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octoberlib

(14,971 posts)
Thu Nov 21, 2013, 05:48 PM Nov 2013

Civitas Institute demands emails, phone records of UNC anti-poverty crusader

A think tank founded and almost wholly funded by conservative mega-donor and North Carolina budget director Art Pope recently filed a broad Freedom of Information Act request seeking all emails and other records of a University of North Carolina law school professor and anti-poverty crusader over a month-long period.

The Raleigh, N.C.-based Civitas Institute wants the email correspondence, phone records, and calendars of Gene Nichol, director of the UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity and a Moral Monday protest participant. It seeks Nichols' records during the period from Sept. 14 through Oct. 25, the day the request was filed. Civitas submitted the FOIA request the week after Nichol wrote a newspaper column critical of the McCrory administration.

FOIA laws were designed to ensure government information is available to the public. But in recent years, requests from conservative groups for the records of academics in Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin and Michigan have raised questions whether FOIA is being used for politically motivated harassment."For a crowd that talks so much about liberty, they sure love to shut people up," Nichol told Facing South.

Civitas, which was also behind the controversial database of Moral Monday arrestees, filed the information request 11 days after Nichol published a column in The News & Observer of Raleigh in which he called North Carolina's new election law imposing strict photo voter ID requirements and other limits on voting the "most oppressive in the nation" and likened Gov. Pat McCrory (R) to "a 21st century successor to Maddox, Wallace and Faubus," referring to the segregationist governors of Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas.


http://www.southernstudies.org/2013/11/conservative-group-demands-emails-phone-records-of.html
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Civitas Institute demands emails, phone records of UNC anti-poverty crusader (Original Post) octoberlib Nov 2013 OP
, blkmusclmachine Nov 2013 #1
"For a crowd that talks so much about liberty, they sure love to shut people up," WorseBeforeBetter Dec 2013 #2

WorseBeforeBetter

(11,441 posts)
2. "For a crowd that talks so much about liberty, they sure love to shut people up,"
Tue Dec 3, 2013, 12:09 PM
Dec 2013

PERFECT reply, Mr. Nichol. He certainly knows controversy, and I imagine the punitive fuckers at Civitas don't phase him in the least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Nichol

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