Friday, July 17, 2009
C. Ray Nixon, Part 3
Posted by Clancy DuBos on Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 6:15 AM
It just gets better all the time. Now Mayor Ray Nagin is trying his hand at a “Saturday Night Massacre” by firing the Louisiana Technology Council, which previously reported the obvious: that someone who knew what he or she was doing had removed Hizzoner’s emails — and only Hizzoner’s emails — from the city’s server. It’s remarkably similar to former President Richard Nixon’s heavy-handed removal of Archibald Cox as the first independent Watergate counsel/prosecutor.
- There is one major difference in Nagin’s version, however: Nixon had a few principled folks in his administration, notably Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus, both of whom resigned rather than carry out Tricky Dick’s order to fire Cox. Nagin, of course, cannot stomach anyone too close to him having more than half a brain or sliver of backbone, so nobody had to man up and quit in the face of an order from on high to fire LTC. In fact, the yes-men seemed only too happy to let the door hit LTC in the ass on the company’s way out.
- The new forensic team has the unlikely name of Sunblock Systems. Gotta love that. And it’s based in McLean, VA. Gee, what embattled government agency is located close to there?
- Another interesting parallel between Nagin and Nixon is that Nixon’s infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” led to his even more infamous quote: “I am not a crook.”
- The city’s Technology Office will hold a press conference at 10:30 a.m. Friday. I wonder if some equally definitive quote will emerge from that.
- Meanwhile, the city’s PR office continues to put out the spin that the Nagin Administration has “voluntarily” undertaken a search for the mayor’s “missing” emails. TRUTH: the mayor was ordered by Civil District Court Judge Rose Ledet to conduct a search for the emails.
- Under Nagin’s lexicon, I guess Oliver Thomas is “voluntarily” spending a few years as the guest of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons — and Naign will “voluntarily” leave office on May 3, 2010 … unless the U.S. Justice Department can convince him to “voluntarily” leave sooner.
Hope springs eternal.
Comments (4)
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Don't know Sunblock Systems. But I have become quite intrigued with the work of Sunlight Foundation. Seems we should be the City that implements real transparency. For more see: http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/
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Well, everyone in Nagin's administration who started out with him - his whole cabinet - left him eventually, right? These SunBlock guys seem alright and may not be any different in their conclusions; if they're going to look for emails they will have to ask and determine what happened to them in the first place. But maybe "Nagin just wanted a palms held outward, shoulder shrugging "nope, we looked and couldn't find `em, judge" style "report." Ledet, I am guessing, will completely go to town on Nagin on this one; like Jordan dunking on Danny Devito. http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/nagin_administration_dumps_ema.html http://www.sunblocksystems.com/ http://www.sunblocksystems.com/forensics.html
