McEachin, Petersen, Toscano Take on Cuccinelli’s Anti-Academic Witch Hunt

Excellent job by the Richmonder getting this press conference on video. Here’s Chap Petersen:

…I was very disturbed that we would have a situation which, what I would regard as a matter of academic inquiry — whether or not climate change exists, whether or not global warming exists – would be politicized to the extent that our Attorney General would be issuing what are in effect subpoenas to individual professors and individual departments to try and collect their research notes, their emails, and other things that have to do with their research as academics…to me, professors have to have the freedom to pursue subjects, to pursue viewpoints, and…we’ll make up our own minds.

Del. Toscano pointed out that there’s “broad scientific consensus, not just in this country but around the world, that climate change is real, and that human activity has a lot to do with it.” What Cuccinelli is doing, in Toscano’s view, is “pursuing this agenda to try to get at some things that can be used in a political way to discredit those who support the notion that there is climate change going on in this world.” Sen. McEachin added that “there is no civil lawyer…that has the ability to essentially issue a subpoena before articulating a cause of action.”

I’m very happy to see Sen. McEachin, Sen. Petersen, and Del. Toscano fighting back against Ken Cuccinelli’s wild – and wildly inappropriate – overreach of his office’s powers. It’s amazing, for a guy who talks so much about “tyranny” and reining in the government, how much Cuccinelli is doing it himself. Can we say “projection?”