The Speaker and the SOTU

For John, BLUF:  At the start of this year's State of the Union Speech the President handed the Speaker a copy of the presentation.  At the end of the talk the Speaker ripped up the copy she had received.  This is a commentary on it.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Whistleblower:  Lives Lost, Billions Wasted Due to Government Records Management Failures

From The Epoch Times, by Mr Ivan Pentchoukov, 13 February 2020.

Here is the lede plus:

The man who shot and killed 26 people at a church in Texas in 2017 used guns he wouldn’t have been able to purchase if the Air Force had properly managed its records.

On six occasions, military officials failed to send Devin Kelley’s records to the FBI while the Air Force investigated, court-martialed, and imprisoned him for abusing his wife and stepson.  Had the FBI received the records, the killer would have been barred from buying the weapons used in the massacre.

. . .

Rather than being an anomaly, the preventable failures that contributed to the Sutherland Springs, Texas, massacre are a symptom of a vast problem spanning the entire federal government, according to two experts with decades of experience with the electronic records management application standard that undergirds virtually all records management software deployed in agencies across the government.

Records are important.  They allow us to go back and see the basis for what exists today.  Historians, statisticians, political scientists and public health researchers, among others, need the data from the past.  I, myself, have been to the National Archives, looking up information on early Washington, DC, for my small part in a history of the National War College, an effort the author was willing to credit with my name on the cover, for which I am grateful.  Just today, looking for a credit card, I came across my Identification Card from the National Archives.

Which is why I am bothered by Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up, publicly, her copy of the State of the Union Address.♠  I don't care if it was the actual State of the Union message or if it was an extract from the D. H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover.  Symbolically, she is saying that those national records don't matter.  It is such a bad look.  It sends the signal that records keeping is not such a big deal.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  The President is required to convey to Congress his judgment on the state of the Union.  Article II, Section 3, Clause 1:  "He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union."