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Another agency tells Congress: File not found

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the IRS share a problem: officials say they cannot provide the emails a congressional committee has requested because an employee’s hard drive crashed.

 

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy confirmed to the House Oversight Committee Wednesday that her staff is unable to provide lawmakers all of the documents they have requested on the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, because of a 2010 computer crash.

 

“We’re having trouble getting the data off of it and we’re trying other sources to actually supplement that,” McCarthy said. “We’re challenged in figuring out where those small failures might have occurred and what caused them occur, but we’ve produced a lot of information.”

 

The revelation came less than two weeks after IRS officials told Congress that Lois Lerner, the official at the center of the controversy over the targeting of conservative tax-exempt groups, also suffered from a hard drive crash that makes it difficult to comply with records requests.

 

The committee suspects that Phillip North, who worked for the EPA in Alaska, decided with his colleagues to veto the proposed Pebble Mine near Bristol Bay in 2009, before the agency even began researching its potential impacts on the environment.

 

Committee staffers have been trying for about a year to interview North, but he has been in New Zealand and refuses to cooperate, they said.

 

“We have tried to serve a subpoena on your former employee and we have asked for the failed hard drive from this Alaskan individual who now is in New Zealand, and seems to never be returning,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the committee’s chairman, said Wednesday.

 

Emails provided by the committee show that EPA told congressional investigators about the hard drive crash months ago. But McCarthy said she only told the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) about the problem Tuesday.

 

The NARA enforces the Federal Records Act, which governs federal agencies’ responsibilities to maintain records.

 

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said EPA probably violated the Federal Records Act by not backing up North’s emails.

 

“It looks like the Federal Records Act has been violated by the EPA,” Meadows said. Did he preserve his emails? That is required by the Federal Records Act.”

 

“We may have some emails that we cannot produce that we should have kept,” McCarthy admitted.

 

The Federal Records Act has also taken center stage in the IRS controversy. David Ferreiro, head of the NARA, told lawmakers Tuesday that the IRS did not follow the Federal Records Act in its policies for preserving emails.

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The Nixon Administration resigned over far less.  At least you know that many of the most die hard Liberals see now in this catastrophe they elected and reelected a most corrupt outfit and one far worse than any Republican one and the either have to live with it or realize a level of ignorance that borders on the unbelievable. 

slowly but surely this administration is being seen for what they have done.  Today the Supreme Court unanamously decided that the POTUS had overstepped his bounds in his appointments to the Labor Board, which will likely discount some of their actions in the past year. On top of this we have Boehner about to file a suit against the POTUS for his actions, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out as well. Like many of us have predicted, this administration is corrupt. They have used erroneous math to make it look like the economy is growing when in reality it is just like many of us have realized.  Things are not headed in the right direction and this country is likely not to recover in the next decade.  meanwhile he continues to add more demands on small businesses driving them further toward disruption.  No party is guiltless, but the ones who voted for thsi guy were sold a bill of goods and may have had the biggest ruse ever perpetrated on the American public pulled upon them.

QD,  keep telling yourself that. The law does not care whether he is black, white or yellow, it was written for equality.  His race does not give him any advanatages that another does not have.  he still has to follow the law.  He had no experience and this is showing in the fact that he refuses to compromise with the other party, and because of that it is driving a deeper wedge between the parties.  he could have been more like Clinton and worked across the aisle, but he is refusing to do so.  Tea Party is showing that the conservatives are not supporting the traditional parties, Republican nor Democrat.  It required Dems crossing the line, and in some cases breaking the law, in order to keep the MS Republican from being sent home.  Thei October promises to be an interesting election.

 

MS voters simply saw the tbags as lunatics.

the tbags are trying to destroy America for reasons of hate and greed driven by their religious furor; no different than the Middle Eastern religious insanity.

I just wish you could back off a distance and see what a ridiculous threat you tbaggers are to America. Us liberals are tired of having to think for you.

Teyates,

 

The recent SCOTUS decision concerning the NLRB is yet another indicator of Obama's failings. Whether, it is incompetence, arrogance or a combination thereof, I'm unsure. The man is a constitutional scholar, we're told. Yet, he made appointments when he said the senate was in adjournment, but members of the senate said they weren't.  Didn't he read the part that says no  branch can change another branches internal rules, unless the rules are themselves unconstitutional.  All the regulations implemented by the NLRB are null and void, leaving that small portion of the government in shambles. 

 

Just a small example of the rest of government -- the southern border is chaotic, foreign policy in tatters, the economy stuck in low and possibly reverse,  and the struggle against Islamist terrorists in shambles. 

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