For those who need catching up -- our beloved David Axelrod sent out a lengthy, image-burdened email to probably millions of people -- many of whom never asked to be sent email by the White House and were utterly mystified as to how their names wound up on the list. Major Garrett last week called Robert Gibbs (my pet name for him: the Gibber; lately "Gibbering Idiot") to the mat -- and was ridiculed publicly by said Gibber. Well, that did not stop Mr. Garrett, who has been doing investigative journalism since long before Gibber was in training pants (that would be last year, I think). Fox now has this news update, with this utterly astounding claim from the White House:

"The White House e-mail list is made up of e-mail addresses obtained solely through the White House Web site. The White House doesn't purchase, upload or merge from any other list, again, all e-mails come from the White House Web site as we have no interest in e-mailing anyone who does not want to receive an e-mail," the statement said. "If an individual received the e-mail because someone else or a group signed them up or forwarded the e-mail, we hope they were not too inconvenienced."

Ah, in other words - Not Our Fault - Someone Else Did It. Not even an apology. WTH is wrong with these people, that the magic silken words "I'm sorry" cannot pass their pristine lips?

Anyway, there's more, and it gets better:

Shapiro said Sunday that those recipients can unsubscribe if they want, "by clicking the link at the bottom of the e-mail or (telling) whomever forwarded it to them not to forward such information anymore." He said the White House is trying to correct the problem.

Ha. Y'all see that monster email (scroll down to the Spam image for the email text)? It was Axelrod's letter, attached to three lists of eight items each attempting to outline and debunk "rumors" and "misinformation", while also giving advice on what to do to educate others. Classic Saul Alinsky tactics. I bow to anyone who had the patience to sit and scroll through this thing to the bottom, find the dang link, and click it to unsubscribe.

Then again, according to some, even unsubscribing does not get you off the Omnipresent Presidential Email List. Wasting time to find the damn link might not even do you any good. But I digress.

"We are implementing measures to make subscribing to e-mails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individuals' behalf," he said.

So now they are saying it wasn't even the White House who compiled those emails. It was mysterious "advocacy organizations" who signed people up "without permission." Hm. Seems like that would take them an awful lot of time and trouble, plus they'd have to get the emails in question as well. Still, that would be plausible, if it weren't for one thing:

It - is - a - load - of - crap.

Hot Air blog has some excellent commenters with some 'net skills who dissected the email in question, and came up with some very interesting links between Axelrod's email and people who had been reported to the flag@whitehouse.org list, and other people who had contacted representatives.

In a nutshell, several commenters noted that those who had their email addresses included in a flag@whitehouse.org email (the text body, the CC, or the BCC fields) also received an email from Axelrod - but those who had actually forwarded the flag message to the White House invariably did NOT receive the infamous email. A couple had created dummy email accounts, reported the dummy accounts to flag@, and found the dummy account was spammed, but their originating account was not. This was a very clear pattern.

The other large group of people who received the Axelrod email had gone to their congressional representatives' websites and either emailed the representative or had requested information there -- had done something that required they provide an email address in return. Although these people had NOT signed up or even visited whitehouse.gov, they received the Axelrod email.

Now why would this be? All these representatives have separate web pages, right?

Not exactly. If you look at the deep header to the Axelrod email, you find the actual originating address is Govdelivery.com, a government-contracted vendor whose sole purpose is apparently providing Web 2.0 and email services to government agencies. If you look at this brochure, you'll note that "The unique Web 2.0 Collaboration Network allows agencies to crosspromote related website content and subscription items with any of the more than 250 government agencies." In human language, that means that they have the background infrastructure to allow different agencies to pluck email addresses from any other agency on the Govdelivery-provided software.

Now, according to the brochure, it's supposed to be an opt-in checkbox -- you go to the list of government agencies, click the ones you want to get information from, and your email goes to all of them. But in this robust system, is it really a stretch to opine that some overzealous government employee said, 'Hey, why not go harvest all the emails from all the congressmen? We know most of their email comes from people concerned about the healthcare thing.'

Anyway, that's my theory, and I'm sticking to it. The White House owes every person whose email was burdened with this spammy propaganda an apology -- and not a sorry-about-your-luck piece of crapology.

Just please, get a clue, and don't send those apologies out in unsolicited email. A nice handwritten note would be acceptable, and -- a clue for the White House etiquette officers -- much more polite.

(PS -- lots of people have been calling for the White House to be slammed with the Can Spam laws. Guess what? Can Spam does NOT cover nonprofit solicitations or political speech. Not a darn thing we can do, even if Axelrod decides that spam should be a permanent part of how he does things.)