How long before lies that are minimally plausible pile up so deep that they become legally actionable? The Bush administration has been depending upon such lies for years, and now that there is actually some form of oversight, they are piling up faster and deeper than ever before. How many administration officials have excellent memories until asked about potential illegalities, whereupon their memories suddenly become completely blank? How many officials can come up with excuses for outrageous behavior that are barely possible but so unlikely that the laws of statistics would demand that several such claims would normally require billions of years for such events to occur naturally?

The most recent: that several years’ worth of Karl Rove’s emails were “accidentally” deleted from multiple locations. Rove’s lawyer claims that Rove deleted the emails from both his own email store and from the email server, believing that the emails were being saved somewhere else. Meanwhile, the RNC apparently did not archive their server data (something which is standard procedure for businesses and large organizations), while the White House says that five million official emails were “accidentally” lost from its servers when it switched from one email software package to another.

So, the instant that serious oversight begins and White House emails are demanded, we learn that officials inside the White House, in multiple separate incidents, “accidentally” erased huge numbers of potentially incriminating emails.

So the question of the day becomes, exactly how monumentally stupid do they think we are?

The answer, of course, is not that they think everyone to be stupid; it is simply that, with no other recourse available, they simply chose the explanation which would legally allow them to escape. Because the explanation, however asinine and contemptuous of reason, is minimally plausible, they can head off legal action, and, in the end, get away scot-free. And since this White House is already recognizably the most corrupt and criminal in history, they probably figure that one more incredibly outrageous lie won’t make that much of a difference.

Of course, all of this sets a dangerous precedent: this administration, if nothing else, is proving that you can violate the law as much as you please, but so long as you destroy the evidence and are able to claim it was an “accident,” no matter how many hundreds of “accidents” there supposedly were, no matter how many instances of memory loss you claim, no matter how unbelievable to rational people the excuses are, so long as they will stop any legal action from taking place, you can get away with it, and keep getting away with it, time and time again. Especially if you can generate fear in the populace and lead the press around by the nose.

It is so nice that George Bush restored “honor and dignity” to the White House, don’t you think?