Richmond Times Dispatch Opinion:
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s fishing expedition into climatologist Michael Mann’s e-mails made for good politics and awful policy. The issue of global warming has been lamentably politicized — plenty of fault for that on both sides — and Cuccinelli’s crusading on the issue has turned him into a hero for many foot soldiers of the conservative movement who deny any connection between human activity and global climate change.
Unfortunately, his pursuit of Mann was wrong in just about every way that it is possible to be wrong.
That it rested on dubious science was the least of its many shortcomings. After all, the AG is not a scientist and cannot be expected to know much about climatology. But he is a lawyer, and he should know something about the law. Yet in order to bring a civil investigative demand, Cuccinelli relied on an extremely elastic interpretation of Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA) — a move not gracefully executed by someone who professes to believe in strict scrutiny and original intent.
Cuccinelli never accused Mann of failing to do the work for which he was paid, or of spending the research money he received from the state and federal governments on, say, fast cars and fancy suits. Albemarle Circuit Judge Paul Peatross was entirely right when he said the AG never clearly stated “the nature of the conduct” Mann supposedly engaged in that constituted fraud. “What the attorney general suspects that Dr. Mann did that was false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the commonwealth simply is not stated,” Peatross wrote.
