Bush's Big Idea -- Both Sides Now!

Finally, something George W. Bush and I can agree on: hearing both sides.

He says he believes that creationism -- which now travels under the PR-sanitized name "intelligent design" -- should be taught alongside evolution. Here's the man himself: "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes." [Never mind that religion isn't a "side" of science any more than the single-bullet theory is a "side" of string theory.]

Let's hold him to that. Let's get the "side" of a lot of subjects that his administration has been reluctant to expose Americans to.

·The 16 case files [out of something more than 300] from John Roberts' tenure as deputy solicitor general under Bush I -- another "side" the White House isn't much inclined to let Americans hear.

·The John Bolton documents that Democratic Senators requested for confirmation hearings on the U.N. nominee, and the White House refused to give up.

·The documents and interviews requested by the bipartisan September 11 commission but nixed by the White House, which also didn't want to declassify parts of the final report.

·The paper trail on the unrealistically lowball estimate for the Medicare prescription drug benefit that the administration used to get its measure through Congress -- and the files on Medicare's chief actuary, who said he was threatened with firing if he went public with his own far higher estimates.

·Photographs of the coffins of dead soldiers coming home -- the other "side" of "bring it on."

·The records of Dick Cheney's closed-door meetings with oil and gas industry lobbyists as Cheney was cobbling together the White House's energy policy. [The administration fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep those under wraps.]

There they are, a few other "sides" we deserve to hear -- just to make sure that this administration isn't making monkeys out of us.