Lawsuit over Cheney papers demonstrates how bad it's gotten

It's hard to believe that it's come to this, but now it looks like it's going to take a lawsuit to force Vice President Dick Cheney to put the interests of the country ahead of his own. A group of historians and advocates of open government announced Monday that they had joined a nonprofit advocacy group in asking the federal court in Washington, D.C., to order Cheney to preserve his vice presidential papers when he leaves office. The open government advocates and historians want Cheney to be ordered to preserve his papers for review after George W. Bush's term of office ends in January out of fear that Cheney will destroy them in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, according to the Washington Post. Cheney has argued on occasion that the Office of the Vice President is not part of the executive branch because the vice president chairs the U.S. Senate. The records could reveal what went on behind closed doors in the most controversial deliberations of the Bush administration, including the decisions to attack Afghanistan and Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001, the drafting of U.S. energy policy and the domestic wiretapping program. The lawsuit, conceived by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, asks for a court determination that the vice president's records are covered by the 1978 act, which was passed in reaction to the Watergate scandal. A spokeswoman for Cheney said the vice president "currently" follows the act. Cheney has not disclosed his plans for his papers.