Elections have consequences for the other guy, too.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is invoking a state anti-fraud law to demand the University of Virginia turn over years worth of documents related to climate scientist Michael Mann, targeting about $500,000 in grants that funded Mann’s studies.
Cuccinelli, a Republican who is separately suing the federal government over regulation of carbon emissions, issued the school a civil subpoena late last month probing “possible violations” of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act by the former U.Va. professor. Mann, now a professor at Penn State, is famous for creating the controversial “hockey stick” graph charting a spike in global temperatures.
(Via AoSHQ Headlines) Basically, the Commonwealth of Virginia can investigate this because Mann took state money to do his research; and the Commonwealth of Virginia will investigate this because Virginian voters put both Cuccinelli and his boss (and fellow-Republican) Bob McDonnell into office last year. Which means that there are a lot of Democrats huffing right now about over-liberal interpretation of laws (if you’ll pardon the pun).
To which I reply: Karma. It’s what’s for dinner*.
Moe Lane
*Another way of putting it: they can call AG Cuccinelli whatever they like, just as long as they also cough up the materials required as per the subpoena.
Crossposted to RedState.
I got my master’s degree there, but I’m glad to see them squirm over this issue. Finally getting called to task for at least some of the money that they defraud from taxpayers, well, it tastes… sweet.
It’s interesting – if you read the skeptic side of the Climate blogosphere, the bloggers are almost 100% uniform in condemning Cuccinelli. Me? In a perfect world science would be science. But when the other side politicizes things (and Mann, along with Hansen at NASA are among the worst offenders for that on the other side), I have a hard time finding much sympathy for them when the politicization comes back to bite them.