Vice President Ordered to Retain Records

The Washington Post reports that a federal court has ordered Vice President Dick Cheney to retain his papers so there will be some records to turn over to National Archives.

As we have said before, what good are open-government laws if public records are destroyed before they can be requested?

If you consider yourself left-of-center and are cheering that Republican Dick Cheney was ordered to retain his records before he could destroy them, then consider the many Washington state and local governments, run almost exclusively by Democrats, which routinely destroy all their email after a few days. The same principle--what good are open-government laws if public records are destroyed before they can be requested?--applies to governments run by people other than Dick Cheney.

Open-government laws are a check on whomever is in power, and officials of both political parties violate these laws when they are in power.