How to make a globe

Now you know.

NYT editorial on Bush records

Exit, Stonewalling

Mostly, I just love the line "L'etat c'est Dick." I'm reading Barton Gellman's book on Cheney (Angler) and that statement seems truer than even his critics realized.

VP records and protecting the historical record

Over on the archives listserv, one of the more intrepid commenters (and a veteran of NARA from the Nixon era) has this to say about the Bush/Cheney records controversy:

In both the NYT and WT articles, historians and public interest officials say they are anxious or disturbed. You see this time and again in such articles. But no one ever offers any nonpartisan, practical advice on how to ease the anxiety (which Cheney's and Browner's statements point to) that officials might feel about their "paper" trails. Nor has anyone taken a hard look at the statutory requirements, what works, what doesn't, and why. As I've mentioned, nowadays, I lean toward sealing Presidential records for longer time periods in part to improve what is created and preserved and to reduce the fear factor.

I totally agree. While many of us (and I include myself when I say "us") would love to grab a bunch of records and indict the miscreants, that merely guarantees that no records will be kept in the first place. Dick Cheney may be an especially paranoid case, but he's not alone. If records are certain to bite you in your lifetime, then you have a strong disincentive to keep them. If you know that they can be kept sealed until after you're gone, or at least until you're long retired, then the fantasy of historical vindication will be a temptation to record your thoughts and actions more thoroughly.

What I'm interested in is learning if there are more surprises of the "Oh, we've been torturing?", "Oh, our phone lines are being tapped?", or "Oh, that data mining program that Congress refused to authorize is actually going on?" variety. You can conceal the discussions that led to certain discussions, but you can't hide the existence of programs and activities like these from the incoming administration. Once you actually start issuing orders to civil servants, records begin to accumulate and people Know Stuff (and once they no longer work for you, they might decide to Say Things).

This is going to get interesting. Even if there are no more revelations, that in itself would be interesting.

Intelligence analysis

Jennifer Sharp posted a link to this WSJ article on her Facebook page, an article which includes this deliciously preposterous map of what the United States will be in just two years:


According to the article, a former KGB analyst is going around predicting that "an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S," as soon as 2010. Now, I estimate a probability of .983754 that this guy is just a huckster who doesn't particularly believe a word he's saying, and anyway, we survived Margaret Sanger and the 19th Amendment, followed by the Great Depression, with no discernible threat to our geographic integrity. But just for fun, let's play along for a minute.

First, it's helpful to remember that intelligence analysts don't necessarily do a great job of predicting the future. If you're almost as old as I am, you might remember that the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later came as a complete surprise
to our intelligence community and our foreign policy leaders. Some of these, like former ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick, had made careers by arguing that nasty totalitarians who would do business with the US were fundamentally different from nasty totalitarians who called themselves "communist" and wouldn't work with us; the latter were said to be uniquely incapable of reform from within. Then came Gorbachev and Lech Walesa and the impossible happened.

Second, our KGB man's target audience is very familiar with large states splintering into many independent states, especially along ethnic lines, but probably not terribly well versed in US demographics. The truth is, our ethnic boundaries just don't conform to any geographic boundaries, not even if the former Mexican territories. We have nothing in our country that is at all comparable to, say, Quebec, let alone Kosovo or South Ossetia.*

Which brings us back to this imaginative map. Who that knows anything about the US could imagine these divisions? South Carolina goes to the European Union, no doubt due to their slavish imitation of everything that Massachusetts does first. Canada takes over Kansas and Missouri? Wouldn't the gun owners of the Upper Peninsula bleed them white before they ever got that far south? The Mexicans get nothing from California or Arizona, but they take Alabama and Mississippi? Poor bastards, but it would make some sort of sense: gathering all the third world countries under one roof.**

Interestingly, California stays in one piece. If anyplace in our country split into two parts, I would expect a break somewhere between Monterey and Santa Barbara. Our KGB guy probably thinks he can lump LA and San Francisco together as just "Californians."

My favorite part:

"It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time." A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. "It's not there for no reason," he says with a sly grin.

Hey, jackass, we paid fair market value for Alaska back in 1867. You can have the governor at a discount, but the rest of it is going to cost you.


* Although, from what I hear, there have been attempts to persuade all the most fundamentalist Christians to move to a single state (I think Idaho gets mentioned) so that they can take it over and create their own little theocracy. I don't think they've had enough takers, though.

** Although if they gain control of Texas, look for some serious payback.

Dick Cheney is the law!

Cheney claims power to decide his public records

"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," according to a court filing by Cheney's office with the U.S. District Court on Dec. 8.

I'm supposed to believe that a law enacted after President Nixon's infamous partial-erasing of his secret tapes was purposely written to allow a public official complete control over the disposition of his records? That wouldn't have required a law; that was the status quo ante. Cheney's argument is patently false, but when was that ever counted as a defect in this Administration's legal strategies?

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Adendum: Actually, there might be a bit of a case here. Purely "partisan" records are allowed to be exempted and that covers pretty much every act and thought in the White House for the last eight years.