U-Va. admirably resists Mr. Cuccinelli's fishing expedition

[Derechos]

AFTER WEEKS of consideration, the University of Virginia has decided to fight Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II's dangerous, ideologically inflected investigation of Michael Mann, a climate scientist who used to work there. Since Mr. Cuccinelli (R) is, technically, the university's own lawyer, the decision to challenge his fishing expedition may have been awkward. But on the merits, it should have been easy.

That's because, first, the law is on the university's side. Mr. Cuccinelli claims to be investigating whether Mr. Mann defrauded Virginia taxpayers when he secured taxpayer-funded research grants to conduct studies on global temperatures.

Without explaining the exact nature of the fraud he suspects, the attorney general is ordering the university to spend untold amounts of money and manpower compiling and turning over a massive number of documents and correspondence related to Mr. Mann, including communications from and to other scientists. In so doing, Mr. Cuccinelli bends far beyond the breaking point a statute designed to combat things such as contractors submitting false invoices to the commonwealth for payment.

It's not just that Mr. Cuccinelli has presented no real evidence that Mr. Mann did anything "fraudulent" while conducting his research, applying for his grants or analyzing his data; in fact, Mr. Cuccinelli's targeting of Mr. Mann appears to be based on little more than a misreading of e-mails the scientist wrote. Multiple scientific review committees have examined Mr. Mann's work, and all have cleared the scientist of wrongdoing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/28/AR2010052804517.html

[Derechos]

1. U-Va. goes to court to fight Cuccinelli's subpoena of ex-professor's documents

RICHMOND -- Virginia's flagship university went to court Thursday to fight an effort by Virginia Attorney Gen. Ken Cuccinelli II (R) to get documents from a former climate scientist at the school, an unusual confrontation that will test the bounds of academic freedom and result in the college facing down its own lawyer in court.

In a motion filed in Charlottesville, the University of Virginia argued that Cuccinelli's subpoena for papers and e-mail from global warming researcher Michael Mann exceeds the attorney general's authority under state law and intrudes on the rights of professors to pursue academic inquiry free from political pressure.

Cuccinelli, a vocal skeptic of global warming who is suing the Environmental Protection Agency over the issue, has said he is investigating whether Mann committed fraud by knowingly skewing data as he sought publicly funded grants for his research. Mann left U-Va. in 2005 and now works at Penn State.

Mann's case has been embraced by academics across the country, who wrote numerous letters encouraging the university founded by Thomas Jefferson to resist the attorney general. The university's governing board -- whose members were appointed by former governors Mark R. Warner and Timothy M. Kaine, both Democrats -- had first signaled that it would likely comply with the April order but then hired a major Washington law firm and prepared to take action.

University President John T. Casteen III said in a statement that Cuccinelli's order had "sent a chill through the Commonwealth's colleges and universities."

Although Virginia universities have at times tangled with political leaders in Richmond, several experts said legal action is a rare challenge by a public institution of the state's top law enforcement officer. It comes in response to the equally unusual action of a state attorney general using the legal process to compel his own client to produce documents.

Cuccinelli issued a civil investigative demand, essentially a subpoena, under a 2002 state statute designed to catch government employees defrauding the public out of tax dollars.

"It's a rarity, and it should not happen often," said former attorney general Jerry Kilgore (R). "The universities are state agencies, and they're your clients. And attorneys general do everything they can to avoid being on opposite sides of their clients."

Mark Rozell, a public policy professor at George Mason University, called the conflict an "extraordinary situation" and one that will be closely followed by First Amendment scholars nationally.

Cuccinelli has sought information about five grant applications Mann prepared before leaving the university, as well as all e-mail between Mann and his research assistants, secretaries and 39 other scientists across the country.


snip

Mann is best known as the author of the "hockey-stick" graph, which showed there has been a rapid, recent rise in the Earth's temperature. Mann's work has long been under attack by global-warming skeptics, particularly after an e-mail between scientists and referring to a statistical "trick" he used in his research surfaced in a series of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. Mann has said the e-mail was taken out of context. Some of his methodologies have been criticized by other scientists, but an inquiry by Penn State concluded that there was no evidence Mann engaged in efforts to falsify or suppress data.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/27/AR2010052705374.html

[Duppers]

2. So glad that UVA has stepped up to the plate

Cuccinelli is an undereducated, all-round obsessive wingnut sob. Sorry that was redundant.

What a waste of tax-payers' money this is. And what embarrassment to the state of Virginia.

Thanks for posting.

[Duppers]

3. They did not heed the warning..

"To put it politely, Cuccinelli’s election would bring embarrassment to Virginia, instability to the state’s law firm and untold harm to the long list of people who don’t fit his personal definition of morality."

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/10/steve-shannon-attorney-general/




My dumbass fellow Virginians should be embarrassed, but I bet they're not.