As we have seen through the conflict and problems of preserving White House e-mail, the law has not kept up with preservation of electronic messages.

A bill (H.R.5811, "The Electronic Message Preservation Act") moving through Congress would address the problems by adding a new Section 2911 to Title 44, Chapter 29. It would require the electronic capture, management, and preservation of electronic records, require that they be readily accessible for retrieval through electronic searches, and would establish mandatory minimum functional requirements for electronic records management systems to ensure compliance with the requirements.

The Bush administration is threatening a veto:

• White House Threatens To Veto House E-Mail Storage Bill, By Dan Friedman, CongressDaily, Jul 9, 2008 (subscription required, but freely available here).

The White House and officials at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) argue that the law gives NARA new responsibility and expands the agency's job from advice to oversight, but the sponsors of the bill say that it only affirms the National Archives' job of advising the White House on record-keeping.

The CongressDaily articles notes that:

A less-discussed but farther-reaching part of the bill updates the Federal Records Act to require federal agencies, also under standards set by the National Archives, to save all e-mail records electronically and create systems to allow electronic searches.

According to GAO and a committee report, most agencies now use "print and file" records systems for keeping e-mail, many of them spotty.

(See National Archives and Selected Agencies Need to Strengthen E-Mail Management, United States Government Accountability Office, GAO-08-742 June 13, 2008.)

A comment in the Committee Report (House Report 110-709, "Electronic Message Preservation Act" 110th Congress 2d Session, June 11, 2008) says:

To make federal agencies comply, I believe this legislation should include enforceable repercussion language. Ms. Patricia McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org suggests this is the only way to make federal agencies comply with the Federal Records Act. Ms. McDermott states that she does not "think anyone has ever been prosecuted for destroying, much less failing to preserve federal records." Just ask former Clinton EPA Director Carol Browner. She supposedly oversaw the destruction of her computer files in violation of a judge's order requiring the agency to preserve its records.

Meredith Fuchs, the general counsel of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, writes that the Bush administration's hostility towards public access to and preservation of records combined with changes in technology that have transformed the way in which we all communicate are leading to a situation in which "primary sources on the most important decisions and activities in the government may be lost, destroyed, or closed to the public." [emphasis added]

• The White House: Off Limits to Historians? by Meredith Fuchs, Passport: The Newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (5-1-08), posted at History News Network on Thursday, May 8, 2008.

[O]ver the last seven years there have been a series of moves by the current administration that may ensure that the records of the White House and the federal offices and agencies that work closely with the White House will not be available to historians.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the main investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has authority to investigate the subjects within the Committee’s legislative jurisdiction as well as “any matter” within the jurisdiction of the other standing House Committees.
Tues. Feb. 26 at 10 am the full Committee will hold a hearing entitled “Electronic Records Preservation at the White House.”  According to the Committee website,  the witnesses expected to testify include:

Court may move against White House, by Pete Yost, Associated Press, Wed Oct 17, 2007.

A U.S. magistrate indicated Wednesday that a federal court may order the Bush administration to preserve copies of all White House e-mails, a move that a government lawyer argued strongly against.

Waxman: Save all e-mails from or to the White House

Rep. Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has asked several federal agencies to step up their efforts to save e-mails they send to, or receive from, White House officials through nongovernmental e-mail accounts.

The Committee's request is a response to a recent announcement by the Office of the White House Counsel and the Republican National Committee (RNC) that the RNC may have destroyed a large quantity of White House e-mails, beginning as early as 2001.

In light of the speculation surrounding the U.S. Attorney firings, it is mind-numbing to think about the sheer volume of erased messages providing potentially valuable information related to this and other such events during the Bush administration.

And what about the RNC's policy to allow White House officials to delete their own e-mails from the RNC server? Each official would probably have a different idea of what constituted an important public record and what constituted spam or simply e-mail that he or she didn't want to become public knowledge. Such arbitrary handling of public records is not only suspect during the current scandal, but it also goes against Americans' "right to know" about their government's activities, whether altruistic or detrimental.

Two Leaders: both were presidents. One was a leader, and the other was a dictator.

Gerald R. FordGerald Ford was the only president who was not elected. He was appointed vice president by Richard Nixon when Spiro Agnew resigned in the fall 1973. He became president by default when Nixon resigned in August 1974.

Gerald Ford is undoubtedly one of my favorite U. S. Presidents. He was an "every man" who took the reigns of the nation during the difficult time following Vietnam and the resignation of President Nixon. The leadership skills of this average man helped to heal many of our nation's wounds. Some of us wondered why he pardoned Nixon, yet perhaps it was this act of forgiveness that allowed our nation to heal and reunite.

By the bicentennial celebration in 1976, citizens were once again proud to be American. In a pub the evening of July 3, 1776 the band began playing "It's a Grand Old Flag," and the entire audience began singing. One man in our group had escaped from Eastern Europe the previous year, and was concerned the police would arrest us for that display. We were happy to inform him that in America we could celebrate our Nation's birthday, and not fear about repercussions from our government.

The Federal Government has designated Jan. 2 as an official day of mourning for former President Gerald R. Ford. Flags are flying at half-mast and most government offices will be closed on January 2nd. Ford's funeral service will be televised that day.

Read a biography of President Ford at The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.
The Presidential Library and Museum recently posted a section of News, Special Events & Featured Pages on their home page.
Three image galleries contain 78 public domain photographs that chronicle the nation's 38th President.
No special permission or usage fees are required, but the library would like you to use the credit line included in the pop-up text for each photo.

Remembering Gerald R. Ford, July 14, 1913 - December 26, 2006 is a FirstGov.gov page with links to information about the former president.

Saddam Hussein
The Trial of Saddam Hussein at the Law Library of Congress provides essential information about the ongoing trials of the deceased Mr. Hussein, who was executed on December 30, 2006, for killing 148 men and boys in Dujail in 1982. .

The leader of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, Hussein gained infamy during the 1988 chemical weapon attack on Iraqui Kurds, as well as for his brutal tratment of his own citizens. A U. S. Department of State report, Saddam's Chemical Weapons Campaign: Halabja, March 16, 1988 descibes the mass murder which occured in the city of Halabja in 1988.

The White House issued a press release, President Bush's Statement on Execution of Saddam Hussein. Previously, the White House compiled theApparatus of Lies: Saddam’s Disinformation and Propaganda, 1990-2003 which chronicled the alleged attrocities of the Iraqui dictator for over a decade.

Saddam Hussein's Capture: One Year Later is a feature article in DefendAmerica the United States Department of Defense Official Website on the War on Terrorism.