VT political columnist Peter Freyne wrote
a column this week about the Dean papers "issue" with some pretty good stuff. But, lacking the resources of the NYTimes he was forced to do some reporting and--gasp--actually called the TX Archivist to follow up on the availability of Bush's gubernatorial records.
Here's the relevant passage:
How did George W. Bush deal with his gubernatorial records in Texas?
Our research indicates Dubya's done a better job than Dean of keeping his from public view.
When Dubya left office in Texas in 2000, he shipped his gubernatorial records to his daddy's presidential library on the campus of Texas A&M. According to Texas State Archivist Chris LaPlante, they were totally inaccessible to the public. There was no staff to catalogue them, said Laplante. And since "They were physically in a federal facility, they were subject to federal, rather than Texas, public-records law."
After complaints were made, said LaPlante, the attorney general ruled they should be shipped to the state archive for cataloguing. The Bush records arrived in Austin in August 2002. According to LaPlante, it's going to take another three years to complete the cataloguing. Then they'll be shipped back to daddy's library. [emphasis added]
By Tuesday everybody, including two of Dean's Democratic rivals, was piling on. The New York Times' Jodi Wilgoren reported that "Mr. Bush's Texas records were moved back to state custody after a ruling from the attorney general, and an archivist for the state said the Bush records were available for viewing."
Archivist LaPlante called the above statement in the Times story "deceiving." While the Bush records are officially "viewable," said LaPlante, actually viewing them is another matter
There's more on how difficult and/or impossible it actually is to view any of the Bush records, and how easy it is to view the majority of the Dean records.
Freyne can be an opinionated jerk sometimes (love ya, though Peter! . . . I know he reads blogs), but I've never heard of him screwing up quotes. This is legit, and sheds a bit of a different light on it than does the NYT lazy reporting.
Oh, and btw, the reason Kunin's records were sealed for six years (the "precedent" everyone talks about) was because that's how long she was Governor. No legal precedent, just a number picked out of the air.