Ruling on Records Delivers a Win to Cheney [the back-breaking boxes]

[wordpix]

This article first appeared in the Post on 1/19/09---the day Chain-ee hurt his back! Apparently he got right to work after this ruling.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 20, 2009; Page A02

A federal judge yesterday rejected the claim by a coalition of historians and nonprofit groups that Vice President Cheney intended to illegally discard some of his official records, and instead accepted the pledge of a senior White House aide that key Cheney documents and other materials will be transferred as required to the National Archives.

The decision, announced on the eve of the Bush administration's handover of power, capped a long legal battle over how much discretion Cheney had to decide which documents he must preserve for history. On virtually every important legal issue in the case, including whether courts even have jurisdiction to review the matter, the Justice Department -- representing Cheney -- lost.

But the groups, including the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians and the Society of American Archivists, were unable to convince the court that Cheney intended to destroy or keep much of his records under what they called a strained interpretation of the governing law. snip....

One of the plaintiffs, Stanley I. Kutler, an emeritus professor of history and law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said he remains worried that "when the Archives goes to open Cheney's papers, they are going to find empty boxes."

Cheney "spent most of his time making sure he left no footprints," said Kutler, who has written two books on Watergate and President Richard M. Nixon's White House tapes. "Why did he fight this order so much if he did not have the intent to leave with these papers? I'm guessing that a lot of it will not be there." more....

[ThomWV]

1. Kick for this discription of a soon-to-be-obvious violation of law by the VP