Those Lois Lerner emails are a real problem and Republicans are justly outraged...

http://www.dcbar.org/bar-resources/publications/washington-lawyer/articles/february-2009-transparency-government.cfm

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At dawn on January 20, some of the earliest of millions of inauguration-goers stationed along Pennsylvania Avenue might have caught a glimpse of a truck—or three—backing up to the White House to take deliveries of history: calendars, disks, executive orders, hard drives, memos, notes, photographs, tapes, and any other records former President George W. Bush had not turned over to the United States National Archives and Records Administration by then.

It is still unclear exactly what Bush’s records contain. Along with the usual dolly loads of paper files and drives, tapes, and disks containing gigabytes of e-mails, Bush also generated newer types of records, including text messages, and a series of videoconferences on war strategy with then British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

According to the National Archives, only 2 or 3 percent of records generated by the Executive Office of the President are important enough to be forever archived. The Executive Office of the President may sort through its own records to decide what goes to the National Archives, but in making its decisions, it must comply with the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

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