Well...Every other president has had one and so will Dubya. Bush senior has one at Texas A&M, but only Dubya's library will include a think tank for effecting public policy. A first, and in keeping with the neoconservative control of everything they can get their hands on.
Here's a link to some of the Presidential Libraries. They all have an entrance fee of $5 to $10, with the Ronald Reagan library being the most expensive. The LBJ library is free. I wonder what Dubya will charge? Not that you will see me anywhere near it.
Lawsuit Over Eminent Domain Could Snarl Bush Library Plans
By MEGHAN CLYNE
Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 17, 2006
DALLAS - The school favored to host the George W. Bush Presidential Library, Dallas's Southern Methodist University, may encounter a snag next week in the form of a lawsuit alleging that the school has improperly seized local homes in order to secure land for the proposed library site.
Amid increasing outrage among Republicans over the use of eminent domain and other coercive measures to obtain private property for public projects, a case in Dallas County's 134th Civil District Court, which is set to begin on Tuesday, will determine whether the university violated its legal obligations to local homeowners in an effort to secure the land currently occupied by the University Gardens condominium complex, a potential library site.
"They're taking my home," said Gary Vodicka, one of the litigants and a University Gardens owner and resident, yesterday.
The case comes as the competition for the $200 million to $300 million library, which has had some schools making plans to attract the memorial since before President Bush's election in 2000, draws to a close, and could end any time in the next six weeks.
A party to the library competition told The New York Sun this week that a member of the library selection committee said a decision was expected sometime within the first quarter this year, or before March 31 - a date moved up from previous projections that the library site would be announced in the second quarter.
A spokesman for the head of the selection committee, former Bush commerce secretary Donald Evans, said the selector was declining to comment on all aspects of the competition as the committee reviewed the proposals, including the selection date.
Mr. Evans is co-chairman of the selection committee, along with Mr. Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, and the third member is a Bush cousin, Craig Stapleton. Three of Mr. Bush's top advisers - White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, and White House Counsel, Harriet Miers - are also helping the selection committee.
The competition for the library is intense among the four schools that were announced as finalists in October last year. Mr. Bush limited proposals to institutions in Texas, where the Bushes plan to return after they depart the White House in 2009. In addition to the prestige offered by a library, many cities are keenly aware of $1 billion in revenue the Clinton library has already brought to the Little Rock, Ark., area since it opened in November 2004.
Mr. Bush's options now include SMU, located in the upscale University Park area of Dallas; Baylor University, a Baptist school in Waco; the University of Dallas, a small Catholic college in Irving, a suburb of Dallas; and Texas Tech University, a public school located in Lubbock, as part of a West Texas Coalition that involves more than 10 educational institutions across the western part of the state who have promised to spend $500 million on the scheme.
SMU has long been considered the favorite to receive the library, principally because of its ties to the Bushes and their advisers. Laura Bush received her undergraduate degree in elementary education from the school in 1968 and since 2000 has been a member of its board of trustees. Vice President Cheney was in 1996 the "diplomat in residence" at SMU's John Taylor Center for political studies, and also served as a trustee. Bush adviser Karen Hughes, and White House counsel Harriet Miers - who is also advising the library selection committee - possess SMU degrees.
It also anticipated that, after their White House years, the Bushes will relocate to Dallas, where they lived from 1988 to 1994. The president and first lady remain members of the area's Highland Park United Methodist Church. The area is also home to some of Mr. Bush's most generous political donors, many of whom are also expected to contribute to his future presidential library foundation.
Mr. Vodicka said yesterday that SMU's being awarded the library is "a done deal," but that he hopes his lawsuit will succeed in preventing the school from destroying his home in order to build it. SMU is located in one of the most expensive and exclusive areas of Texas, and, while it will not disclose the acreage it has to offer a future library, is said to have little land to offer in comparison to its competitors, all of which are proposing at least 100-acre sites for the library.
Mr. Vodicka's lawsuit, filed in the fall, seeks to prevent the university, which officially bought the property in mid-December but issued vacate notices last spring, from destroying the condominiums by declaring the university's actions in obtaining the property to be illegal.
According to Mr. Vodicka, who is also a Dallas-based litigation attorney, SMU has progressively stacked the board of University Gardens with university employees since around four years ago, and the board has since failed to perform maintenance on the complex. At the same time, the school has been purchasing units in University Gardens, and according to an SMU "fact sheet" about the land deal, the school owned 93% of the complex's 347 units when "SMU moved that the property be declared obsolete and put up for sale."
Mr. Vodicka said the board's failure to maintain the complex was part of a comprehensive tactic used by SMU to drive owners out of University Gardens. The school has used the building for student housing and, Mr. Vodicka said, told tenants their property values would go down owing to the increased noise, greater traffic, and greater exposure to crime and vandalism that would likely result from student use - even as Mr. Vodicka says condos have been purchased by SMU for progressively higher per-square-foot prices.
Well...I'll admit that I don't know much about polituics or religion either one, but why in the world would an religious institution and place of learning want to have a library associated with a world class criminal. A president that is responsible for starting a war over a lie, has perpretated crimes against humanity, and has went against the principles of the constitution of our country. Does SMU really think that there is something $acred about George W Bush?
His Legacy and His Library Occupy Bush's Thoughts
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 8, 2006
WASHINGTON — President Bush had dinner last month on the Stanford University campus at the home of George P. Shultz, who was President Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, and the topic of conversation was not, as might be expected, the war in Iraq. Instead, guests said, Mr. Bush spent the evening focused on how he could create a public policy center with his presidential library after he leaves office in 2009.
The dozen or so guests at the dinner included directors and fellows of the Hoover Institution, the Stanford-affiliated policy center with close ties to the Bush White House. Mr. Bush spent most of his time, guests said, grilling the center's director, John Raisian, about the pros and cons of having an organization like Hoover within the confines of an institution like Stanford.
"Our presence here raises all the same questions that he'll have to deal with if he puts his think tank at an elite university," said Charles G. Palm, a former Hoover deputy director who did not attend the dinner.
In 1987, Mr. Palm served as the liaison between the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Stanford when efforts to house the Reagan library on Stanford's campus fell apart because of opposition from faculty members and from homeowners near the proposed site.
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