NYT editorial: Exit, Stonewalling; "Mr. Cheney retreats from sunshine with the wariness of Alucard."

[DeepModem Mom]

Exit, Stonewalling
Published: January 3, 2009

True to its mania for secrecy, the Bush administration is leaving behind vast gaps in the most sensitive White House e-mail records, and with lawyers and public interest groups in hot pursuit of information that deserves to be part of the permanent historical record.

E-mail messages that have gone suspiciously missing are estimated to number in the millions. These could illuminate some of the administration’s darker moments, including the lead-up to the Iraq war, when intelligence was distorted, the destruction of videotapes of C.I.A. torture interrogations, and the vindictive outing of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

The deep-sixed history also includes improper business conducted by more than 50 White House appointees via e-mail at the Republican Party headquarters. Historians and archivists are suing the administration. We should be grateful for their efforts. Entire days of e-mail records have turned up conveniently blank at the offices of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Cheney, of course, retreats from sunshine with the wariness of Alucard; he is fighting to the last the transfer of his records to the National Archives, as required by law. He recently argued in court that he “alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records.” As in: L’etat c’est Dick.

Modern administrations from Ronald Reagan’s to Bill Clinton’s typically tried to evade at least some disclosure obligations under the public archives law. But the Bush team, from day one, has flouted the requirement to preserve a truthful record, ignoring repeated warnings from the National Archives. In government agencies, the public’s freedom-of-information rights have been maliciously hobbled....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04sun2.html

[Demeter]

1. We Will Deal With Mr. Exception-to-all-Rules

Never fear. He will be hounded, even after death.

[DCKit]

3. May he live a very, very long time. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, DeepModem Mom.

[Jim Lane]

4. By invoking "Alucard", the Times has likened Cheney to a vampire

For those who, like me, didn't understand the line, "Mr. Cheney, of course, retreats from sunshine with the wariness of Alucard...." -- fear not, I've done the research for you, with the help of Wikipedia.

The name "Alucard", which is "Dracula" spelled backwards, appears in the 1943 film Son of Dracula. A mysterious Hungarian arrives in Louisiana and says he is Counta Alucard. After a series of vampiric incidents, the vampire hunters speculate that Count Alucard is a descendant of Dracula's. Similarly, in video games from the Castlevania series in the 1990s, Alucard is the son of Dracula, but has a human mother, so that he is only half-vampire.

So, is the Times going soft on Cheney by implying that he's actually half-human? No, the reference is probably to the old film -- in which the part of Alucard is played by, you guessed it, Lon Chaney.