corrente

They seem to have been, um, lost. By Bush's lawyers!

A file folder containing papers from Supreme Court nominee John Roberts Jr.'s work on affirmative action more than 20 years ago disappeared from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library after its review by two lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department in July, according to officials at the library and the National Archives and Records Administration.

Archivists said the lawyers returned the file but it now cannot be located. No duplicate of the folder's contents was made before the lawyers' review. Although one of the lawyers has assisted in the Archives' attempt to reconstruct its contents from other files, officials have no way of independently verifying their effort was successful.

It is rare for the Archives to lose documents in its care and the agency has requested an investigation by its inspector general, said Sharon Fawcett, the assistant archivist for presidential libraries.
(WaPo via Bradenton News)

Well, I'm sure it's just a coincidence. The kind of thing that could happen to anyone. But it would be nice if the investigation were complete before Robert's hearing, wouldn't it?

And while we're at it, could we get the lawyer's story on the record? Did they lose the papers in a cab? Make airplanes out of them? Did they use them as toilet tissue? What? Hey, these lawyers work for Gonzales—maybe we could torture them!

NOTE Thanks to alert reader chicagodyke, who pointed me to Unknown News. Somehow, in all the hurly-burly, I missed this one.