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Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot…

Go Ahead & Try    

The Washington Post provides a delightful example of one of the myriad ways the Bush Administration will exit as it governed, with comically opaque statements, inept execution of its legal responsibilities, and the providential retirement for health reasons of an official who facilitated its crimes by his own idleness.

The jerry-rigged pile which is the Bush White House email system is supposed to disgorge its treasures onto the National Archives when the president leaves office in a month.

But there’s never a lack of drama with these guys.

The endless litigation trying to force Bush not to destroy presidential records through sloth, indifference and malice has taught us that some five million emails may be missing from the White House system, as well as tens of thousands written on Republican National Committee email accounts in order to evade records keeping law.

National Archives’ General Counsel Garry Stern is praying for a Christmas Miracle:

“we hope and expect they all will exist on the system or be recoverable…We can’t say for sure.”

But Santa may not exist, or have treats for all the good boys and girls:

  “White House spokesman Scott M. Stanzel said last week that “we are making significant progress in accounting for the e-mail records stored on our computer network.” But he declined to say how many e-mails remain missing or to predict how long the recovery will take because the issue is the subject of ongoing litigation. “

“Stanzel said the White House is also still “working to acquire” e-mails involving official government business that were transmitted by presidential aides through accounts operated by the Republican National Committee, a problem also first publicized almost three years ago. “We continue to be in communication with RNC officials about recovering official records,” he said without offering details. Such records are subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires their transfer to the Archives at noon on Jan. 20. “

Outgoing Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein has long urged faith-based archiving.  Visiting the future

       George W. Bush Library home at SMU he painted the vision of a happy future , where the cares and controversies of the present fall away, and a disturbing category he invented called “Presidential Families” decide it’ll be good for grandpa’s image to let loose the papers.

The ongoing scandal that ex Presidents, and thanks to Bush, their heirs for untold generations, have any say in shaping the public record and image of past administrations went unmentioned.

But it’s not Weinstein’s problem anymore.

He’s resigning before the end of term smashup for health reasons, offering a glowing self-assessment has he scurries away from the looming train-wreck.

“we at the National Archives have worked diligently and successfully on our primary mission of maximizing public access to the records of all three branches of government while protecting at all costs this agency’s rock-solid nonpartisan integrity“

The Post’s story ends on a reassuring note.  There’s no word on Saddam’s pistol, but…

“The bullhorn used by Bush at the World Trade Center site in New York is among the objects set to go to Texas. “

Pockets Secured! 

I guess the Portrait Gallery’s new Bush painting   is more flattering than the Philadelphia freakazoid,    but lordy can’t this guy pick better memorializers?

Er, Guess not. 

Lest We Forget   

The Bush Administration may look sleepy, and the President himself may be trying for wistful, but someone’s minding the store.

Dick Cheney, everyone’s Uncle Shifty, continues his lunge for power and secrecy even as he goes out the door.

In a court filing over a challenge to his control of Vice Presidential papers, Cheney essentially says that regardless of what you may imagine about the claims of history, a public right to know, or what the law would appear to require,

“The vice president alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records, how his records will be created, maintained, managed and disposed, and are all actions that are committed to his discretion by law.“

Cheney is under court order not to mess with his papers for now, but can the law’s imagination comprehend what  such a towering institutional ego might do as he exits?