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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."
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.
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
The Republicans have yet to figure out how to reach the younger demographic of net users
That's a symptom of the main problem, which is this distressing anti intellectual, anti science attitude that the Republican Party has embraced.
They won't inquire into the facts of matters. They won't listen to anyone who has, preferring instead to make accusations of bias, ulterior motives, corruption, and lack of patriotism when they can't simply ignore the pesky researchers. They shape policy in deliberate ignorance. They act as if science is a big hoax, a diabolically clever machine for manufacturing rationales and manipulating the public. They set up their own institutes to manufacture rationales they like, and think that is science, that they're just doing the same thing that the other guys do. The manipulators among them think Big Tobacco's "Doubt is our product" campaign against the dangers of smoking is a great model to follow, and the idiots are only too happy to embrace the conclusions uncritically. Scary.
In case you think that does not matter, that it all works out, consider the biggest blunder in recent times. I refer to the accusation that Iraq had WMDs. That was the excuse for the Iraq War, and it turned out to be wrong. The costs are more than money, which is itself extremely large, estimated to be at a minimum a staggering $3 trillion. The West lost a lot of credibility, strained a lot of friendships. All that isn't enough to bring us down, nowhere close, but we can't keep making mistakes like that. The Republicans are supposed to be the party of fiscal prudence, but when they were in power, they couldn't abandon fiscal sanity fast enough. This sudden new concern the Republicans have for the budget, after that financial disaster (note that it's far more than the bailout), looks like empty posturing, deserving of the most cynical view possible. Do the Republicans have any principles left, or have they sunk to the party of Greed and Ignorance?
The Democrats, despite their many faults (such as supporting ACTA), have seldom interfered with scientists.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"