Today's Wingnut - And The Long Game

Odds-On favorite for Creepy Cheeseball of the Year - Ken (Kenny The Kooch) Cuccinelli, Atty General for my very own (and otherwise pretty excellent) Commonwealth of Virginia.

The Kooch first caught our eye by running a campaign of intimidation against UVa and (former) resident Climatology wizard Michael Mann.  And make no mistake here - intimidation is exactly what that was all about.  Tax dollars were being spent on  research; the results of that research were not in keeping with the political views and goals of those in charge of spending those tax dollars; and so pressure is brought to bear on anyone not reaching the prescribed conclusions.

And then, just a coupla years after UVa Prez Terry Sullivan fought Kooch and eventually prevailed in court, it seemed so very coincidental that suddenly, the UVa Board of Visitors hatched a plot to get rid of Sullivan.  They said at the time that Sullivan had "failed to present a comprehensive plan for the future success of the flagship school blah blah blah", but most of us (me too) tho't at the time that it was about an attempt on the part of wealthy Alumni to capture the brand of Mr Jefferson's Academical Village and turn it into a typically hollowed-out profit center.  Aha!  Now I get it.  Sullivan had made Cuccinelli - and by proxy, Governor (Vaginal Bob) McDonnell - look bad, so she had to be punished.  It really was just the usual political retribution crap that these 3rd rate phonies think is how you're supposed to conduct the people's business.

I am so seriously sick of this shit.

Coupla stories worth scanning if you wanna tie this all together:
From The Guardian (tying Climate Gate to Sullivan Gate):

Sullivan is, no doubt, in the latter camp: a sociologist of labor, she co-wrote two books about middle-class debt with Harvard law professor, consumer advocate, and now Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren. Warren has been such a lightning rod for conservative ire in recent years that on 11 January 2010, when the BOV announced its unanimous selection of Sullivan as UVA's next president, I wondered whether the visitors' politics had shifted recently – or had they not done their homework?

Five days later, the state of Virginia inaugurated Governor Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, both rightwing Republicans. In April 2010, Cuccinelli, seeking evidence for the alleged international scientific fraud known as "Climategate", demanded from UVA the records of former faculty member Michael Mann, co-author of the famous "hockey-stick graph" showing a historic rise in average temperatures. Shortly after Sullivan took office, a judge dismissed the demand, but Cuccinelli issued another. By the time of her ouster, Sullivan had spent nearly $600,000 in UVA funds to defend the university against litigation that many described as a politically-motivated witch-hunt and an attack on academic freedom.

But this one's the kicker - from MoJo - about Cuccinelli's bombast trying to defend his support of Virginia's (now unconstitutional) Anti-Sodomy Law:

The campaign of Virginia state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli won't say if he's committed any crimes against nature.

Cuccinelli, who is running to be Virginia's next governor, recently petitioned a federal court to reverse its ruling that the state's archaic "Crimes Against Nature" law is unconstitutional. That statute outlaws oral and anal sex between consenting adults—gay or straight, married or single—making such "carnal" acts a felony. The law is unconstitutional because of the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated such "anti-sodomy laws" across the country.

One thing about all this Natural Law / Crimes Against Nature malarkey:  What are we a buncha fuckin' badgers?  We're animals alright - I'll give you that one, but we happen to have this little thing called consciousness - we're self-aware animals.  So we know things - like for instance, we know how to make decisions based on what we think might happen in the future;  we know how to think our own way thru to a conclusion about right-and-wrong; and lots of other stuff too.

We can make those calls because we're not a buncha fuckin' badgers.

And y'know what else?  In Nature, sometimes a mama spider will eat her babies because times are tough and hunting's been pretty lousy, and her instincts (not her intellect) drive her to stay alive for a little while longer, which may give her a shot at having another brood.  It's the nature of some things.  Can you think of one situation when we might think it's OK for a human mom to kill and butcher and serve up one of her kids for dinner?  And why not?  Because we're not a buncha fuckin' spiders either.

This Natural Law argument is at best specious, and at worst, it's just fuckin' stoopid.  So stop it already.