Virginia AG Lacks Actual Evidence Against Climate Professor

As the Washington Post reports, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II has been stymied in his attempt to subpoena the notes and papers of a climate scientist at the University of Virginia. Cuccinelli wants to go through professor Michael Mann's files in search of evidence that he had committed fraud in his grant applications to support his climate reaserch. A state judge found that Cuccinelli failed to offer any reason to think that professor Mann had done anything wrong:

What the attorney general suspects that Dr. Mann did that was false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the commonwealth is simply not stated.

The Union of Concerned Scientists issued this statement by Francesca Grifo:

This is a victory for scientific discovery. This ruling makes it clear that when a state attorney general alleges fraud against a scientist, he needs actual evidence to back up his claim.

Cuccinelli and his fellow climate skeptics may be sincere in their beliefs, but they have yet to come up with any actual evidence that scientists have faked or manipulated the data.