have benefited from curiously and mysteriously missing e-mails that document their role in criminal wrongdoing, then there needs to be some independent intervention. Because all of the bad actors have skated on their actual crimes, we can still give meaning to the old adage that "it's not the crime, but the cover-up" that will ultimately get them.

UPDATE: Thanks, Kossacks, for Rec. Listing me last Monday and today. You have given me fortitude during what has been a devastating week. I will try to live-blog later. I have a migraine (obviously psychosomatic.)