As if the AP and the Administration weren’t already enjoying a contentious relationship, today it details the Administration’s use of second, secret emails.

Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the secretary for Health and Human Services, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

[...]Google can’t find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.

Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.

Now, the Administration claims people are doing this just to cut down on clutter in their email boxes. But thus far, it appears that the second emails aren’t being turned over under FOIAs or, if they are, aren’t being identified as belonging to the principal.

And so we move into another chapter of the Executive Branch hiding or deleting emails to avoid transparency, which of course goes back to Poppy Bush’s efforts to hide PROFS notesas part of the Iran-Contra coverup. The National Security Archive’s timeline, of course, misses the several efforts under the Bush Administration to either delete massive amounts of emails, particularly those from sensitive days of the CIA Leak Investigation, and the political staff’s use of RNC email addresses to take emails entirely out of Presidential Records Act retention.

This is getting tiresome: We’re going on five presidential administrations now that have played games with emails, a tedious series of efforts to avoid transparency.

Maybe it’s time for Congress to put some real teeth onto laws requiring the President to retain such records?

When the FBI found sensitive — though it turned out, unclassified — documents in Thomas Drake’s basement, he was charged under the Espionage Act. When the Army found hundreds of thousands of classified — but not Top Secret — cables on Bradley Manning’s computer, they charged him with Espionage and Aiding the Enemy.

But when the FBI found Top Secret documents on Sudan — our actual enemy, if sanctions count — in Reagan National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane’s basement, it decided to investigate him for illegal lobbying.

The FBI has searched the apartment of former Reagan administration national security adviser Robert McFarlane for evidence of whether he lobbied for the government of Sudan, in violation of federal law.The search warrant is on file in federal district court in Washington. It shows agents seized items this month including handwritten notes about Sudan and White House documents with classifications up to Top Secret.

From this I can only assume that McFarlane is being subjected to the same double standard that Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger was (represented, it should be noted, by former Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer), when he snuck 9/11 related documents out of the Archives, yet only plead guilty to a misdemeanor.

When National Security Advisors take top secret documents, they’re called lobbyists, not spies. I can’t wait to find out what Condi Rice will be called if she’s ever caught with sensitive documents in her basement.

For the second time in four months, Mitt Romney has penned a tough-talking op-ed on the Iranian nuclear program. But this time, the almost certain GOP presidential nominee has introduced a new riff to his constant refrain that "If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. If you elect me as president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon." Now in his Washington Post piece and again in his speech Tuesday to AIPAC, Romney has portrayed himself as a modern day Ronald Reagan who will force Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions just as it did the 52 U.S. hostages in 1981. Unfortunately, Mitt forgot the full story of the Gipper's experience with Iran. As it turned out, in the Iran-Contra scandal that almost ended his presidency, Ronald Reagan gave the mullahs in Tehran not a show of American might, but a cake, a Bible - and U.S. arms.

Romney first Reagan impersonation appeared in Monday's Washington Post as a follow up to November's "I Won't Let Iran Get Nukes." In it, he cast Barack Obama as "America's most feckless president since Carter" and cast himself as the Gipper:

Beginning Nov. 4, 1979 , dozens of U.S. diplomats were held hostage by Iranian Islamic revolutionaries for 444 days while America's feckless president, Jimmy Carter, fretted in the White House. Running for the presidency against Carter the next year, Ronald Reagan made it crystal clear that the Iranians would pay a very stiff price for continuing their criminal behavior. On Jan. 20, 1981, in the hour that Reagan was sworn into office, Iran released the hostages. The Iranians well understood that Reagan was serious about turning words into action in a way that Jimmy Carter never was.

Speaking by satellite Tuesday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy (AIPAC) Conference, Mitt again donned his Reagan mask (around the 8:40 mark above):

"I believe the right course is what Ronald Reagan called 'peace through strength.' There is a reason why the Iranians released the hostages on the same day and at the same hour that Reagan was sworn into office. As President, I will offer that kind of clarity, strength, and resolve."

Apparently, Mitt Romney wasn't paying attention to the rest of Reagan's performance. That would be the part when Ronald Reagan swapped arms for hostages with Ayatollah Khomeini.

The Iran-Contra scandal, as you'll recall, almost laid waste to the Reagan presidency. Desperate to free U.S. hostages held by Iranian proxies in Lebanon, President Reagan provided weapons Tehran badly needed in its long war with Saddam Hussein (who, of course, was backed by the United States). In a clumsy and illegal attempt to skirt U.S. law, the proceeds of those sales were then funneled to the contras fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And as the New York Times recalled, Reagan's fiasco started with an emissary bearing gifts from the Gipper himself:

A retired Central Intelligence Agency official has confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that on the secret mission to Teheran last May, Robert C. McFarlane and his party carried a Bible with a handwritten verse from President Reagan for Iranian leaders.

According to a person who has read the committee's draft report, the retired C.I.A. official, George W. Cave, an Iran expert who was part of the mission, said the group had 10 falsified passports, believed to be Irish, and a key-shaped cake to symbolize the anticipated ''opening'' to Iran.

The rest, as they say, is history. After the revelations regarding his trip to Tehran and the Iran-Contra scheme, a disgraced McFarlane attempted suicide. (That would be the same Bud McFarlane whose endorsement Newt Gingrich touted during a reecent GOP debate.) After his initial denials, President Reagan was forced to address the nation on March 4, 1987 and acknowledge he indeed swapped arms for hostages (video here):

"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages."

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Back in May, Brendan Nyhan used historical and statistical analysis to presciently conclude that for the hitherto untainted Obama White House, "the first Obama scandal is likely to arrive sooner than most people think." Now, the dual imbroglios over the $535 million loan lost to bankrupt Solyndra and the ATF's ill-conceived "Fast and Furious" gun-walking operation have Republicans targeting the President and his Attorney General, Eric Holder.

While the twin dust ups, each with roots in the Bush Administration, may ultimately reveal only bureaucratic bungling, poor judgment and taxpayer investments gone bad, Republicans are salivating at the prospect of manufacturing scandals just in time for President Obama's reelection. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa called the Solyndra case "salacious" and "a story of political interference" on behalf of "people giving to President Obama's campaign." Meanwhile, as House Republicans called for a special prosecutor to investigate Fast and Furious, grandstanding Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu declared, "I believe that this is a much larger scandal than what took place in Watergate."

Perception often trumps reality when it comes to presidential scandals. Of course, if the accusations are actually true, the political damage will (and should) be worse. Worse, but not necessarily fatal.

Just ask those masters of scandal survival from the Bush White House.

Here are just some of the Republican scandal management tips for President Obama:

It's the "Criminalization of Politics." Ever since President George H.W. Bush first used it during the Iran/Contra scandal, Republicans and their conservative amen corner have routinely brushed off charges of their own corruption and lawlessness by accusing their opponents of "criminalizing politics." From Iran-Contra, Plamegate and Tom Delay to the U.S. attorneys purge and the Bush regime of detainee torture, Republicans survived their endless scandals by instead successfully politicizing crime.

Sadly, Attorney General Eric Holder is already quite familiar with the GOP's tried and untrue "criminalization of politics" sound bite. During his confirmation hearings in January 2009, Holder reassured Republican Senators the Obama administration would not prosecute the architects of the Bush detainee torture program:

"I think President-elect Obama has said it well. We don't want to criminalize policy differences that might exist between the outgoing administration and the administration that is about to take over. We certainly don't want to do that."

Four Words: "I Don't Recall Remembering." In a letter to Congress this week, Attorney General Holder pointed out that "I now understand some senior officials within the Department were aware at the time there was an operation called Fast and Furious although they were not advised of the unacceptable operational tactics being used in it." Then in words only a Republican could love, Holder explained how he remained unaware of the program's details until this summer:

"My testimony was truthful and accurate and I have been consistent on this point throughout. I have no recollection of knowing about Fast and Furious prior to the public controversy about it."

If the "no recollection" formula sounds familiar, it should. Then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales perfected it to the point of comedy during hearings about the Bush administration's politically-motivated prosecutors purge. Gonzales, who almost surely lied to Congress at least three times about the NSA domestic surveillance program, the Bush torture program as well as the U.S. attorneys scandal, reached new heights of selective amnesia in April 2007. As Dana Milbank recalled:

Explaining his role in the botched firing of federal prosecutors, Gonzales uttered the phrase "I don't recall" and its variants ("I have no recollection," "I have no memory") 64 times. Along the way, his answer became so routine that a Marine in the crowd put down his poster protesting the Iraq war and replaced it with a running "I don't recall" tally.

If he finds himself in a pinch during his next appearance before Congress, Eric Holder can always quote Alberto Gonzales:

"Senator, that I don't recall remembering."

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In July of 2010, two dozen members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus led by Michele Bachmann co-sponsored a resolution announcing support for Israel "to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force." So, Tea Partiers must have been shocked - shocked! - to learn that Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers underwriting their "movement," were also in business with Iran. As it turns out, the Kochs are merely following Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney among the Republican luminaries caught up in dirty deals with Tehran.

Twenty four years after Ronald Reagan sent a Bible, a cake and U.S. weapons to the mullahs in Tehran, Bloomberg News reported that, in the words of a former employee, the Koch brothers in likely violation of the American sanctions used "every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else."

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism...

Internal company records show that Koch Industries used its foreign subsidiary to sidestep a U.S. trade ban barring American companies from selling materials to Iran. Koch-Glitsch offices in Germany and Italy continued selling to Iran until as recently as 2007, the records show.

The company's products helped build a methanol plant for Zagros Petrochemical Co., a unit of Iran's state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co., the documents show. The facility, in the coastal city of Bandar Assaluyeh, is now the largest methanol plant in the world, according to IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colorado-based provider of chemicals, energy and economic data.

In response to the allegations, Koch spokesperson Melissa Cohlmia said, "During the relevant time frame covered in your article, U.S. law allowed foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational companies to engage in trade involving countries subject to U.S. trade sanctions, including Iran, under certain conditions," adding that Koch has since stopped all of its units from trading with Iran.

If this story sounds familiar, it should. Just change the company to Halliburton and the CEO's name to Dick Cheney.

As the New York Times explained in March 2010, even as the Obama administration was seeking tougher UN sanctions to press Tehran into curbing its nuclear program, "of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave."

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington's efforts to discourage investment there, records show.

That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.

Among the U.S. contractors also profiting from Iran was Halliburton, which pocketed $27.1 billion from American taxpayers between 2000 and 2009:

Halliburton, former Vice President Cheney's old company, provided oil and gas drilling services to Iran through foreign subsidies. After a political furor erupted over the work, the company announced it would do no new business in Iran, and it exited the country altogether in 2007. While still operating in Iran, Halliburton won huge contacts from the federal government, including a no-bid contract to restore Iraq's oil sector, as did its subsidiary at the time, Kellogg Brown & Root.

As Perrspectives detailed four years ago, Halliburton had side-stepped the U.S. sanctions regime in place against Iran since the 1990's by using a Cayman Islands subsidiary. And what should come as a surprise to no one, CEO Dick Cheney opposed those very sanctions until, of course, he became George W. Bush's Vice President.

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On Friday, Senator John McCain became the highest ranking American political figure to meet with the Libyan rebels. But while his declaration that "they are my heroes" doubtless was well received in by the anti-Qaddafi fighters in Benghazi, McCain's track record should give Americans good reason for concern. After all, this is the same John McCain who called Ahmed Chalabi a "patriot," offered cash and support to the Nicaraguan Contras, defended Oliver North and casually declared, "we're all Georgians now."

Two years after McCain traveled to Tripoli to meet with Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi (above), the failed Republican presidential nominee returned to the country to back the insurgents now opposing him. As the AP reported:

McCain, one of the strongest proponents in Congress of the U.S. military intervention in Libya, said he was in Benghazi "to get an on-the-ground assessment of the situation" and planned to meet with the rebel National Transition Council, the de facto government in the eastern half of the country, and members of the rebel military.

"They are my heroes," McCain said of the rebels as he walked out of a Benghazi hotel. A few Libyans waved American flags as his vehicle drove past.

Of course, McCain over the years has had many heroes. Among them were the Nicaraguan Contras.

By all indications, then Congressman and later Senator McCain shared Ronald Reagan's assessment that the rebel forces trying to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Managua were "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers." But months before the Reagan administration ramped up the Iran-Contra operation to skirt the 1984 Congressional ban on aid, McCain was lending his name to dubious efforts to arm the right-wing fighters. As the AP explained in October 2008:

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.

In a 1986 interview, McCain said he has resigned from the group and asked that his name be removed from their letterhead. "I didn't know whether (the group's activity) was legal or illegal," he said, "But I didn't think I wanted to be associated with them."

Perhaps, but McCain remained committed to supporting the Contras themselves. As the Washington Post reported on February 9, 1988 (via DailyKos):

Nicaraguan rebel leaders, scrambling for a survival strategy in the wake of congressional refusal last week to appropriate new aid funds, pleaded today for independent financial contributions from U.S. supporters to two private foundations based in Washington.

The contra leaders said Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole recently contributed $500 to rebel coffers, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) donated $400.

As it turns out, the biggest beneficiary of McCain's Iran-Contra largesse may have been its central figure, Oliver North.

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This weekend, Republicans marked the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan with speeches celebrating his small government philosophy, anti-tax fervor and hard-line foreign policy. But if Reagan was a GOP candidate today, he would doubtless fall victim to violations of his own 11th Commandment, "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." Because despite all of the right-wing hagiography, Ronald Reagan ballooned the national debt, repeatedly raised taxes, signed abortion rights legislation and negotiated with terrorists in Iran. For those and so many other perceived offenses, the GOP rank and file - and especially its purity-demanding Tea Partiers - would today brand a reanimated Ronald Reagan a Republican in Name Only.

Meet RINO Reagan:

1. Reagan tripled the national debt
2. Reagan raised taxes 11 times
3. Reagan expanded the size of government
4. Reagan supported the "socialist" Earned Income Tax Credit
5. Reagan negotiated with terrorists in Tehran
6. Reagan sought to eliminate nuclear weapons
7. Reagan gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants
8. Reagan approved protectionist trade barriers
9. Reagan signed abortion rights law in California
10. Reagan eventually debunked AIDS myths Republicans continued to perpetuate

1. Reagan Tripled the National Debt. As most analysts predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios."

Forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder Stockman lamented last year:

"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

Sarah Palin's revisionist history Friday notwithstanding, it was Reagan who put the United States on "the road to ruin."

2. Reagan Raised Taxes 11 Times
As ThinkProgress noted, the inedible image of Ronald Reagan the tax cutter is "false mythology." (It is also worth noting that it was President Obama and not Reagan who delivered the largest two year tax cut in American history.) While Governor Reagan doubled California's state spending and signed the biggest tax hike up to that point, as President he raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan "a dear friend," told NPR, "Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration -- I was there."

3. Reagan Expanded the Size of Government
On Friday, Sarah Palin told the Reaganauts assembled by the Young Americans for Freedom, "We need to stop spending and cut government back down to size." If that's the case, her role model should be Democrat Bill Clinton and not Republican Ronald Reagan.

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While Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has deemed the Sestak no-pay-for-no-play non-scandal an "illegal quid pro quo" and "Obama's Watergate," the overwhelming consensus of legal opinion had concluded otherwise. While Bush White House ethics officer Richard Painter told his fellow Republicans to "move on," Steve Bunnell of the firm O'Melveny & Myers announced, "There is nothing inherently bad about it unless you think politics and democracy are bad."

But for over a generation, it has been the Republicans and their conservative amen corner who have tried to brush off charges of their own corruption and lawlessness as "criminalizing politics." And from Iran-Contra, Plamegate and Tom Delay to the U.S. attorneys purge to detainee torture, Republicans survived their endless scandals by instead successfully politicizing crime.

Ironically, it was President Bush's father who introduced the criminalization of politics defense into the Republican strategic lexicon. In justifying his Iran-Contra pardons, President George H.W. Bush used the talking point that would come to define the discourse of his son's 21st century water carriers. Much like his son's defenders, Bush 41 sought to recast rampant Republican White House criminality as mere political disagreement:

Mr. Bush said today that the Walsh prosecution reflected "a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences."

The "criminalizing politics" canard has been part of the Republican scandal survival kit ever since.

Take, for example, the imbroglio surrounding the politically motivated firings of U.S attorneys in 2006. On PBS Newhour in May 2007, Republican California Congressman Dan Lundgren was only too happy to offer the criminalization of politics ruse for Monica Goodling and Alberto Gonzales alike. Just moments after acknowledging Goodling's admission of violating civil rules and Hatch Act prohibitions ("she did admit that she made mistakes in that regard"), Lundgren returned the script:

"Let me just say this -- and I think it's an important point -- there is too much of a tendency in this environment to try and criminalize political disputes. That's been the effort here. They have found no basis for criminality, so the suggestion is now a vote of no confidence. Who knows what is next?"

But it was Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) who beat Lundgren to the punch, defending Goodling in the opening moments of her testimony. Pence, who famously compared his March 2007 visit to a Baghdad market to shopping in his home state of Indiana, trotted out the tired GOP talking point for her:

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Announcing his Christmas 1992 pardons of Caspar Weinberger and five other Iran-Contra figures, President George H.W. Bush introduced a time-honored Republican scandal evasion by decrying "the criminalization of policy differences." Now, 22 years after his own role in a Congressional minority report which blasted the allegations of Reagan administration abuses of power as "hysterical," Dick Cheney is back to defend the "little guys" now at the center of the Bush 43 administration's regime of detainee torture.

In an interview with 9/11-Iraq fabulist and chief Cheney hagiographer Stephen Hayes, the Vice President explained why he was not following George W. Bush's guidance that President Obama "deserves my silence." Just like Oliver North and Cap Weinberger all those years ago, the "little guys" who architected and carried out waterboarding and other potential war crimes, Cheney insisted, deserve his protection:

"I went through the Iran-contra hearings and watched the way administration officials ran for cover and left the little guys out to dry. And I was bound and determined that wasn't going to happen this time. I think to George Tenet's credit-I don't agree with George on a lot of stuff-but I think he was of the same view and that's why we had all of these requests coming through for policy guidance and for legal opinions. And this time around I'll do my damndest to defend anybody out there-be they in the agency carrying out the orders or the lawyers who wrote the opinions. I don't know whether anybody else will, but I sure as hell will."

Looking back on then-Representative Dick Cheney's hand in the 1987 Congressional Iran-Contra Committee minority report, one could be excused for performing a mental copy and paste. Substitute Bush for Reagan and torture for Iran-Contra, and you'd thnk you were reading an excerpt of Cheney's upcoming book:

"The bottom line, however, is that the mistakes of the Iran-contra affair were just that - mistakes in judgment, and nothing more. There was no constitutional crisis, no systematic disrespect for ''the rule of law,'' no grand conspiracy, and no Administration-wide dishonesty or coverup. In fact, the evidence will not support any of the more hysterical conclusions the committees' report tries to reach."

Then as now, Cheney and his allies insisted Democrats were "criminalizing politics." Rep. Cheney even anticipated Michael Mukasey's claim that "the Bybee memo, to paraphrase a French diplomat, was worse than a sin, it was a mistake." Which makes the use of the same language by Attorney General Eric Holder ("we don't want to criminalize policy differences that might exist") and President Obama ("whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake") all the more disconcerting.

Karl Marx famously said that historical events occur twice, first as tragedy and the second time as farce. Of course, Karl Marx never met Dick Cheney.

Keith offered up a delicious wingnut trifecta of shoddy research and revisionist history Monday night.

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Bronze goes to Bill Kristol for (once again) making up facts not supported by reality in his attempt to smear Barack Obama and praise John McCain, his neocon brother-in-arms.

Comedian Rush Limbaugh gets the runner-up spot for disparaging a 10th grader's decade-old research paper as he tried to trash Barack Obama's astute observation that the current economic climate resembles the conditions that preceded the Great Depression.

And, of course, the coveted gold goes to convicted felon FOX News analyst Ollie North for having the sheer audacity to chide Barack Obama for suggesting we negotiate with Iran when he (North) was the principal architect in the Reagan-era scheme to illegally sell weapons to the Iranians.