Tis a villain, sir

One of Ned's most trusted moles, buried deeply within the bowels of a Mid-Atlantic State--what the hell, Virginia--has told Ned a tale that causes his blood to run cold. It involves a Being, in this case, the newly-elected Attorney General of the State, one Ken Cuccinelli II, who, not content with being a proud know-nothing Christianist and an anti-intellectual to boot, has actually began civil proceedings against a former member of the University of Virginia's faculty, one Michael Mann. Mann, an internationally-known climate expert, has published some of the most important peer-reviewed research to date on the science of climate change, a topic which Cuccinelli, or Kook, as we will call him from now on, knows, of course, nothing about, but which he runs around the state denying exists (global climate change, that is). Peer-reviewed research is something else Christianists know nothing about, content as they are to take the words of Jesus for just about anything. Not actually to live according to those words, mind, but to use them to suit their purposes. But we digress.
The latest outrage, as reported by the Washington Post, describes Kook's "lawsuit" for want of a better word, against the University, founded by Thomas Jefferson himself, to determine if there has been any "manipulated data" or even fraud, in some of Mann's grant requests, even though the grants were filed with the federal government, and not with the state.
Now, Ned was an academic for thirty years (and let his enemies make the most of it), but never in all his, or any of his colleagues' run-ins with administration or state officials, did Ned experience something as Nazi-like as this clear attempt to interfere with the freedom of the Academy. And yet, as some have said, we get the government we deserve, and Ned concludes that the bunch of extremist, Republican nitwits running the state of Virginia today are right out of the hallowed tradition of Stalinist purges, and "reeducation camps" practiced so efficiently by the Viet Cong. Ned will of course not mention Guantanamo, since democracies like the U.S. are congenitally unable to interfere with anyone's human rights, as we all know.
Anyway, Ned will be watching the matter closely, and hopes to see Kook removed from office for malfeasance soon. He is best described by Miranda in The Tempest, referring to Caliban. "'T'is a villain, sir, and one I do not love to look upon."