The Historians (and us) Win One

One of the first things the Connecticut/Texas Dauphin did after assuming the Presidency was to place all of his Father's soon-to-be-open-to-the- public Presidential papers back under lock and key.

W loses!

From The Guardian Online:

Former Presidents Can't Withhold Records

By MATT APUZZO
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Presidents don't have indefinite veto power over which records are made public after they've left office, a federal judge ruled Monday.
In a narrowly crafted ruling, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly invalidated part of President Bush's 2001 executive order, which allowed former presidents and vice presidents to review executive records before they are released under the Freedom of Information Act.

By law, the National Archives has the final say over the release of presidential records and Kollar-Kotelly ruled that Bush's executive order ``effectively eliminates'' that discretion. It allows former presidents to delay the release of records ``presumably indefinitely,'' she said.

The judge ordered the National Archives not to withhold any more documents based on that section of the executive order.

The ruling was made in a lawsuit filed by the American Historical Association and other organizations, which argued that Bush's Executive Order 13,233 was an ``impermissible exercise of the executive power.''

The judge dismissed most of the claims and sidestepped some of the loftier questions, such as whether the entire order was unconstitutional or whether former presidents can claim executive privilege as grounds for withholding documents.

BTW: Why am I finding this in a British paper and not one from the land of the free?