Virginia State Judge Screws the Cooch

Ed. note: This post is by “Juggalo Law,” one of the two writers under consideration to join Morning Dockette as a Morning Docket writer. As always, we welcome your thoughts in the comments.

I have a confession to make. I don’t care at all about the environment. It’s true. Since I was in short pants, I’ve been aggressively indifferent to climate change, rainforests, oil spills and the plight of the Duck-Billed Platypus (“has feet like a duck…but it’s furry!”). This despite my parents’ solid liberal bona fides. This despite my presence at one Young Democrats meeting in 1998 (Earnest Goes to College).

And yet, guys? The Cooch is tripping. That’d be Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia. Yesterday, a state judge blocked his request to subpoena documents from a college professor studying climate change. Take it away, BLT:

Cuccinelli, a Republican, said he wanted the records in order to investigate whether the researcher, Michael Mann, made false claims in connection with state grant funding. Cuccinelli is a skeptic of human causes of global warming, an area that Mann has studied at the University of Virginia and elsewhere. Mann is now a professor at Pennsylvania State University.

This caps a rather newsworthy couple of weeks for The Cooch. He’s managed to raise the hackles of many an interest group in protecting the rights of Baby Jesus and all unborn critters not named Jesus. In doing so, he’s undoubtedly established himself as a rising star in conservative circles.

But what of his latest…err crusade?

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It appears that The Cooch is on a mission from God, and this latest obstacle will do nothing to deter him. He already plans on keeping the Heat on Michael Mann (ugh) by simply conforming a new subpoena to Judge Peatross’ ruling. All of this effort despite the fact that Mann’s Public Enemies (double ugh) in the climate debate have only managed to agitate for an academic investigation that ultimately cleared his name.

So what’s the takeaway here? Well, we could probably surmise that The Cooch doesn’t care about the plight of bonobos.

“The Cooch lied and bonobos died!”
Your homemade sign.

But do you guys remember a few seconds ago when I said I didn’t care about the environment? Still true. So instead of focusing on such a boring story about anthropogenic global warming and dendroclimatology and Milankovitch cycles (seriously, what do any of these words MEAN????), let’s instead focus on The Cooch’s troubles with the sex. Here are his greatest hits:

* Did you know The Cooch needs a thesaurus to keep his rather Ugandan views on homosexuality polite? It’s true.

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* It’s not that The Cooch thinks Virginia universities shouldn’t protect gays and lesbians explicitly in their non-discrimination policies. It’s that he doesn’t believe they are allowed to by law.

* The Cooch is not a boob man.

* And if that’s not enough, The Cooch thinks something called “Sextravaganza” is a bad idea. Apparently, his next act will be to make “being awesome” illegal in Virginia.

I’m only speaking for myself here, but The Cooch is crazy y’all. Oh, and blah blah blah the environment.

Judge Blocks Virginia AG in Climate Inquiry [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]