Operative SMR writes in the following:

Let me clarify in a few steps. First, for those unaware of Occam’s Razor (or Sherlock Holmes), the principle can be traced back to Aristotle – “we may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses.” and Ptolemy – “We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible”. In modern terms, “that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.”

Applying that theory to the latest explanations – seven hard drive crashes, the lack of a centralized archive, a practice of erasing and reusing backup tapes every six months, and an IRS policy of allowing employees to decide for themselves which e-mails constitute an official agency record – really starts to make one question things. When you add that in attempts to get Lerner’s emails from the people she e-mailed with, the IRS has told the House Ways and Means Committee that six other employees who had communicated with Lerner also had hard-drive crashes. They include Nikole Flax, the chief of staff to the acting commissioner and Michelle Eldridge, an IRS spokeswoman, and four agents working on exempt organization cases. Now it really gets shaky.

My broader point in my post yesterday was that it is either gross incompetence by a number of organizations, including the company auditing the IRS for FISMA compliance, the IRS, the Department of the Treasury, and others or it was intentional. Occam’s Razor would lead us to believe the latter. I suspect that if noise continues about this – especially the incompetence angle – the IT folks won’t like being painted as such and maybe some truth will roll out. More explicitly, what is the track record for this administration in being open and honest and not making calculated politicized decisions about stuff like this? That might be the simplest way to an answer.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.