What makes you feel better: A promise by the current administration to backup copies of e-mails, or an order by a federal judge for the same? Well, considering that White House lawyers argued against mandatory backups, I’d say that the order from U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy is a welcome one.

For some quick background, two organizations — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive — have filed suit against the administration, alleging that they destroyed five million e-mails. This is in conflict with the Federal Records Act, which prohibits the destruction of government documents. The act expressly includes electronic messages.

The order goes a long way in maintaining a level of transparency that we simply haven’t seen from this administration. It might not be a huge help immediately, though, as the archiving of White House e-mail ceased in 2003, and it is speculated that the backups may have already been re-used.

CREW and the National Security Archive are seeking to force the White House to immediately explain in court what happened to its e-mail, an issue that first surfaced nearly two years ago in the leak probe of administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame’s CIA identity to reporters.

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald revealed early in 2006 that relevant e-mails could be missing because of an archiving problem at the White House.

That’s quite a convenient archiving problem, now isn’t it? True, there have been stranger coincidences. But the stifling of e-mails seems to go right along with this administration’s M.O.

In any case, the law couldn’t be clearer. Electronic documents must be preserved. And I feel a lot better now that a federal judge ordered it. Because if we were just taking the administration for it’s word, well, we know how credible that is.

I simply wish to say I hope our new Attorney General understands that he is our lawyer, not the President’s lawyer or the Vice President’s lawyer. He is our legal counsel as a people. It’s sad that it needs to be said. Unfortunately, our track record with Attorney Generals under this President is abysmal. We have seen lawyers tasked with parsing the law in a way that would read it to allow torture. We have lawyers figuring out how to suspend habeas corpus. That we haven’t been able to get our lawyer to take a clear stand against torture is tragic. That should be a knee jerk response. It shouldn’t require time to ponder or evasion. It speaks volumes that it’s come to the point where there is a debate on that issue.

Regardless, at this point, we have to live with the decision and so instead of lingering on all the reasons to doubt this nomination will be in the best interests of the nation, we instead just express our hope that Mukasey remembers who he works for and what our real values are.