Bush's governor records available for viewing. Dean's are still sealed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/national/02DEAN.html?ex=1071032400&en=d7cb1abeee025e16&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Dean Defends Sealing His Papers as Governor
By JODI WILGOREN
Published: December 2, 2003

Howard Dean yesterday defended a decision he made when he left office as governor of Vermont to keep nearly half of his official papers secret for a decade, saying that doing so was routine.

Questioned on the ABC News program "Good Morning America" about his handling of the papers, Dr. Dean tried to turn the issue back on President Bush, who originally sent his own papers from his years as governor of Texas to his father's presidential library.

"I'll unseal mine if he will unseal all of his," said Dr. Dean, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

But Mr. Bush's Texas records were moved back to state custody after a ruling from the attorney general, and an archivist for the state said the Bush records were available for viewing.

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involving memos and the like. Just wanted to point that out.

IF the archivist gives consent. You have to request the specific record you want and a determination is made whether you can see it or not .. I looked this up awhile back. You can google it yourself. See how many records are 'open' ...

However, one can hardly expect the New Whore Times to look into the red tape and small print.

While I'm freely associating, I'd like to point out that the phrase "George Bush's accomplishments only look good until you read the small print" is a damn good meme.

And much more substantive than most soundbites.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-11-07/pols_feature.html

SNIP...."In the latest dispute over the Bush papers, however, the president is winning on points. This round began in August, following the publication of an article tracking Gov. Bush's decision-making process that had led to the execution of 151 men and two women during his six-year tenure in Austin. Specifically, reporter Alan Berlow ("The Texas Clemency Memos," The Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2003) attacked as sloppy and inadequate the work of Bush's briefing attorney and general counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who now holds that same job in the White House. Gonzales is a hot property in D.C., widely considered to be the president's first choice should a vacancy open on the U.S. Supreme Court. (Following Gonzales' stint as general counsel, Bush appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court.) The Atlantic piece was the unofficial beginning of the Gonzales confirmation process, which could be nasty (some conservatives also oppose his nomination because they consider him too liberal). In retrospect, the Atlantic article is also turning out to be a test case on the strength of open records law in Texas.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Closing the Door
During recent years, state agencies have increasingly begun stamping documents as confidential or indicating that the work is subject to attorney-client privilege. The practice has a counterpart among federal documentation -- the "secret" classification, for example -- but even sensitive federal papers may be automatically declassified after 15 years, while no statutory time limit exists on the "confidential" papers of state agencies in Texas.

http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/findingaids/bush.html

The records of Governor George W. Bush are available for research. Researchers will expedite the fulfillment of their reference requests by first consulting finding aids. Requests for records must follow the procedures set forth in the Texas Public Information Act.

The Records of Governor George W. Bush are available for research despite the fact that they have not been fully prepared for research. As the Archives' staff prepares each group of records, this finding aid is updated on the Web at TARO (Texas Archival Resources Online).

The finding aids listed here will also assist researchers in locating records of interest.

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http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/agency/customer/pia.html

Texas Government Code, Chapter 552, gives you the right to access government records; and an officer for public information and the officer's agent may not ask why you want them. All government information is presumed to be available to the public. Certain exceptions may apply to the disclosure of the information.

Governmental bodies shall promptly release requested information that is not confidential by law, either constitutional, statutory, or by judicial decision, or information for which an exception to disclosure has not been sought.

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"Certain exceptions may apply to the disclosure of the information.

Governmental bodies shall promptly release requested information that is not confidential by law, either constitutional, statutory, or by judicial decision, or information for which an exception to disclosure has not been sought...."

might not be the same the same thing as the sort of discretionary confidentiality that Dean and Bush sought.

That statement doesn't neccessarily get Dean of the hook. In fact that statement just says there are documents which are automatically (and also by judicial fiat) confidential. If those rules applied to Dean's records, this wouldn't even be an issue. Dean apparently used his discretion to cover his tracks. And he has discretion to waive privilege, as he admitted today. If the constitution, a statute, or a court said he couldn't do that, then he can't even offer to waive privilege.

Dean has used executive privilege to prevent disclosure of lots of documents. It looks like Bush did too. The only difference seems to be that the court said Bush didn't have the authority to do so, and nobody has told Dean that he can't.

Dean's wiggle room is that he said he would release his if Bush released his. Well, Bush hasn't. But a court has. So Dean can say that he's not going to release his because Bush tried to hide his (ignoring for a moment that it didn't work).

So, do you think Dean will waive privilege now?

If he did there would just be something else. But, yes, he will be forced to do so. I am sure he will. There is more to Bush's records, a lot are still not really open.

I leave the boards to you guys. I was energized by a candidate, but this board is killing my interest.

so where is the PR fight - except in the media spin.

A Dem could "release" every and all document relating to himself - and the media would ask "what is he hiding" - yet there will never be a media storm over Reagan or Bush unreleased documents.

The Dem doesn't have to be marginally better. He or she has to be much much better.

The thing is, we have Democrats who are twice as good as Bush.

Why don't you just demand that Bush release all his records and let Bush-backers demand that Dean and the Democratic candidates release their records?

I can't figure out why you want to do Karl Rove's job for him, and allow Bush to save all the campaign money he has amassed for the primary to be used against our candidate in the general election.

John McCain fell for this release your records gambit and lost to Bush.
McCain was so insulted when Bush backers put out the word that McCain's years as a prisoner of war had made him psychologically unfit to be president, that he immediately released his military record without Bush agreeing to do the same.

Can we learn from experience?

It is Bush's records we need released.

probably already familiar with the source.

chimp's records are not fully available and they also violated law by repressing and I'm sure "editing" the reagan/poppy papers.

Other than play games on his computer and get turned on by people being put to death?

the state budget into red ink.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2001/03/12/texas.html

As a candidate, he promised big tax cuts and won a close election. As a chief executive, he made delivering on that pledge his first item of business. Lawmakers lined up to vote for his tax bills--but over time, those cuts reduced government revenues and threw the budget out of whack, undercutting essential programs like Medicaid.

That may sound like Tom Daschle's warning cry about what will happen to America if President Bush's tax cuts become law. But critics charge that it's also what happened to Texas after Governor Bush's tax cuts became law there. They say the nearly $3 billion-plus in tax reductions the Governor steered through the legislature in 1997 and 1999 have left the state facing a potential $700 million shortfall.

Bush and the legislature used rosy revenue projections to justify not only lower taxes but costly improvements in education and highways. Now, with the economy cooling, there may not be enough coming in to pay for some of these programs--and a bundle of unanticipated Medicaid costs, plus much needed programs such as affordable health care for teachers.

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to have the records unsealed. This will give the media an excuse to keep the story alive (while most likely failing to mention Bush's failed efforts to seal his records and the ongoing efforts to limit access to them). Wouldn't Dean be better served by unsealing the records now and getting the issue out of the way?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/national/02DEAN.html

<edit>

A conservative group based in Washington, Judicial Watch, plans to file a lawsuit, perhaps as soon as this week, to gain access to the records, which were sealed under the executive privilege exemption to the Vermont Public Records Act and include reams of correspondence with the state staff.

"He has been acting like he has something to hide," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.

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doesn't convince most people he's not just another politician.

Isn't he always first in everything, from inventing the internet, to using it to solicit donations, from talking about 're-regulating,' and then explaining that's not what he really meant, from saying our policy towards Israel should be 'even-handed,' to explaining that's not what he really meant, from saying Medicare is horrible, to saying that's not what he really meant, and so on and so on and so on. Shouldn't he be first here, too? Roll up his sleeves, display those manly forearms, and show Bush that true leaders don't play little kid games; they set examples. Or would that piece of leadership be too expensive? Of course, once those records are open, he can't get them re-sealed by saying, 'that's not what I really meant,' so maybe his caution here makes sense, viewed in perspective with his other leadership pronouncements.