Lawsuit to Ask That Cheney’s Papers Be Made Public
September 10th, 2008Yeah, well, Cheney doesn’t concern himself with lawyers and sign wavers and other people who ask politely. They would have a better chance of suing Darth Vader to get an injunction against the use of the Death Star.
Via: Washington Post:
Months before the Bush administration ends, historians and open-government advocates are concerned that Vice President Cheney, who has long bristled at requirements to disclose his records, will destroy or withhold key documents that illustrate his role in forming U.S. policy for the past 7 1/2 years.
In a preemptive move, several of them have agreed to join the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in asking a federal judge to declare that Cheney’s records are covered by the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and cannot be destroyed, taken or withheld without proper review.
The group expects to file the lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It will name Cheney, the executive offices of the president and vice president, and the National Archives and chief archivist Allen Weinstein as defendants.
The goal, proponents say, is to protect a treasure trove of information about national security, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, domestic wiretapping, energy policy, and other major issues that could be hidden from the public if Cheney adheres to his view that he is not part of the executive branch. Extending the argument, scholars say, Cheney could assert that he is not required to make his papers public after leaving office. Access to the documents is crucial because he is widely considered to be the most influential vice president in U.S. history, they note.
“I’m concerned that they may not be preserved. Whether they’ve been zapped already, we don’t know,” said Stanley I. Kutler, an emeritus professor and constitutional scholar at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
You wrote: “They would have a better chance of suing Darth Vader to get an injunction against the use of the Death Star.”
For all we know, they did. 😉
But it still took a pissed-off teenager in a spaceship held together with baling twine and duct tape to do anything about it.
Hmm, there’s another lesson in here somewhere. Oh yeah, don’t kill people’s families. It tends to piss them off. Then you get more ‘terrorists’.