Could be, could be:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is invoking a state anti-fraud law to demand the University of Virginia turn over years worth of documents related to climate scientist Michael Mann, targeting about $500,000 in grants that funded Mann’s studies.

Cuccinelli, a Republican who is separately suing the federal government over regulation of carbon emissions, issued the school a civil subpoena late last month probing “possible violations” of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act by the former U.Va. professor. Mann, now a professor at Penn State, is famous for creating the controversial “hockey stick” graph charting a spike in global temperatures.

(Via AoSHQ Headlines) Basically, the Commonwealth of Virginia can investigate this because Mann took state money to do his research; and the Commonwealth of Virginia will investigate this because Virginian voters put both Cuccinelli and his boss (and fellow-Republican) Bob McDonnell into office last year.  Which means that there are a lot of Democrats huffing right now about over-liberal interpretation of laws (if you’ll pardon the pun).

To which I reply: Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner*.

Moe Lane

*Another way of putting it: they can call AG Cuccinelli whatever they like, just as long as they also cough up the materials required as per the subpoena.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.