Dick's Parting Shot

OK, and then this is it for today...

VP Cheney has apparently decided that since he does not consider himself to be part of the executive branch of the government, he does not need to comply with the 1978 Presidential Records Act which requires him to turn over the documents generated during his time in office to the Library of Congress, which seals them for at least 12 years and then releases them to government historians, who will keep them for additional years writing official histories.

The idea that we might never really understand what the most active and powerful vice-president in US history actually did during his time in office, not just while he is there, but ever, is a fitting ambition for a man who has sought to use his time in office, so far as one can tell, to trample any effort by the other branches of government or the public to restrain him in any way.

A coalition of historians, archivists, and some sort of legal watchdog group in Washington DC, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, have sued the VP's office in an effort to prevent him from hauling off his papers and burning them in his back yard at the Naval Observatory. See their press release here.

Considering that Cheney continues to refuse to submit to congress a list of his staff on the grounds that he is free to ignore the legislative branch, these guys face an uphill battle.

More on this to come, I suspect.