Please cite where it says that each and every email is to be printed. I can guarantee you that it does not say what you think it says.

Again, you fail to answer the question: Where does it say that email is to be saved more than six months? All you have is that a government agency must retain records. However if you actually read the statutes it clearly says in 3105 (1):

If you follow then to Chapter 33.

If the IRS has a 6 month retention policy, then it clearly falls under the guidelines set by Chapters 31 and 33 that after a certain time period that they can be disposed.

Current IRS policy is 6 months retention. I think that should be longer but that was not the case here.

First of all I said "Personally" meaning "in my experience" specifically because I don't claim to know how the entire IT world does things. But in my experience from small (under 30) to large (Fortune 100) companies, they don't keep HDs around that don't work especially when they have warranties to replace them with little cost. A basic attempt to recover the data is done. But the IT guy isn't normally a data recovery expert. If there was something immensely valuable on the drive, it might be sent out to one of these data recovery companies. But this is done at great cost. Often times, the data is just gone. The HD is gone.

Unfortunately for you, they were retained. For 6 months. Please cite any law or statute that requires the IRS retain them for more than 6 months.

They weren't. The Fox story fails to mention that the IRS has recovered 24,000 emails from 83 individuals from their local HDs. The Politico story mentions it. This is why I'm distrustful of Fox News.

Again the Politico story specifically mentions that the IRS only keeps 6 months on their servers. After that individuals can keep them longer but it is not an agency mandate.

You are only hearing about it now because the IRS keeps getting more and more requests for information. The last subpoena requested all of Lerner's old media including old HDs. I don't know about you but my company would take some time locating that information if I had a HD replaced. And then researching what happened to that HD 3 years ago.

And if the HD is not functioning, how do you image it? I'm not an expert on HDs but if the HD fails to work, I don't have a lot of tools to fix this. Data Recovery companies have many tools and procedures to try to recover the data. Some things to try is replacing different parts like the board, head, etc. I do not see a lowly IT tech having these tools.

This was covered. IRS keeps emails and their backups for 6 months only. The emails wanted go back 3 years.

This was done. The IRS retrieved 24,000 emails from 83 individuals on their local HDs. There are of course emails that will be missing. Her mails off her HD in this case.

[Citation Needed]

You seem to be postulating a lot of "if"s on a lowly IT tech who replaced a HD. Possibilities:

1) IT tech gets a ticket that said "Computer not working." It was diagnosed to be a failing HD. After trying to recover the data and failing, the HD was replaced. Old HD was recycled/destroyed. This does not violate any data retention policies as no data was likely to be recovered.
2) IT tech colluded with Lerner to destroy a HD that had damaging emails 2 years before a scandal erupted.
3) Lerner with great technical expertise manages to fake out a IT Tech in thinking a HD was bad and making it impossible to recover.

I would think Occam's razor favors #1.

I did. You left out an important detail:

This only applies to general policies not individual cases.

She did. It was on her HD. She was bad at backups but so is most of the computer using world.

I don't see this anywhere as a regulation that applies to the IRS. Each individual agency can set their rules in addition to data retention policy. The EPA seems to do things differently than the IRS.

Oh, here we go: If you want to blame Obama for everything that has gone wrong, you can go ahead. But that's your bias. Has Obama done enough? Has he been open enough? I would say no. But this particular scandal may not have had anything to do with him.

To pretend that Obama had anything to do with this without any proof is partisanship on your part. It's the same thing as the VA scandal: The VA has been screwed up for decades. Suddenly it's all Obama's fault that someone uncovered how screwed up there were? Who's talking partisan here?

No, the IRS does keep backups of emails as instructed by the Standard. The problem is the data retention period is only 6 months. I would argue it needs to be longer but nothing I've seen dictates how long specifically to keep emails.

The IRS Commissioner may have a lot of explaining to do. But from what I can tell the actions were not directed by the Whitehouse and not particularly politically motivated. Under the deluge of new applications after Citizens United, the IRS took shortcuts. That's the scandal. The GOP is making out to be that there were secret orders from the Whitehouse.

From what I know of companies and government agencies, poor data retention is the norm and not the exception. Especially with an entity that has fewer IT dollars. An underfunded government agency with a small IT staff doesn't follow industry best practices. Color me surprised.