Ever wonder why you’ve heard about the Spanish Inquisition but not the Italian one? Public records, my friends.
You see, when the church asked the Italian government to use the courts for the Inquisition, the government replied “yes,” follwed by an important instruction. It reminded the church that the court recorder was a part of the court, and every word would thus be recorded.
That soften things considerably. What thugs want to be judged for their immoral acts by everyone in the future who was reminded of their crooked stance by reading documents produced in and by the courts?
Perhaps you’ve heard. The president of these United States is trying to do away with the Presidential Records Act, which turns every document produced by the administration public fove years after leaving office. They have tried to claim that the act is unconstitutional. It is not.
In fact, it is a very good thing for democracy. Corruption has no place in Government. Documents are a roadmap to that corruption. Smart people might build a different path to Good Government from careful documentation.
Here is what the Presidentail Records (PRA) Act is:
bg. As the D.C. Circuit recognized decades ago, the PRA attempts to “balance two competing goals.” On the one hand, records of what happened in the White House are an important part of the nation’s history and potentially essential to the present functioning of all three branches of our government. The PRA thus ensures that persons in the White House, including but not limited to Presidents, do not destroy, abscond with, or otherwise fail to preserve, the government’s own records of what occurred in the Executive Office of the President. On the other hand, in crafting the PRA, Congress recognized that the President was the head of a co-equal branch of government with important interests in the proper functioning of the Executive Branch and the confidentiality of his deliberations and personal information. The PRA thus contains a number of provisions designed to “assiduously” protect these important presidential interests. — The PRA: What It Is and Why Congress Enacted It | Just Security
So let’s celebrate the sanity brought by the Presidential Records Act. Isn’t the President supposed to act in the interest of all Americans, and not just the people he is desperately trying to make into his “rich friends”?