Can not get those images out of my mind when someone says “pile” on.

Sen. Stevens, as usual, has it backwards. Presidential Libraries house public records, the history of a presidency. Even the badly tattered record that will have escaped Cheney’s shredders and hard drive and PDA destroyers will be important to the public, scholars and later politicians. If nothing else, the many gaps in it will be a testament to the administration’s arrogance – its belief that it was above the law, and its willingness to manufacture false crises and incompetently manage real ones so as to allow that belief to take hold. As such, they are not “charities” except insofar as they are immune from paying tax. Like the White House, they serve the public trust.

They are places that aggrandize the President’s image and that will hide or illuminate his record for generations. Scholars are still seeking access to private papers of JFK that won’t be available until after his daughter is a memory. Libraries cost hundreds of millions or more to build and operate.

Donating large sums to that cause, especially at the end of a presidency, when most encumbents and their caretakers care more about their past than their future — control of which is their future — can buy a lot of favors today, both from the man about to leave the Oval Office and from his party and supporters. A lot of favors.

That’s why all donations should be treated like political donations, which is what they are. Donations above a nominal figure, whether from or packaged by a single source, should be public information. The public, owners of the libraries contents, have a right to know who is keeping their records and why they might be doing it, which may

Let’s assume that transparency is a good thing in regards to fundraising for presidential libraries. Stevens must assume that, for he doesn’t argue against it on those grounds.
I would ask him then, when exactly would changing the law NOT be changing the rules on SOMEBODY?

I just loved the part where one single Senator can put a “hold” on a bill. Too bad one single Senator couldn’t do that with the FISA amendments.

Hey McBush- Go find Osama and THEN ask us ta vote for you…We didn’t just fall off the turnip truck ya know!

Here’s a wonderful picture of the new Bush/Cheney library:

http://i36.photobucket.com/alb…..a02_05.jpg

McBush wants to be the Bobby Knight of war—”best major college record in all of war- sure I’m tough on my guys- but they respond to it”!

I really want to push people back to read what earlofhuntingdon @ 11 has to say about Presidential Libraries. We are really in grave need of a comprehensive legislative approach to this — and yes, in order to have a realistic chance of passage, perhaps it is wise to wait for the next administration — note that they didn’t get too far trying to give the Presidential Records people at the Archives any role in determining whether electronic systems in the WH were properly archiving E-mail and documents… But all of this needs to be of a piece.

Taxpayers always pay for the Archives part of a Presidential Library. That’s where they store everything in secure, climate controlled conditions, and where reading rooms are provided for Historians, scholars and the like. Legislation is needed to make clear exactly what these basics are that have public support, and we also need legislative clarification of ownership aspects of the Presidential Records Act — passed after Nixon tried to take his tapes home with him to California — and put it beyond executive orders when papers are opened, and how the powers of declassification actually are to work. Clinton made it 12 years which is very reasonable, But Bush came along and has tried to give presidential families near century long control — in a sense revising everything that was litigated with regard to Nixon’s papers, and which he lost at all stages. It is simply time for Congress to adopt and put into statutes clear rules that cannot be changed administration to administration, and I would add — a statute that is Historian Friendly.

What President’s raise money for is not really their library — it is their museum. Taxpayers don’t support these. Likewise, Taxpayers normally don’t support other things that are done in the Museum — some are very valuable, as for instance, the Kennedy Library is attached to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, a certain number of Fellows and Faculty are supported by an endowment, and the School does Conferences, publications, supports research and the like. Example, something like the three way conference series about the Cuban Missle Crisis that the Kennedy center organized — first in Cuba with their archives and surviving players, then in Moscow with again archives, surviving players, and an audience of International Historians, and finally in Cambridge, with a major release from the National Archives and again a gaggle of Historians, some surviving players (not many left now), and about a week of scholarly debate directed toward synthesis of all the materials, resulting in at least a dozen major publications. Since Cuban Missle Crisis was about as close as we got to Armageddon in the Cold War — this about six or seven year process was profoundly valuable, and it is hardly just “all about Kennedy.” It is, in my mind, what the programatic/museum side of a Presidential Library ought to be about. What Congress needs to deal with is creating rules for these associated museums (which they can do as they share some administrative services, space, and above all, donations are to a non-profit foundation that serves as an endowment for the museum.) Congress needs to draw a line between a “Shrine” and a Museum with a public historical program tied to events and themes in a particular presidency. I suspect if they put their minds to it Congress could write such a statute — and that would be respectful of both Citizens who want to comprehend a presidency and its era, and Scholars and Historians who want to research a presidency and its era.

So please call attention to this NEED, and at the same time argue that the corruptions of recent years need to be ripped out of this collection of institutions.