Ken Cuccinelli: Virginia's Grand Inquisitor

"There have been indications that the hackers [who breached the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) servers] could have been based in Russia, and some experts believe they may have been hired by [global warming] sceptics based in the US."---The Financial Times (4-15-10)

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is persecuting the climate scientist Michael Mann because Cuccinelli's financial backers do not support policies that would limit global warming. The Attorney General is demanding all of the University of Virginia's records and e-mails about Dr. Mann's research.

Virginia's Grand Inquisitor undoubtedly hopes to mischaracterize these e-mails the same way that global warming denialists mischaracterize e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. Cuccinelli reminds me of the dishonest ex-professor Ward Churchill who also mischaracterized other scholars' research in order to make a name for himself by fabricating a canard about the U.S. Army deliberately infecting the Mandan Indians with smallpox. Ward Churchill's hoax was exposed by lawyers and scholars, and Cuccinelli will also be exposed by U.Va.'s lawyers scholars.

The Attorney General spreads the same junk science about global warming as much of the Russian media, which are owned by big oil and gas monopolies.

The Financial Times (4-15-10) reports:

There have been indications that the hackers [who breached the CRU servers] could have been based in Russia, and some experts believe they may have been hired by sceptics based in the US.

The Soviet regime spread a canard about "crafty" American scientists, just like Cuccinelli does. The Russian newspaper Izvestiya (3-19-92) reported during the Glasnost' era:

[KGB chief Yevgeni Primakov] mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists' 'crafty' plots were fabricated in KGB offices.

Ironically, climate denialists like Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, and his mouthpiece Marc Morano depict "crafty" scientists who study global warming as part of some diabolical communist conspiracy, but if the Financial Times report turns out to be true, Cuccinelli may end up looking like a stooge of Russian big oil and gas.

Attorney General Cuccinelli reminds me those Soviet politicians and KGB officials who smeared American Army scientists for bioengineering AIDS and persecuted their own Soviet scientists who honestly researched the consequences of Chernobyl. I have nothing but contempt for the thuggish Ken Cuccinelli: he abuses his office by persecuting scientists his financial backers don't like on specious "fraud" allegations. That's exactly how officials treat their best scientists in the USSR and Russia: they concoct some fake criminal or psychiatric charges.

It's difficult to have respect the law when the demagogic Attorney General abuses his position to lead an Inquisition against scientists who are trying to enlighten our people about the consequences of global warming.