In case there was any remaining doubt that the Obama White House is taunting House Republicans and rubbing Darrell Issa's nose in it, the EPA is getting in on the fun as well:
The IRS isn't the only government agency that has lost emails that the House Oversight Committee wants to see as part of an investigation — now the Environmental Protection Agency said it is missing emails as well.
"I don't believe this is a missing hard drive issue," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told the Republican-led committee on Wednesday, CNN reported. "There is a challenge getting access to the data on it ... I'm still hoping we recover all those emails."
Her admission came just as the committee was focusing on the Internal Revenue Service's contention that the hard drive on a computer used by former official Lois Lerner had been destroyed after it crashed, losing emails that Oversight says are crucial in its investigation into whether the agency improperly targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.
The missing EPA emails belong to a biologist who had worked on a controversial mining project assessment for the Pebble Mine in Alaska. The Oversight Committee and the EPA's own inspector general are conducting separate investigations into whether the biologist or the EPA colluded with environmentalists on a negative review of the Alaskan project.
Hey, if the IRS is untouchable and will never be investigated by Eric Holder or an independent counsel, why should they hog all the hijinx? I'm waiting for The One himself to start making mention of lost cybercommunications in his next "historic" speech, doubtless as part of a pitch for nationalizing the Internet so as to "fix" such "problems". Look how well it worked for healthcare.gov; what could possibly go wrong?
As to our plaintive wonderings as to if there's an upper limit to the Obama Regime's horsepuckey, there does seem to be lid on one such front:
The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered a blow to President Barack Obama by cutting back the power of the White House to temporarily fill senior government posts without Senate approval.
In a ruling that will constrain future presidents, the court held on a 9-0 vote that the three appointments Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board in 2012 were unlawful. The decision limits the ability of presidents to make so-called recess appointments without Senate approval, although the court did not go as far as it could have gone in restricting a president's powers.
The decision, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, could especially hamper the Obama administration if Republicans were to win control of the Senate in the November elections. They already control the House of Representatives. It also is likely to make it more difficult for the president to make appointments of his choosing during the last two years of his term. [emphasis added]
If it had been the typical split, "Thank God Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas haven't dropped dead yet" vote, we'd have just gotten lucky and it'd only have been a matter of time until this usurped legislative power had been confirmed to be in presidential hands. But the fact that it was unanimous gives it some weight that the White House will be more hard-pressed to dispute or spin away. It's not impossible, and I have no doubt whatsoever that they won't let go of the Senate's advice and consent power easily, but they're more likely to just quietly hold onto it without making a fuss about it until this setback blows over.
That'll be easy to do since Harry (G)Reid nuked the filibuster last year, but if the GOP retakes the upper chamber this fall, things could get very interesting very quickly.
I hope they save the emails on that one.
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