Huh. Isn't having a subpeona turned down like this virtually unheard of?

Considering everything that he has done so far; how is this man not the front runner for the Republican nomination for President?

Cue right-wing screaming about judicial activism in 3... 2... 1...

-Z

before, i thought of cuccinelli as merely a clown. now, i think of him as a dangerous clown. i hate to overstate the threat he poses, but it goes well beyond academic freedom. the term thought police comes to mind.

The Cooch strikes again!
Sorry I mean the Cooch strikes out!

I cant believe my peepers.. the Cooch finally gets smacked down.

"And he's only been in office since January."

...And my fellow Virginians and I have had to endure this clown the whole time.

And in the real world... Santa's home is melting

The Northwest Passage--the legendary shipping route through ice-choked Canadian waters at the top of the world--melted free of ice last week, and is now open for navigation, according to satellite mosaics available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and The University of Illinois Cryosphere Today. This summer marks the fourth consecutive year--and fourth time in recorded history--that the fabled passage has opened for navigation. Over the past four days, warm temperatures and southerly winds over Siberia have also led to intermittent opening of the Northeast Passage, the shipping route along the north coast of Russia through the Arctic Ocean. It is now possible to completely circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean in ice-free waters, and this will probably be the case for at least a month. This year marks the third consecutive year--and the third time in recorded history--that both the Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage have melted free, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The Northeast Passage opened for the first time in recorded history in 2005, and the Northwest Passage in 2007. It now appears that the opening of one or both of these northern passages is the new norm, and business interests are taking note--commercial shipping in the Arctic is on the increase, and there is increasing interest in oil drilling.

OK, then we include this judge as part of the right wing's imagined vast worldwide conspiracy meant to dupe people into thinking global warming is real.

These people are WAY out there.

You know, we here in Virginia were doing just fine with our forward-thinking governors and all. These kind of lawsuits [not to mention the lawsuit against the Health Care Reform Bill] make us a laughingstock the way the "Equal Time in Science Class for Intelligent Design" campaign did for Kansas.

The problem is, fact-free heavy-handed "governance" like this lends some kind of fucked up credence to the Global Warming deniers. It doesn't matter to them that a real judge says the suit is bullshit. Their boy Cooch "done said Global Warming ain't real! Why, he's the dad-blamed attorney general! Shoot fire! He knows more'n any damned scientist!"

We're chock full of decent universities in the Commonwealth. Great science schools and all. But, we've got our Regent and Liberty Universities, too. And I'd bet you'd find an assload of real fraud on those campuses.

". . . ruled that Cuccinelli's subpoena failed to state a "reason to believe" that Mann had committed fraud."

Modern "conservatives" tend to reason backwards from desired results, so Cuccinelli's reason for believing in fraud was undoubtedly simply that Cuccinelli disagrees with Mann. He had the good sense not to actually state that in a Court filing, however.

On appeal, watch him minimize the issue of a reason and instead argue that his authority is unlimited and does not require a reason. That he can subpoena on a whim, in effect.

And he'll be massively supported by fools who believe that he is defending them from arbitrary authority.

How...how was such a fool as Cuccinelli voted into office?

I hear Cooch AG Dept has ok'd a grant to Liberty U. to see if they can definitively anwser how many angels fit on the head of a pin.
Snark (I hope)!

Considering everything that he has done so far; how is this man not the front runner for the Republican nomination for President?

Patience, patience. First he can be the future Republican-held Congress' special prosecutor for all things Obama. THEN, he can run for Prez.

Koreyel,
Whoo hoo! Open shipping lanes in the Arctic. For Republicans, this isn't a bug of Global Warming, it's a feature.

Why doesn't Cuccinelli just take a big pile of public money and light it on fire? Be more efficient.

before, i thought of cuccinelli as merely a clown. now, i think of him as a dangerous clown.

Well sure, any clown's dangerous if you give him a live grenade.

How...how was such a fool as Cuccinelli voted into office?

I'm not sure that even Virginia would elect somebody this out there under normal circumstances. However the Governor's race, which was what most of the voters were focused on, was not especially normal that time around.

Democrat Creigh Deeds was an astonishingly lackluster candidate, and he ran an astonishingly lackluster campaign. He completely failed to energize Democratic voters who largely stayed home, while Repbublican voters turned out in droves for McConnell, who admittedly ran a better campaign, and that translated into stronger downticket turnout for people like Cooch.

The Cooch's picture recently appeared in the newpaper, I do believe that that he has a far off blank stare, like he has an exreme lack of grey matter. He actions seem to bear that out.

Can we please get the GOP to offer Cucchie something to get him to hell out of Virginia before he really causes severe problems?

Add to the pile of the rotten "eggs" that the Cuckoo has laid his taking a huge campaign contribution from that fake/fraudulent "Veterans charity". And it took him much longer than anyone else to disgorge it; some fakes, he has a larger tolerance for than others :)

John, @18:40
Spot on analysis of the disaster, though I'd like to remind you that the name of our Governor is McDonnell, not McConnell. Me an' Bobby McD... :)

The Cooch's picture recently appeared in the newpaper, I do believe that that he has a far off blank stare, like he has an exreme lack of grey matter. -- Ted76, @19:03

That might be part of the problem; the photos (esp in a newsprint version) do no show the zealot's glint, which is *very* evident if you actually see the guy. I saw him at the Buena Vista Labor Day Parade (our kick-off of the political silly season). He was on the stage, I was in the third row of the audience, and that glint scared the bejeesus out of me even at that distance. It's not that he's stupid; he's dangerous because he's *not* stupid. Bolling is stupid (and a lazy bum) and Little Bobby McD could use a few extra cells in his brain box too, but the Cuckoo knows what he's doing. He's a natural-born crusader, whose faith provides all the armour he needs against all reason.

If you haven't seen (or better yet listened to) "I am the very model of a mad attorney general", courtesy of a Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist, you should check it out--

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/may/07/ed-hinkle7_20100506-183803-ar-158401/

(audio link in the upper left)

Coochie-coo is part of a "cackle of rads" in the Old Dominion trying to appropriate our First Amendment freedoms.

The only language rightist ideologues like Kenny boy understand is ATTACK! So, counter-attack we will, with pleasure. Kenny is going to be one tired show horse after four years of dishing his own crap. Especially so when Virginian's wake up to all the staff time Kenny is squandering buffing out his Tea Party biceps by attacking academics, minorities, single moms and others he thinks he can manipulate into a compromise with his extreme views.

"how was such a fool as Cuccinelli voted into office?"

Because no one gives a damn about the AG race in VA. It's just a lame appendage to the Governor's race, like the Lt. Gov. Cuccinelli isn't even a particular ally of McDonnell (much to McDonnell's credit) but was essentially elected on his coattails. He has no mandate for what he's doing, in other words, and McDonnell should reign him in or risk discrediting himself and the GOP generally.

Let's not forget his recent ruling that the state's abortion clinics must adhere to hospital quality standards (as opposed to doctor's office quality standards), which could force the majority of them to shut down.