MORE INSTA-HACKERY, THIS TIME ON DEAN

Around the blogosphere it is often asked whether Professor/hack Glenn Reynolds actually reads substantial portions of the articles to which he links.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if he even reads the portions he excerpts.

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S PENCHANT FOR SECRECY has apparently found an unlikely admirer:

As investigative reporters and “oppo” researchers flock to Vermont to dig into Howard Dean’s past, they have run into a roadblock. A large chunk of Dean’s records as governor are locked in a remote state warehouse—the result of an aggressive legal strategy designed in part to protect Dean from political attacks.

DEAN—WHO HAS BLASTED the Bush administration for excessive secrecy—candidly acknowledged that politics was a major reason for locking up his own files when he left office last January. He told Vermont Public Radio he was putting a 10-year seal on many of his official papers—four years longer than previous Vermont governors—because of “future political considerations... We didn’t want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time.” (emphasis TFM's)

Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and all that.

This is, of course, a bullshit story. In his article, Michael Isikoff acknowledges that it's customary for outgoing governors in Vermont to seal official papers for 6 years (10 years minus four). Something tells me that if Dean's plan had been to seal his records for the usual 6, there would still be complaints from his political opponents. But of course, not every outgoing Vermont governor goes on to run for president. If former Vermont governor Richard Snelling, a Republican, planned to run for president after leaving the statehouse, he would have sealed portions of his records longer than the 6 years that he did.

This story actually surfaced back in the summertime, when some Republicans in the Vermont state senate complained. Here's the Dean campaign's statement from late July:

"One should consider the source and draw your own conclusions on motivation," Enright said. "The facts are that Howard Dean followed the precedent set by previous governors. The vast majority of his records have been made public, including all official correspondence, proclamations, declarations, pardons, extraditions, and appointments."

Standard practice, Professor. The Bushies' secrecy about energy, Iraq, not revealing the Plame leaker, stifiling the 9/11 commission, and so on, and so on, is NOT standard practice for a worthy president.

I assume, by the way, that Glenn is going to criticize Governor Schwarzenegger for buying up and destroying all copies of the outtakes from Pumping Iron. *crickets*