Quick analysis
As always, it's tough to get a handle on just what's going on in Washington and what it all means. From the questions asked above in his order, United States Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola is clearly also trying to get a clear picture of what's going on at the White House.

Unfortunately, it appears he's focusing on a small portion of the problem: Presidential Records Act and Freedom of Information Act record keeping requirements and disclosures. The broader question of the 103.6+ million email messages that the White House may have sent though the Republican National Committee servers down at SMARTech in Chattanooga remains unexplored.

Of course, the Court isn't the only Federal body looking into the White House's email archiving practices. Mr. Waxman's Oversight Committee is also searching for White House email records.

Chairman Waxman has scheduled hearings for Tuesday, February 26, 2008 regarding the preservation of White House email and has invited Fred Fielding, Counsel to the President, Alan Swendiman, Director, Office of Administration, and Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States to testify.

Here's an interesting procedural note: these hearings were originally scheduled for February 15, but they got pushed back so the Oversight Committee could hear testimony from baseball player Roger Clemens instead. Apparently, security and disclosure at the White House is important, but steroid abuse in baseball is much more interesting -- and probably results in far more TV coverage for the congress-critters involved. Besides, nobody wants to meet an email administrator, but everyone wants to shake Roger Clemens' steroid-stained hands.

But, like Judge Facciola, Representative Waxman is focused on one small piece of the puzzle. Analysis shows the problems at the White House to be far greater than just the mail traveling through the EOP servers.

The House Oversight Committee deserves big kudos. Email is not exactly a sexy topic for a politician and yet Representative Waxman is giving it the attention it needs. But in the same way that the Committee seemed to completely overlook Karl Rove's missing Blackberries (and the startling implications of such a loss), the Oversight Committee seems to be completely overlooking the vast amount of White House email not managed by the White House.

I know I'm not a Washington insider, and I'm not schooled in the ways of the politician. But my understanding is that the Committee is the main investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives and it has jurisdiction to investigate any federal program and any matter with federal policy implications. So it would seem that this is the exact federal entity that should be concerned with all aspects of the White House email problem.

Of course, the members and staff are politicians and attorneys, not network engineers. Even though some of the members and staff are probably technically strong, they're not likely to have the specialized expertise to see all the implications of this problem.