Hiding the decline: $500,000 . . .

. . . and counting?

Blogger Tom Nelson noted this little tidbit from the Commonwealth Foundation: UVA has spent roughly half a million dollars to fight Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s attempt to get to the bottom of “Nature Trick” Michael Mann’s role in Climategate, and whether the taxpayers of Virginia were swindled.

Complying with Cuccinelli’s request (now mirrored by a FOIA request), by contrast, would have only cost $8,000.

Now, UVA has been squawking that this is all about fighting for “academic freedom.” Put aside the fact that “academic freedom” was coined as a phrase to protect students from ideological professors, and Mann’s former colleague Fred Singer supports Cuccinelli’s probe. Fact is, Mann and his colleagues have stretched “academic freedom” to include ignoring freedom of information requests, twisting the peer-review process to silence dissenting scientists, and truncating inconvenient data (the last of which was the actual “Mike’s Nature Trick”).

?There have been so many instances of errors, data manipulation, and other shenanigans, from global warming alarmists that the rest of us can barely keep up with them; the number of my posts alone on this subject stands at thirty-three.

None of that seems to matter to Mr. Jefferson’s university – all the more reason I would have been a capital-F Federalist.

Cross-posted to RWL