Supoenas now!

The White House has "lost" thousands of emails sent by White House officials -- including Karl Rove -- on official business -- including the U.S. Attorney purge -- from email addresses registered to the Republican National Committee and the Bush campaign.

Investigating Democrats in Congress need to get Rove in particular on the record under oath about the contents of the missing emails, before it's clear whether they can be recovered from the servers or not. Once he knows, he can tell exactly as much of the truth as could be proven anyway. That means sending subpoenas right away, without wasting any more time in negotiation. It means setting short deadlines. And it means not bothering with contempt citations if Rove refuses to show, but sending the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest him and bring him in.

If the White House wants to try to claim "executive privilege" about communications sent on unofficial email accounts, all it's going to get is a national horselaugh. Nobody's going to believe that the dog ate their email.