Mann and his UVa e-mails aren’t out of the woods yet.
Inside Climate News reports:
…The University of Virginia and Mann, who now directs the Penn State University Earth System Science Center, are still contending with the American Tradition Institute’s lawsuit.
In its 2011 Year in Review, the ATI said its “litigation center is moving at full speed: we have filed a series of landmark Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits challenging the anti-freedom environmentalist agenda.”
The ATI won an earlier FOIA case seeking the release of scientist James Hansen’s NASA email relating to fees for work and speaking engagements he did outside of NASA…
Jeff,
You’ve hit this one squarely. For a judge to rule that the State AG must prove “probable cause” to access State records, of work produced with State funding, and under the auspices of a State institution is the height of judicial lunacy. This essentially sets up the argument that no State institution is accountable under the law to the State AG. To maintain this would imply that no State employee, anywhere, under any circumstance, can be investigated by the State AG.
Sheer lunacy.
the state AG accessing state records should not require probable cause …
[pats self on back] I said here a good while ago that Cucinelli’s case was weak. First off, he needed to prove probable cause to believe fraud had been committed. He could have, because the information was available. But he didn’t, so the rest of the case faltered and failed. Crappy lawyering.
Cuccinelli’s had always been the weaker effort