What’s ironic, Marlowe, is that this administration is being buried under investigations. The fired USA’s is just getting started, they are looking into Plamegate tomorrow, and have already had hearings on contractor fraud in Iraq , and the WR imbroglio. While I do think that this WH needs to operate more openly, and badly has needed some oversight, I would hate to see each successive Congress either sit idly by while Rome burns as the GOP did for the last 6 years, or engage in innumerable hearings if the President happens to be from the opposing party. The Republican set a bad precedent with Clinton, though his own party didn’t provide much oversight before 1994, either.

Which is why so many republicans voted for it…

Alternatively, some voted for it because they believed in it. Others voted for it because they don’t want to be on the short end of the stick with a Democratic president. And there could be motives unstated yet.

Transparency in the government is a good thing, regardless of who’s in power.

There is, of course, much that we will never know. Cheney, for example, has publicly stated that he rarely takes notes or issues memorandum, because of his experience of Watergate and his observance of the Clinton WH being buried in investigations.

This may have saved Cheney’s ass in the Libby affair, as his paper trail is at a minimum.

This is an ABSURD ruling on Bush’s part. I will cite just one thing. Recently I had to look at the transcripts of Bush Senior’s Summit with Gorbachev at Malta. The only transcript in existence is the Soviet one…the US one is still Classified Top Secret.

Seriously. Over 15 years later! The Soviet Union no longer exists, and the Soviet transcript is mundane. No secrets at all.

Anyone who cares at all about the truth or about history should be aware of this issue, and do what they can to make sure the truth gets out. I suspect this is a sideline political attack on Bush…but it is, coincidentally, one that serves the greater good!!!

November 1, 2001:

Historians and others who have seen the proposed order called it unprecedented and said it would turn the 1978 Presidential Records Act on its head by allowing such materials to be kept secret “in perpetuity.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20731-2001Oct31

The entire matter slipped below the radar in the early days of the administration because Bush was trooping around acting presidential and that, not what was going on behind the scenes, was the big news.

There have been periodic stories on the order and I have blogged several times on it, most recently in contrasting the order to the decision by the Martin Luther King family to make sure that many of the reverend’s papers that were destined for public auction and likely sale to a private collector instead ended up in a public institution.

We’re not out of the woods on this one yet. Beyond a veto threat, there may be other ways that this secrecy obsessed White House can limit access. This gang is no more clever than when being perfidious.

It got so little attention because all of us lined up behind the President after 9/11. He took advantage of our nation, united in mourning to get as much power and privilege which would have caused outrage at any other time.

I think this administration saw this coming, that would explain why they are trying to raise 500 million for the presidential library. I don’t see this as an effective way to whitewash his legacy though. Other organizations, whether liberal or moderate, have the ability to raise money and fund historians to do research and write the history of the Bush misadministration.

I don’t see Bush being successful if he does fight it in court. Even his own appointees to the courts would have a hard time finding a constitutional standing for his censorship of historical records.

I believe it to be evident from recent events that the tide has turned for Mr. Bush. He’ll need to carefully pick and choose his fights for the remainder of his time in office.

I am not, however, so sanguine about the bill surviving a veto attempt. Having blown his mandate, at this point, George Bush has little to lose.