“Yes, Virginia, you do have to produce those ‘Global Warming’ documents“. Anthony Watts the citizen-scientist provides a sneering headline to his reprint of a partisan Washington Examiner op-ed.

Right-wing “think tank” the American Tradition Institute says that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s legal campaign against climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann, who worked at the University of Virginia from 1999 t0 2005, is somehow principled and that the University of Virginia is somehow wasting taxpayer’s money by resisting Cuccinelli’s groundless legal actions.

Cuccinelli have been widely condemned over this in the press and by academic and legal bodies. We covered the fall-out from “Kook’s” first kick at this cat back in October. In a nutshell, Kook is not engaged in an effort to prove that Mann defrauded Virginia taxpayers, and has not demonstrated any reason to believe that the University has information relevant to such an accustion. He just wants to root around and see if he can find anything that can be twisted into an accusation after the fact. It is the near definition of a witch-hunt.

Funny how libertarians rail against government oppression unless they manage to grasp the levers of power. Anthony’s readers salivate over the persecution righteous smiting of Dr. Mann by Tea Party supporter “Kook” Cuccinelli, but they’ll return to howling about their own persecution soon enough.

There’s a useful timeline at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Washington Post has a recent report on this.