Tombs of the Pharaohs

The latest update from the New York Times on how President Bush's Executive Order 13233 has thoroughly bogged down historical research in presidential archives: The wait for papers at the Reagan Library is now six and a half years.

Nowhere in the article is the suggestion that President Bush made this directive because many prominent members of his administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush himself) had served in the Reagan and previous Bush administrations. Ergo, they didn't want embarrassing memos from those years suddenly popping up and distracting them from their current work, successfully inspiring terrorists and fouling up the recovery of New Orleans.

Meanwhile, in a vote Wednesday, the SMU faculty senate was split right down the middle, 13-13, on whether the school should dissociate itself from the partisan think tank that will be part of the proposed Bush Presidential Memory Hole. The partisan institution will not report to SMU but to a Bush foundation. How's that for giving them money and land but deeding over control? Sounds like President Bush's old days helping to sell Arlington on building a new stadium for the Texas Rangers -- with city money but with the Rangers' retaining profits. And in keeping with such Bush thinking, SMU filed a court motion to keep its documents related to the library under wraps. The university is being sued over the way it took over the condos it tore down to make way for the library.

Unfortunately, the deadlocked senate vote may have been the faculty's last shot at stopping the steamroller. Predictably, the faculty's objections to the Bush library/propaganda center have led to pundits pointing out how liberal professors preach open-mindedness, free speech and the rights of minorities -- except when it comes to conservatives, who are so outnumbered in academic circles.

Funny. I didn't know SMU needed more rich, white conservatives.

The university is also approaching the South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church for official sanction for the library because one proposed location includes land from the original gift that started the school in 1911, and SMU needs church permission to sell or lease it. The word is, however, that if the Methodists get snippy about it, there's other real estate that can be used to build it without their consent.

Half a billion dollars in fundraising will always find the One, True Way.