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Using the Open Records Law To Intimidate Critics
Layzej writes "On March 15, Professor Bill Cronon posted his first blog. The subject was the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council in influencing recent legislation in Wisconsin and across the country. Less than two days later, his university received a communication formally requesting under the state's Open Records Law copies of all emails he sent or received pertaining to matters raised in the blog. Remarkably, the request was sent to the university's legal office by Stephan Thompson of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, with no effort to obscure the political motivations behind it. In a recent editorial, the New York Times notes that demanding copies of e-mails and other documents is the latest technique used politically to silence critics."
The is just as contemptible as the Democrats trying to reinstitute a so-called "Fairness Doctrine" in order to silence Conservatives so I fail to see the newsworthiness of business-as-usual. Whoever is in power tries to topple whoever isn't.
It is politics which is sleazy and slimy and harmful for those of us just trying to live.
It's not just Republicans doing this.
Look at HuffPo's website: http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/
Type in the address of your neighbor, see what political groups they contribute to. They used this to pull a list of Prop 8 contributors in California, to intimidate them.
I could make some sort of argument about anonymity and free speech, I guess, but apparently these things only matter when it's the other guys doing these acts.
isn't that what we do best, other than superficial trivial pursuit/noise when we're being mean, or killed? so that's good that we still have something right?
fear is the primary weapon of unprecedented evile. the truth repels it. both the fear & inhuman behaviors of the walking dead (no conscience)
Suppress and intimidate political distention. Tick that box.
If you're going to have an open records law then you don't get to make exceptions for political reasons. Otherwise you end up with the inevitable, "It's only OK to request records for a cause advantaging the sufficiently powerful." It's the listener flip side to declaring freedom of speech then listing a million forms of speech which don't really count as speech.
The role of the professor in open-minded contemplation / testing ideas / free academic discourse / blah is irrelevant. Everyone should be able to engage in all these things, and life would be even worse if only certain classes of people are exempted on account of being allowed to "think more freely" than others, or something.
This means that any open records law must be limited in application to specific people in specific roles which affect the public: legislative, executive or judicial. In particular, those representatives directly elected or those appointed by such representatives should expect to have all their correspondence scrutinised.
Exceptions may only exist when the exception is required to protect the well-being of a private citizen, and they must exist for only as long as that protection is required. For example, correspondence relating to a police investigation would not be appropriate to reveal until the investigation and any judicial wheel-turning is complete, but should be available for perusal after that unless certain private witnesses need protecting. If the witness-protection justification is used, it must be well documented so that, after the natural death of the witness (or as appropriate), records can be revealed and our descendants can study our performance and learn from it.
Remember also that, while today we think that we have an impossible mound of bureauratic record-keeping, in 100 years time computer systems may be able to intelligently search and analyse more text than we have ever created.
Alas, the most corrupt will communicate off the record anyway.
maybe he & a few others could be invited (by us) to attend some of the 'secret' holycost meetings, to see if he can make any sense of it/help them stop doing it? save lives/money who knows what else
Almost all open records act requests are political. They're mostly made by organizations with an agenda.
I thought the Open Records were for government agencies only? Isn't this a university or just an individual?
I don't see anything nefarious about this FOIA request. The author is a public employee, and his emails are public records. Here's the text of the request, in full:
If there's anything "chilling" about this request, I sure don't see it. When you write a blog article that is critical of a political party, and get over a half-million hits within days, you should expect a little attention from the people you're poking a stick at.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
A lesson that I learned a long time ago, keep your work life and home life separate. The attorneys for your workplace will have the company's interest at heart, not yours. Our company has a fairly liberal computer policy. You can use workplace computers for personal use as long as it does not interfere with work or break any laws. Nonetheless, in our ethics training, it was pointed out that if the company is sued, they may be required to give my computer to the other side. And they will. And anything private on it is open to discovery. They advised keep work and home separate. So I have separate email accounts, separate computers, etc. Never let the two mix.
Start using the amend the Wisconsin Constitution process. Ask for things like Instant Run-Off Voting (a way to break the back of the Republican AND Democratic parties), allow direct contact with Grand Juries (like California - thus the citizens could approach the Grand Jury directly with charges VS elected officials - at the moment you have to have a Judge or the DA approve of your charges) and I'm sure there are other "Reforms" which can be proposed which would be ways to make the Elected/appointed people's life hard and give the citizens something more than voting every few years.
At my "day job" I occasionally have to respond to congressional inquiries.
Internally we have many checks and balances on data, computer records, personally identifiable information, etc.
All of those checks and balances are sumarrily bypassed when it's a congressional inquiry. Often I see all the crap checks and balances being bypassed as cutting through unnecessary red tape and have to have some respect for the ability of a congressman to bypass all that crap.
Usually in response to such an inquiry I take the attitude of "shoot them all and let god sort them out". i.e. if it's a computer database we turn over literally hundreds of thousands of pages of data. The requests are in fact fishing expeditions almost all the time so it's hard to respond otherwise.
As an employee of a US state government, I'm very careful about guarding the work/personal boundary for exactly that reason. If it doesn't relate to my job (an if it is political, it doesn't - it would actually be against state law for me to do so) I ensure it is kept in the personal accounts.
I've also refused certain stipends from my employer due to the records-law hooks they create, e.g. one would make my personal cell phone records be subject to requests, even beyond such time as my employment there ends.
was not locked in a cupboard. TFA says he was not given access to the dinner before the speeches
, he was asked not to enter. My opinion is if they didnt want him at the dinner, they shouldnt have invited him to the dinner.
I am not surprised that the daily mail headline is sensationalist.
Please be advised that source newspaper for that story is the Daily Mail.
I shall let that publication's dubious reputation speak for itself.
That's the Tea Party's vapid refrain. While I admire their passion about what they perceive to be wrong about American politics, the notion that a "revolution" is required in order to bring about any significant change, left or right, is... premature. If enough Americans were to wake up and realize what is happening, they could elect the right people and solve the problem. Complacency and/or an almost willful ignorance, however, are enabling the fascists to solidify their power. When it gets bad enough that enough people realize how "the land of the free" has turned to shit, armed revolution may indeed be the only thing that will turn things around.
So, returning to the topic, open records laws are a key tool for the engaged citizen to maintain control of his/her government. It's not perfect, but it is a way to make sure that the dealings of our elected officials, their appointees, and perhaps most important, their dealings with those who buy influence, are as visible as possible.
If there's anything "chilling" about this request, I sure don't see it. When you write a blog article that is critical of a political party, and get over a half-million hits within days, you should expect a little attention from the people you're poking a stick at.
A little attention would have been good. Seems rather a case of huge attention and too small of a care
TFA:
A number of the emails caught in the net of Mr. Thompson’s open records request are messages between myself and my students. All thus fall within the purview of the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act (FERPA, sometimes known as the “Buckley Amendment,” named for its author Senator James Buckley—the brother of conservative intellectual William F. Buckley). The Buckley Amendment makes it illegal for colleges or universities to release student records without the permission of those students, [...]
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Seems like a good idea to ask the same questions of Stephan Thompson, using exactly the same law.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370371/Vice-Presidents-staff-lock-journalist-closet-hours-fundraiser-stop-talking-guests.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
How are you Obammy apologists going to rationalize this away? If Bush had done this, you all would have been screaming, "ZOMG, shrub = teh Hitler!!!"
Not even Faux News has covered this... and they will cover anything bad.
Remember, if it is on the interwebs, it must be true!
how many times before people get the message , if you want privacy, don't do it electronically ? Actually, if you want privacy, write it on a single sheet of rice paper, on a glass sheet, with destatic sizer, in a room with variable lighting to fool cameras, in a dead language known only to you and your intended recipient
Why is one instance of a legal request for open records considered bullying and intimidation and the other one not?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
There is a lot of time and effort that goes into fulfilling one of these Open Records requests, someone has to pay for it. I suspect that the vice chancellor of the university will have a little chat Professor Bill Cronon telling him what it cost and suggesting that he doesn't cause such an expense again or else ....
...then lobby to have the law changed, don't just complain that the other guy wants to read your emails.
Unless your problem is that you didn't think of snooping first. In which case, carry on then.
BFD, once you post an email or a physical letter for that matter you should expect the contents can easily become public knowledge. This is hardly a surprise.. If you prefer more privacy post or write anonymously.
Looks like the professor has been label as an SP (suppressive person), and anything done to ruin him is considered "fair game". Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
One of the common mistakes at the heart of the matter:
"they do involve academic work that typically assumes a significant degree of privacy and confidentiality."
It strikes me nearly as tragedy that so many people see email as private and confidential. SMTP is unencrypted, most cloud services (gmail, hotmail, etc) are automatically reading every email that hits them, and I suspect the federal government either already has or soon will kick email out of the ever narrower sphere of "reasonable expectation of privacy" -- leaving it unprotected by the term "unreasonable" in The Fourth.
We (geeks, hackers, etc) did not make it easy enough for the plebs to encrypt their email, and did not make it common practice to do so. Now everybody uses postcards, even for their most intimate communications, and powerful entities get to read whatever they want.
Scarier: Give it a few more years, and I'd wager using encrypted communications will become reasonable cause for search and seizure, or used like removing the battery in a cell phone has been in court cases -- as evidence of foul intent. They won't have taken the freedoms of speech and association, we will have given them away.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
... doesn't make it right.
Stephan Thompson of the Republican Party of Wisconsin has done an anti-American thing by stifling free speech. No surprise from the state that gave us Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Apparently the new 'in' thing for fascists is to use the freedom of information act to obtain emails sent by their critics about them. Apparently, academic freedom seems to be dissolving. I don't understand how the freedom of information act can be used to invade the private transactions of professors, but it has happened several times over the last year or so, and has been entirely perpetrated by the increasingly more rabid conservative undertow in this nation, not all conservatives, but a specific group of highly politically (as opposed to socially or morally) motivated people. I had the displeasure of hearing what conservative talk radio sounds like these days while I was driving through the highly conservative '3-corners' region of Missouri (i.e. Limbaugh's homeland), and it is astoundingly racial charged and disturbingly desperate and angry. These people are truly scary, and we really should keep our eyes peeled (as intelligent and reasonable people) for the horrible emerging attitudes in this country. If you asked an average German citizen about their attitudes on putting Jewish people in ovens in 1938, it is likely they would think you were crazy. And if you asked them what National Socialism meant, they would say it had something to do with purity and sexual abstinence, the words like 'Jew' or 'camp' likely would have never come up. No to compare these people to Nazi's, but it illustrates how quickly the most infamous act of hatred in human history can emerge from the consent of a naive population. I guess, ultimately, I am trying to say, that it is our job as being vigilant and morally informed people to see things like McCarthyism and National Socialism before it becomes a problem.
This isn't "news" or an example of overreach. The request is completely legal and shouldn't be considered "intimidating" unless he has really done something wrong. Let's not forget that all of Gov. Walker's emails got FOI'd by the AP in a lawsuit too. Not just some, all. If Cronon considers it harrassment for his to be opened, how does he feel about it applied to Gov. Walker? How is the request "thuggish" compared to the intimidating applied by the Unions during and after the recent debate? Or are these cases of, "It's okay when its us investigating the evil corporate-Republicans, but they're just petty when they use it against us?" If he had any privacy concerns, he should have done what most of us probably do - GMail from a (non-University) cell phone.
It doesn't appear to have anything to do with the university at all. It's part of a larger website that also belongs to him. I'm not going to post the whois record, but it's available for all to see.
I fail to see what his university has to do with his personal website or his personal emails. By rights, this should go nowhere. If the Republicans somehow succeed, it will be a miscarriage of justice in terms of freedom of speech. Of course Justice has been miscarrying quite a bit lately...
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
The only people I've ever heard talk about reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine are Republicans and their shills. It's especially been a talk radio talking point, and used repeatedly as a scaremongering tactic. I listen to Neal Boortz now and then, and I've heard him constantly harping on how Democrats want to shut down talk radio. The only problem is, I never hear any Democrats actually try to shut down talk radio. It's just a fabrication, another conservative scaremongering tactic just like all the others.
It's simply not true. I'm about as liberal as they come, and I have exactly zero interest in shutting down or changing talk radio. I mean, sure, some liberal out there has probably mentioned the Fairness Doctrine at some point, but I'm pretty liberal myself and I have exactly zero interest in pushing any kind of law to change or shut down talk radio and I don't know of anyone who does. This clatter all probably rose because someone made an offhand comment, and conservatives saw a chance to jump in and try to scare the bejesus out of everyone, thinking that the big, bad liberals are trying to take away the First Amendment or some crap.
I normally don't post "Mod parent UP!" posts, but damn, what a day not to have mod points of my own. :( I'd also mod the OP down. "Insightful?" Politics sometimes being sleazy isn't particularly insightful, and the claim that Democrats tried to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine is an outright lie.
We've all of a sudden, had a lot of high-numbered Slashdot users appear with well-written, slick conservative opinions.
This doesn't seem right -- if anything Slashdot tends to libertarianism with a smattering of liberals.
Are we being subjected to some kind of conservative dirty trick -- or is it merely rutting season for right wing retards?
If you can't reach the dealers go after the users.
This recent rampage against public employees seems to stem from their ideological stanpoint that these services and positions shouldnt be there in the first place.
They want to create a problem were public institution will have trouble finding willing employees, and then roll in with privatization and contracting.
Let me make one thing clear, public employees is not any different from private ones, for a union its still ...."bourgeois scum"(please dont take this last part to seriously, but for unions it must be seen as a political opponent wheter its about demands or concessions )
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
No, seriously... Agreed perfectly.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Turnabout is fair play, isn't it?
"emanding copies of e-mails and other documents is the latest technique used politically to silence critics"
Oh and hiring people to fly to another state to sit in the capitol building, yell about stuff many know nothing about (because they were hired), and smell up the place by refusing to leave long enough to bathe isn't another "latest tactic?" And this professor titles his post "Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere?" So it's okay for him to post "with no effort to obscure the political motivations" and ask who's behind what but it's somehow a anathema to be asked the same question. This is hypocrisy. You'd think being a professor...you know what, tell me you're a professor and you start at idiot. The rest of the conversation I'm thinking to myself, "Will this guy be able to convince me his doctorate is anything more than a piece of paper?"
The daily mail is probably the trashiest of British journalism: sensationalist, scaremongering, simplistic, and not above straightforward making stuff up. See also this song.
Rule 12 of the internet: citing the daily fail as your only source causes you to lose the argument.
If the Egyptian people can get rid of Mubarak why can't the American people get rid of the republican party?
I'd like a law that allows any person to video/audio record any public official during work hours regardless of where they are. The only limitation should be that the release of the recording must be delayed by 60 days. We should be allowed to record - anyone who works in a public facility (doctors, lawyers, IT, security, secretaries, directors, whatever).
I don't believe there should be open access to all parts of every facility.
If you don't want to be recorded, don't work in the public sector.
That's absurd and you are an idiot (or merely a troll, in which case I'm sorry I'm feeding you). Do you have any idea how expensive it would be to scrub from the recordings all the private data that most of these jobs involve? And many of these jobs depend on people coming to the employee with confidential matters. If all school teachers (guidance counselors, etc.) were recorded all the time, students would feel less comfortable bringing up personal issues with them, so things like child abuse would be less likely to be reported. And how do you record doctors' activities without revealing private medical data? And judges do a million things in chambers that are and should be private: for example, they may hear claims that is inflammatory and false, or private details such as medical records, or oversee negotiations between parties who can't speak freely in public because of NDAs, etc. And elected representatives and police meet in confidence with people they represent, yes, sometimes for nefarious purposes, but also for very legitimate ones, such as victims of crime who fear retribution if the mere fact that they made the visit were known. The examples are legion (do you want tapes from shelters for abused women to be put up on Youtube?). These are all very legitimate functions of government that involve individual privacy--not of the employee but of the citizen who is dealing with the government official. Do you have any idea what a nightmare it would be to ensure that no inappropriate information was released? Or do you really not care about the consequences?
.sig withheld by request
Nice troll. I'm surprised you haven't had a bite yet.
Here's the thing: Most people don't apply the 90% bullsh*t rule of the internet when they read a blog posting, accept it as fact, and proceed to tell other people about it.
"The world operates not on reality..."
"...But the perception of reality."
"Posit: people think a bank might be financially shaky."
"Consequence: people start to withdraw their money."
"Result: pretty soon it is financially shaky."
"Conclusion: you can make banks fail."
"Bzzt. I've already done that. Maybe you've read about a few? Think bigger."
"Stock market." "Yes." "Commodities market." "Yes." "Currency markets." "Yes." "Small countries?"
The point here is that to defend oneself against the unsubstantiated claims made on blog postings, the accused is attempting to ensure that the blogger does indeed back up his claims and that those references are made available for anyone to verify.
I was to lazy to log in...
So I'm far left - HOW
Do you dispute that a majority of people in the country are against the recent law in WI ?
Do you dispute that a majority of guests on C Rose are corporate/mainstream types ?
Do you dispute that the supposedly liberal NPR frequently makes statements that are right wing (eg, a recent aside that deficits are a problem that pre occupies most people in this country; typical right wing BS; deficits rank way below jobs, and , anyway, aside from medical costs, short term deficits are not a problem, at least if we repeal bubama tax cuts )
And we all know that long term deficits are mostly medical; bowles erskine are, by def, loosers as they did not address this
Do you dispute that the right wing gop AZ legislature has instituted death panels - aka medicare restrictions organ transplants ? that GOP law allows faceless beauracrats in AZ to decide if granny lives ?
Do you dispute that banks, led by places like WAMU, but aided and abetted by others, engaged in fradulent practices ?
It is true that ordinary people did a lot of really stupid and crazy things in the housing boom. And they have paid; you should go and read the Times piece on a cul de sac in CA [it is interesting how right wingers think "n y times" is a synonym for liar, yet when they (R Limbaugh) need some news they cite times articles, and assume the articles are correct - listen to limbaugh if you don't believe me)
the point is, ordinary people have paid a huge price; ruined neighborhoods, lost jobs, etc
and the bankers who engaged in fradulent loan practices (when i say fradulent, i mean that, not sloppy) ? Obama says the "deserve" their salaries , and the bankers whine about how taxpayers are unwilling to cough up enough to keep their bonuses at pre boom levels
On what planet do you think the liberals have any influence in this country ? NOT ONE, NOT ONE crimminal indictment has been issued against a senior banker; marzillo got a wrist slap fine from some agency, and a lot of the fine was paid by his employer (ok a multi millon dollar fine, but fo rmarzillo a wrist slap).
Do you remember the original TARP proposal - H Paulson, former CEO of Sachs, says congress should give him a trillion dollars, with no strings (do you remember that the arrogant Paulson asked that the law be written so that appropriations were deemed lawful ?) ?
and do yo remember that the supposedly liberal democrats - led by my rep, B Frank, - aquiesced ?
What a sight; the "liberal" B Frank giving a trillion tax dollars to wall str with no quid pro quo, and outrage forcing him add some pretend restraints to the law ? ON what planet are liberals powerful, when the defense budget grows and grows and grows ?
on what planet are liberal powerful, when Nuclear Power gets money, while wind and solar don't (and don't give me that right wing BS about power density or load mismatch....) I could go on, but the right wing - the corporate reptiles who run this country - buy politicians and get, repeatedly, laws passed that are opposed by a vast majority of people in this counrty.
I am not left wing; I am moderate !!
But as a reader of history myself i can't help but draw parallels to other states in the past that have gone from less authoritarian regimes that are for the majority of the country to more authoritarian regimes that only benefit a select few at the expense of everyone else. Specifically the days and years before a state goes from a superficial multi-party state to a authoritarian dictatorship backed by a official party that outlawed all others. I am avoiding naming examples because if you take away the inflammatory names and the associated propaganda taught as fact about them you will realize underneath they both are the same.
I hazard a guess that if nothing external to the united states acts to change the situation. wither it be economical or geological or a combination of both, that in the next decade to decade to decade and a half the united states will shed what ever thin dressing of democracy that the current state of the democratic republic has in favor of a more authoritarian rule by a single party who seems organized to that very goal in mind. Frankly I view this as a fatal flaw in democracy in general, It seems to tolerate the existence of the very forces that seek it's destruction and then promotes that as a virtue worthy of praise like a smoker downing a pack a day and proud of it because it's their choice. It also brings into focus that the historical democracy's, even though they share the name only between them, were themselves temporary and led to the exact same ending. It's like the old saying, the best government is a good king, and the worst government is a bad king.
Last minute addition:
to RogueWarrior65. Scroll down to the bottom of the guy's blog post. He has a section with the word 'bibliography' in the title. Everything listed under it is where he got the information in his post.
Only if you also run around claiming that the Republicans have floated a return to the Gold Standard because a Republican in the House talks about it.
When has Obama tried reinstating the FD.
When Speaker Pelosi try to reinstate the FD.
When did Majority Leader Reid try to reinstate the FD.
When have any Democratic-controlled committees tried to reinstate the FD.
Fascism is said to be the merger of corporation and state. This is commonly quoted, not sure who said it.
The other merger? "Communism is the merger of union and state".
A pox on both their houses.
The state Open Records Law pertains to records contained on state property including on state computers. If a state employee (the professor) was engaged in political activity on state-time using state-property, he broke the laws that prohibit such activity. All political parties should respect that using government property for politics is not good for the state.
The answer for the professor is to do his union politicking from his home on his computer. Don't break the law and then cry "academic freedom".
--dont_tread_on_me
I love this. It will prompt people to stop using government services and use private services instead. This takes power away from government and gives it back to the people.
All part of one ongoing line of jokes.
If he were working for a private company, he'd have confidentiality and trade secret laws to help protect that stuff.
Right, but he doesn't work for a private company. He works for a government, which has a monopoly.
In exchange for the citizens (aka taxpayers) allowing the monopoly, they get to see how it works. If their money is being used to orchestrate political action, they deserve to know that.
And if this professor wants to organize a recall, great, do it on his own time, on his own dime.
Heck, there's a small brouhaha around here because cops were driving around on the job asking store owners to put up election signs for the Chief of Police. Doing it on their own time, using their private cars, out of uniform is 100% OK - doing it in uniform during their shift is 100% against the law.
Yes, the political hack making this request is politically motivated, but he has a legitimate point. If the professor did this using publicly owned equipment, on the job, he made a serious error*.
* I'm assuming his State's laws are similar to most others.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The topic is something else here. If you have a cause someone will care, but not in this thread.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Nice ad hominem. I expected nothing less from an Obammy apologist, I guess.
I see the lefties are just shocked, SHOCKED! that anyone would use such tactics to intimidate their political opponents...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Gee. Is this a little like that other article about not letting engineers become finance type, but just tailored to your particular slant? It wouldn't be trying to disuade public employment would it?
I'm sure that anyone who is facing a court trial would love to have a high res version of all conversations by the judge and jury and the public prosecutor.
Of course that would be just for keeping them on the up and up, and not seeking advantage.
It would have a downside for anyone not able to afford a private lawyer, as the public defender would be subject to it.
Perhaps you'd like them to be subject to weekly colonoscopies as well.
This is a complete overreaction. NO ONE should be attacked for filing an FOIA request. PERIOD.
Actually, the Koch operatives and forces within the republican party, including a large fraction that ensure taxpayer money is spent to support it, have broken their political operations into regional cells. Operators in each cell are charged with targeting certain key intersections of public discourse and economic activity to attempt to either steer or derail democratic conversation. It is estimated that Koch Industries alone employs about 2,500 operatives broken into 25 regional action groups that use sophisticated data-mining and geo-location techniques to profile millions of Americans 24/7. They also make use of extensive cryptographic security to conceal their activities, much illegal, but given carte blanche by supreme court judges on the take. It is a well tuned apparatus, with even right-wing talk-radio channels spots integrated with tea-party member shopping profiles, all under software control.
It will be extremely important to track and monitor these individuals going forward as they are busy laying schemes to further erode civil and political rights by giving corporate interests undue decision making power by virtue of their larger budgets that can be extracted from the public more or less at will.
You really have to laugh at the folks, who think they know why their communications and energy bills are going through the roof.
The people have a pretty clear right to know who it is that's funding an unconstitutional measure to rescind rights.
If its constitutional its not unconstitutional.. get it? constitutional does not = moral; merely the state of a law's authority. example: slavery was constitutional. Unless, by unconstitutional you mean that the state constitutional amendment is violative of the federal constitution.
Public higher education is one of the great benefits of living in the United States, and many of our best institutions of higher learning are state-run. The University of Wisconsin is one such prestigious state institution, and much of that prestige derives from the accomplishments of its faculty.
Now let's ask ourselves what will happen in the future if witch-hunts like these become widespread. Will serious academics in controversial fields seek employment at state-run universities? Or will they prefer to teach in private institutions where they can't be construed as "public officials" and forced to reveal every rash or ill-formed argument they might once have made as they conduct their research? I was once offered a position at UW; under these conditions I'm not sure if I would have even pursued the position in the first place.
The target of this attack (it's disingenuous to call it anything else) holds a distinguished chair in the UW history department and is the President-Elect of the American Historical Association. Do you really think scholars of his distinction will continue to serve in public institutions if they can be subjected to these kinds of tactics? Or will someone of his distinction choose Princeton over UW because he won't be a "public employee" at the former? What will be the effects of these decisions over time on the quality of education and research being conducted in public universities?
As to the person above who asked whether someone should be employed as a faculty member in a public university and paid to attack one political party, the answer is resoundingly yes. Should a Marxist who offers courses attacking capitalism be barred from the campuses of our state universities? How about an monetarist who rails against government intrusion into the economy? Or a Straussian political philosopher who complains that our entire political system is an affront to her notion that only elites should rule?
Unless you are an exploitative employer that is. It's just standing up for your rights so you don't get shat on.
Clearly the USA is descending further into corporate fascism when people have attitudes like this...
Another thing the United States don't care about.
Easy solution - simply respond with the now infamous republican tactic of stating the professor did not use University e-mail or that the e-mails were accidentally deleted. If it works for republicans during a criminal investigation it will certainly work for a University Professor in a non-criminal investigation. From Wiki: "The Bush White House e-mail controversy surfaced in 2007, during the controversy involving the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain hosted on an e-mail server not controlled by the federal government. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the Hatch Act.[1] Over 5 million e-mails may have been lost or deleted.[2][3] Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove lost emails, leading to damaging allegations.[4] In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been deleted.[5]"
Don't use your work email for anything but work. If Bill followed this rule, then the disclosure of all of his work email should be nothing to worry about. In fact, if he follows this rule, then he should be laughing at the people who asked.
We can all learn something from republican's here - even during a criminal investigation it is not really a requirement to provide e-mail information. The professor has two republican lines of defense: 1. I did not use a University e-mail address but rather an e-mail hosted on a non-state server. 2. Oops, all my e-mails related to that blog article were deleted. "Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain hosted on an e-mail server not controlled by the federal government." WIki article "Bush White House e-mail controversy" or e-mail-gate!
Very insightful commentary. The way around putting yourself on the record would be to simply use a non-state run e-mail server. This is the same tactic employed by republicans in the Bush White House for eight years. It provided protection not only from the freedom of information act but criminal investigations. If this University uses GMAIL as their host provider it may not be legal to access any University e-mail even though it may have the .edu. In any event if the professor sent any e-mails on a non University e-mail those would not be subject to the public information request. Finally, he might simply use the oops - all got deleted defense. All of these defenses were successfully used by republicans during the infamous e-mail gate criminal investigation.
"Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain hosted on an e-mail server not controlled by the federal government." WIki article "Bush White House e-mail controversy" or e-mail-gate!
So does the janitor. And, with all the tax breaks etc, that private corporation is more an employee of the government than the professor. So why not FOIA the minutes of the meetings?
By now, anyone who is foolish enough to compromise themselves in email should rightfully suffer the consequences. However, if your cause
is a valid one, who can really hurt you? If you have the balls to write what you think and stand by it, you will prevail.
Never say die! The more intense your opponents, the more desperate they likely are.
FOIA requests for political purposes are as old as, and were clearly included within the scope of, freedom of information and open records laws, which wisely do not require that the requesting party give any reason for wanting the public governmental information requested. This is only a news story for the New York Times or other liberal organs if the request comes from the Republican Party as here or another organization not on their approved list of leftist Establishment groups. There are some loopholes you can drive a truck through. Doesn't it ever occur to politicians and those seeking to buy access to and influence with them, the only way I know to get either, to meet in the restroom and whisper or pass a note, or use a separate political Email account, address, and maybe a separate computer system so these don't get stored on the government server? Actually, I think if a politician sent or received an occasional Email from his wife or child, or other personal matters disclosure of which would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, or even about his and/or his mistress' of either sex's testing, that ought to be outside the scope of FOIA in most instances. Of course no politician of either party would bge stupid enough to Email anything illegal or embarrassing, get caught with a $5,000.00 an hour or $5.00 a pop hooker or a freeaer full of cash, etc. They never lie or take bribes, either. I'm in Texas. Under our state Open Records law, the Attorney General's office demanded payment, within ten days, of about half my monthly income just to answer a basic question, on a subject addressed on his campaign and official Web sites, about what position he had taken, on the record, on behalf of the State on the Constitutionality of the Americans with Disabilities Act. They insisted that the hundreds of thousands of disabled citizens were not "significant" for purposes of a provision permitting waiver of such prohibitive expenses. I once found a sworn lawsuit, in the open public court records, where the plaintiff sued the defendant for failing to pay him on a contract to "ascertain the confidential plans of the State Highway Department relating to acquisition of land for . . .." One of the Plaintiff's attorneys in that case was a state legislator and later on our State Supreme Court.