| The Supreme Court of Virginia recently agreed to judge a case involving Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's effort to obtain documents related to former University of Virginia climate-change researcher Michael Mann.
Cuccinelli's investigation into Professor Mann opened on the belief that Mann had defrauded taxpayers in Virginia by using manipulated data to obtain government grants.
The University of Virginia, much to their credit, has resisted Cuccinelli's demand for the records.
After a Virginia judge struck down Cuccinelli's first attempt to obtain Mann's documents on climate change, Cuccinelli appealed the ruling.
According to The Daily Progress, both Mann and Cuccinelli are pleased that the case will be reviewed by the Supreme Court.
Regardless of the final outcome, however, Cuccinelli's witch-hunt for believers of climate change in the academic community is an illustrative case study of just how far right Virginia has gone in important respects.
Only a decade ago, it would have been highly improbable that an Attorney General would have drug out a former University of Virginia professor to accuse him of fraud and intellectual dishonesty. All this, as Cuccinelli has made clear in other statements, because he does not believe in the conclusions that Professor Mann drew from his research.
This whole ordeal is, of course, a political stunt made primarily for the purpose of bolstering Cuccinelli's conservative credentials. But while Cuccinelli is playing a Machiavellian game of politics, the world is literally heating up.
Cuccinelli may not believe in the science of climate change, but his disbelief certainly does not change the fact of climate change or its negative effects on living organisms. |
