President Obama decided today to once again “move on” when another choice presented itself on whether to take a closer look into possible criminal activity on the part of the Bush administration.

Way back in 2007, White House spokesmodel Dana Perino talked about the missing email controversy in which Karl Rove and others conducted official government business on Republican National Committee email.

Perino, doing what she did best, lied by saying “I wouldn’t rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost.”

Ha ha, yes — make that 22 million , Dana. But who’s counting, right? Never mind that some of these accounts were used to talk about the illegal firings of eight federal prosecutors.

Or that others were used to cover up debate in the build-up to the Iraq war disaster, when the Bush administration lied to the American people about Iraq’s possession of “WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (echo echo echo.)”

That was a long time ago, anyway. No need to dredge up such unpleasantries. Who cares that Rove was ignoring a subpoena from Congress which supposedly compelled him to testify about the prosecutors’ firings. Didn’t matter. The Democratic-controlled Congress rolled over and didn’t bother to actually enforce the subpoena.

After all, Nancy Pelosi assumed her position as Speaker of the House by saying “impeachment is off the table.” The unspoken corollary was, of course, “and so is getting to the bottom of the Bush criminal enterprise.”

These emails would’ve come in handy had they not been “lost” but rather also subject to Congressional subpoena. In fact, they might have helped prove what a dirty, lying criminal dickbag Rove is and won him some vacation time at Club Fed. Of course Bush would’ve pardoned him, but whatever.

The point here is not how evil Karl Rove is. He’s a criminal who should be in jail. And nobody cares about known liar Dana Perino. She was just doing what every spokesdick for George W. Bush did — knowingly lie to help cover up some malfeasance or other.

The real story is in today’s reporting of a settlement reached between the Obama White House and two groups, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, whose lawsuit sought to compel the White House to find and preserve these messages which were supposedly missing, in violation of laws requiring their preservation.

This settlement assures that no evidence of criminal wrongdoing will ever come to light, even though the simple fact that they were missing was a violation of the law, never mind that they probably contained evidence of a coverup.

The Washington Post would have us believe that the messages were missing due to “poor labeling and other technical problems.” Yes, if by “poor labeling and other technical problems” you mean intentionally lost or hidden to cover up crimes committed by Karl Rove and his lackeys.

The counsel for the parties bringing the lawsuit, Meredith Fuchs, is toeing the Obama party line regarding all things Bush. Though she kind of contradicted herself by saying “this settlement means that the Obama administration is trying to clean up the mess that the Bush administration left behind. They want to move on; they don’t intend to have this kind of problem.”

Well which is it? Does Obama want to clean up the Bush mess or move on? You can’t have it both ways. You can either commit to cleaning up the mess, with all the messy investigations and possible criminal prosecutions it would involve, or you can sweep it under the rug and move on. It’s apparent that Obama is more interested in the broom, and not just in this case.

It’s another example of the Obama administration adopting the nefarious policies of Bush, refusing to cede executive power snatched from the jaws of The Constitution by the power-hungry and secretive Bushies.

Because you never know, Obama may need to use that power some day for the good of mankind or to feed hungry children in Africa. Or maybe they can imagine a time when they’d want to hide something from the American people. Or maybe they’re hiding something already.

What is obvious is that the supposedly transparent Obama administration, which condemned the conspiratorial bent of the Bush administration with its lies, secrecy and coverups, is no longer too terribly interested in resurrecting the dignity and integrity of the Oval Office.

Previously they prevented the release of more pictures of prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib. They also didn’t want to release a log of White House visitors, but eventually relented, though only after a public outcry calling them on their transparency bullshit.

Obama’s administration is turning out to be not much more transparent than W’s crew. They talk the talk of transparency and the value of shining a light on the previously dark corners of executive power. But when it comes time walk the walk and actually follow through on their campaign promises, it seems they’d rather sit down and hope nobody notices.

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