Virginia’s attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, is now pressing his demand for documents related to the work of a climate researcher formerly at the University of Virginia on dual fronts, The Washington Post reports. A conservative Republican, Mr. Cuccinelli has said he questions climate scientists’ findings about global warming, and wants to find out if a fraud investigation is warranted against the former U.Va. researcher. After a state Circuit Court judge quashed his original demands for the documents, Mr. Cuccinelli filed new requests in language tailored to the court’s decision. But even as his new “civil investigative demands” make their way through the legal system, he has appealed the earlier decision to the state Supreme Court. In a brief filed today, according to the Post, Mr. Cuccinelli argues that the lower court’s reasoning was flawed and inappropriately hindered his inquiry.
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4 Responses to Va. Attorney General Appeals to State Supreme Court in Quest for Climate Documents
ksingh - December 16, 2010 at 10:25 am
Why can’t he just get over it?
_perplexed_ - December 16, 2010 at 1:47 pm
An action that “hindered his inquiry” might always be appropriate.
raymond_j_ritchie - December 17, 2010 at 4:04 am
ksingh is right but he is playing to a political audience. Whilever Cuccinelli is denied access to files he will squawk like a parrot and make himself important. The last thing he really wants is to be actually given the files.
Wikileaks shows conclusively that in hundreds of thousands of documents you will find very little that everyone did not already know and much useless trash. Why does he not ask for the thousands of gigs of raw climatic data? Because it would be pointless and that is not what his political audience wants. Will a 3 day gap in 2007 because the gas chromatograph was stuffed at Monakea change conclusions about global CO2 and global warming? Do not be silly.
Conspiracy theories about climate data are just that – conspiracy theories. When he gets what he says he wants he will become strangely silent. Deep down he knows he will find nothing that will hold up as a fraud charge. The quickest way to discredit him is to give him the few hundred gigs of emails, with all the attachments and require him by law to assess every single one in its context. All he will find is evidence of gossip, shopping lists, office politics, junket trips to useless conferences, spiteful referees reports on submitted manuscripts, hundreds of drafts of papers, grant applications etc.
lexalexander - December 17, 2010 at 3:36 pm
After watching behavior like this from public officials for 30+ years, I am beyond ready for responses neither entirely rational nor at all proportional.
Literally speaking, I want this man to suffer personally, professionally and politically for his stupidity, intellectual dishonesty, violation of his oath of office, waste of taxpayer dollars and general jackassitude.
Metaphorically speaking, I want him destroyed so completely and horribly that generations after we are all dead, parents still tell use his example as a cautionary tale, told to their children in hushed tones in the dark of night, to warn them away from similar behavior.