Freedom of Information is great but what about our phony-baloney jobs?
By Norman Leahy | Monday, August 15th, 2011 | Policy, VirginiaIt’s been a while since we heard anything about the University of Virginia’s legal fight to keep the emails and other materials of former Prof. Michael Mann away from prying eyes. In May, a Prince William county judge ordered the University to stop stonewalling and obey Virginia’s FOIA law. It wasn’t a blanket order for UVA to expose every electron Mann committed to screen, but it was broad enough to satisfy the American Tradition Institute, which had to take the state-funded school to court in order to get a look at the documents.
Tthat prospect rankles the gaggle of leftist groups who egged the university on in its expensive legal fight to keep the emails secret. So they sent a letter to UVA pleading with the school to use each and every FOIA exemption at its disposal.
It’s a rather remarkable document, displaying as it does the sort of rhetorical gymnastics that are usually reserved for poorly-scripted episodes of “Law and Order.” Consider this amusing bit:
We fully embrace the university’s responsibility to respond appropriately to open records requests. Freedom of information laws are critical for keeping public institutions and their employees accountable to the people who support them. We also support the university’s equally important obligation to protect its employees’ privacy and preserve researchers’ ability to privately and freely correspond with one another.
Sounds noble, doesn’t it? But it’s really just throat-clearing, as the next paragraph shows:
Unfortunately, the university’s agreement with ATI does not adequately balance these two responsibilities. We find it troubling that the agreement would allow ATI lawyers, including the very individuals who filed the open records request, to review all documents in the university’s possession, including material which will ultimately be exempt from disclosure. While the agreement asserts that ATI representatives would be under a gag order regarding exempt documents, we are concerned that giving requesters this level of access sets an entirely new precedent and would create a chilling effect for current Virginia researchers.
In other words, FOIA is great, except in this case. And really, how on earth can the “very individuals who filed the open records request” be allowed to view the items they requested?
They signers resort to familiar tropes to defend their stance: freedom of thought is at stake. Chill winds will blow. A climate of fear will ensue.
A cynic might suggest they are taking their cues not from the law, or even their ideology, but “Blazing Saddles”:
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About the author
Norm Leahy has written about Virginia and national politics online since 2002, beginning with One Man's Trash (OMT), and continuing through Bacon's Rebellion (both the blog and the e-zine), Sic Semper Tyrannis, NBC12's Decision Virginia, Richmond.com and Tertium Quids. He is the chief blogger at "The Score" and a producer of "The Score" radio show as well as being a Washington Post contributor.
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21 Responses to "Freedom of Information is great but what about our phony-baloney jobs?"
Global warming or cooling and its causes are empirical questions. They can be answered by the scientific method which requires open publication of all data and research methods in arriving at the results. Unfortunately, politicians and academics without integrity have politicized an empirical question in order to advance an ideological program.
They are not innovators in this. A Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko perpetrated with the enthusiastic assistance of Josef Stalin various frauds based on a wish to show that experiences could trump genetics in plants and animals (and humans). Lysenko cherrypicked data, suppressed colleagues who found problems with his data and constantly changed his explanations and methods.
When climate scientists tell Al Gore and the Democrats to take a hike then there is a reasonable chance that scientists will be able to answer questions related to climate changes.
Harrumph!
From the sign that hung in Albert Einstein’s office at Princeton: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
I find it interesting how conservatives, who prattle on all day about “liberty”, will suddenly change your tune when one of your own holds the reins of power. Cuccinelli is asking for pretty much every electron and scrap of paper ever associated with Prof. Mann, with no basis other than wacko conspiracy theories that basically accuse thousands of scientists of deviously skewing their results for…some reason.
His goal, obviously, is not to protect Virginia citizens in any way, shape or form, but to impede the practice of climate science to please such donors as Koch Industries and Massey Energy. And the well-trained dogs on the right just respond to this clear abuse of government power and of the freedom of scientific inquiry by lamely repeating talking points that UVA is government-funded, ergo its employees have no freedoms.
I can’t wait to see if you will sing the same tune when it’s a liberal attorney general harassing a conservative academic. Look, we all have to protect everyone’s freedom in the US, not pick and choose based on who’s the predator or prey in any particular situation.
“Kindler”, here’s the real “wacko conspiracy”… Mann and all those other environmental scientists who fabricated, falsified, distorted, warped, garbled, faked, skewed misrepresented, manipulated, distorted and otherwise made up their results were part of Al Gore’s worldwide environmental cabal. They were providing a “factual” basis on which to establish a new “carbon trading” economy scam that Gore and others were inventing to corner the market on trading and selling carbon credits. The problem is that they are pseudo-scientists without MBAs and no experience at Goldman Sacs, AIG and Citigroup during the Bailouts which would have helped them make this scam “to big to fail”. They got caught along with the institutions that sheltered and coddled them and now they are running for cover like roaches who are feeding off of the best filth until the lights were turned on. I see our AG as an exterminator who just turned on the lights.
Thanks for proving my point, Tim.
Your welcome, and there’s a special spot for you and your’s in the “roach motel”.
The trolls of the Church of The Holy Molecule are so silly. One would hope that they would go on a “carbon-free” diet. “Hockey Stick” Mann’s emails, like man made global warming is so out of fashion. One should hear the trolls talk about how all the missing heat is hiding at the bottom of the ocean or how man made global coolong is preventing man made global warming or how they want 76 TRILLION dollars to solve this carbon problem.
analysis of Climategate, the climate science scandal that has already eclipsed Watergate in terms of its global political ramifications.
http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/
Kindler,
Since when did the “freedom of scientific inquiry” include the right to conceal publicly-funded research data?
bandeja, it’s well documented how Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries have spent tens of millions of dollars to create the network of climate denial websites, NGOs and academics-for-sale (like Patrick Michaels, who got caught complaining that Big Coal’s bribes to him weren’t big enough) that regularly spit out the sea of red herrings that you all so dutifully quote. They even hired some of the same frauds that the tobacco industry had used to “prove” that smoking doesn’t cause cancer.
The so-called “climategate” so-called “scandal” was just a bunch of emails grossly distorted by political hacks and commentators, even though three separate inquiries found no wrongdoing on the part of those whose emails were stolen.
Science is and should be determined via robust inquiry and research among scientists, not by oil and coal-funded stooges playing political games.
HisRoc, why do you assume something is being hidden? Here’s what Cuccinelli requested of UVA in his [last CID http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/New%20Mann%20CID.PDF:
blockquote>the original and any copies of any written, printed, typed, electronic, or graphic matter of any kind or nature, however, produced or reproduced, any book, pamphlet, brochure, periodical, newspaper, letter, correspondence, memoranda, notice, facsimile, e-mail, manual, press release, telegram, report, study, handwritten note, working paper, chart, paper, graph, index, tape, data sheet, data processing card, or any other written, recorded, transcribed, punched, taped, filmed or graphic matter now in your possession, custody or control.
You’re going to tell me that this is a serious inquiry and not a fishing expedition for harrassment purposes? The Attorney General has no business fabricating trumped up charges of criminal fraud to prevent scientists from doing their jobs.
That list of evidence requested proves that the AG is extremely thorough and is doing the job we pay him to do… to stalk, fish, hunt, gather and eventually skin these bought and paid-for scientists and their enablers who are making up facts, committing fraud and lying to fit their “science” to the politics and economics of the carbon Cabal.
Our AG is doing the Lord’s work and the results prove it by Al Gore frothing at the mouth during a recent Aspen Institute speech where he used the same curse word three times and then took the Lord’s name in vain. If Gore wants to get some Global Warming and carbon credits from the Almighty, he had better watch his potty mouth. Or another explanation could it be… perhaps… maybe….. Satan?
Kindler,
Either you have never read a subpoena are you are being intentionally obtuse. Either one doesn’t speak highly of your credibility. I don’t suffer fools and you are a fool if you think that anyone is falling for your convoluted reasoning.
No, the only fools here are the dupes of the oil and coal industry, parroting every talking point they develop to discredit scientists whose findings may impact their share prices. The real Lysenkoism here is Cuccinelli using the full power of the state — aka, big government — to charge a scientist with criminal fraud based on ZERO evidence — I mean, except if you count the kind of conspiracy theories that Tim is spouting here as “evidence.” The only way to make any sense of this nonsense is to follow the money…
If we follow Michael Mann’s money, it leads back, in part to…taxpayers. Those pesky taxpayers have a right, under FOIA, to see how their dollars have been spent. Another taxpayer-funded institution, the University of Virginia, has fought mightily against that, warning that to allow the masses to see Mann’s work would undercut scientific inquiry, freedom of speech and likely cause an outbreak of super-cooties.
And please note that it was under FOIA, not Cuccinelli’s investigation, that the documents are being released.
Just received my share dividend checks made out to “Fool” from big oil and “Dupe” from big coal that were signed by a “Parrot”. Now on to “follow” some more money by “spouting” some more “theories” as “evidence” which I should probably turn over to the AG to help with the investigation into this scam to make the earth warmer and to scare people.
No Norm, Cuccinelli can simply read Mann’s peer reviewed work if he wants to understand his scientific inquiry, and he can read the criticism and critique of his work just like any scientist can. This is much more insidious than that. Cuccinelli is on a fishing expedition at the expense of the taxpayers of Virginia. He ought to be be doing his job instead but I guess that would not serve red meat to the right wing of the Party.
Must not feed the trolls…
LOL…
“…to charge a scientist with criminal fraud based on ZERO evidence.”
I’m trying to keep up here, Kindler. Exactly when were criminal charges filed against Michael Mann?
And, Mike, speaking of “taxpayer expense,” why has UVA spent $500,000 in legal fees to hide the data behind Mann’s “peer reviewed work?”
Just to keep the record straight, I am not a climate change denier. I think that the evidence is irrefutable that we are experiencing global climate change. The debate should focus on the extent to which it is caused by human activity versus cyclic changes in our atmosphere. As I have posted on other threads, when we warmed up from the last ice age there was an estimated 5 million human beings on the entire planet. Ice covered most of North America to a depth of one-half of a mile. The carbon footprint of the humans consisted solely of camp fires and farts. So why did we warm up?
It’s funny how a little “carbon spouting” and “carbon denying” will draw out the “carbon faithful” like moths to a flame.
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