Anne Weismann's posted an excellent analysis of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's hearing on yesterday the serious email problems at the White House. 

There is also a question about White House staff using private email accounts to conduct business.  For example, Karl Rove used a private email account from the Republican National Committee (RNC) "most of the time."   Those emails used to conduct official government business should be part of the public record. We were led to believe that the RNC was spending vast sums to find Rove's missing emails.  Not anymore.  Yesterday, we learned that the RNC will not even try to find missing White House emails: 

After promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands of e-mails sent by White House officials, the Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes, the panel's chairman said yesterday.

The move increases the likelihood that an untold number of RNC e-mails dealing with official White House business during the first term of the Bush administration -- including many sent or received by former presidential adviser Karl Rove -- will never be recovered, said House Democrats and public records advocates.

The RNC had previously told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it was attempting to restore e-mails from 2001 to 2003, when the RNC had a policy of purging all e-mails, including those to and from White House officials, after 30 days. But Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) disclosed during a hearing yesterday that the RNC has now said it "has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails."