Government in secret

We knew Rove and others had done it, but it seems the Administration has made a regular and wide-spread practice of using private e-mail accounts for official business as a way of avoiding oversight. Citizens of Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a complaint about this practice at the U.S. Department of Education:

A liberal government watchdog group has accused employees in the U.S. Department of Education of illegally using private e-mail accounts to conduct official government business, eliminating the ability for independent oversight through public records access.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the department's inspector general to investigate the use of non-governmental e-mail accounts after it was denied access to e-mails it requested under the Freedom of Information Act. CREW's lawyer was told that department personnel "often use private e-mail addresses," which are not subject to public records requests, according to a press release from the group.