TO SERVE MANN: Virginia’s AG Puts Climate-Researcher on the Menu.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II has opened an investigation into whether Professor Michael Mann (whose “hide the decline” email was an the center of the Climategate scandal) violated the Commonwealth’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act when he served as a faculty member at the University of Virginia. Dr. Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars, comments:

At NAS , we are neither supporters nor skeptics of climate science per se. We support good science on important topics. Good science, however, sometimes requires more than closely-cabined peer review. It also requires public accountability. And this is especially true in a campus atmosphere dominated by unscientific certainty on the matters in question. The reigning unscientific certainty in higher education is visible in lots of ways, including the 685 college and university presidents in the United States that have signed on to a preemptive declaration—the College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment—that treats global warming caused by human emissions as a settled fact which requires by way of response “integrating sustainability into the curriculum.”

Read it all.

Linked from PowerLine.

NOW WE KNOW WHY the stimulus money is being spent so slowly: it takes 5 months to hire one government worker. John Derbyshire comments on this part of the news article:

For the first time in history, applicants will be able to submit résumés and cover letters and will not be required to complete knowledge skills and ability essays.

“Down with knowledge, skills, and ability! No need for that stuff in the federal workforce!”

I must have worked for the government before history began (1968 actually) since all I filled out was the 4-page SF-171. But in 1968 I was a new college graduate – it was obvious I had no knowledge, skills, or ability - and then, as now, there was “no need for that stuff in the federal workforce.”

I lasted 18 months.

DESPITE REPEATEDLY VOICING CONCERNS about Arizona's new immigration enforcement law in recent weeks and threatening to challenge it, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday he has not yet read the law.

These guys must take prescription-strength stupidity pills daily to maintain this level of incompetence.

WHO’S SURPRISED? Obama administration liberals, apparently.

IF WE’RE EVER to run our electric grid on the on-again, off-again power that wind and sun provide, we’re going to need better batteries. Here’s an option.

In place of the solid electrodes of a conventional battery, flow batteries use two liquid electrolytes that react when pumped through a cell stack. The battery is broken down into a cell stack and two large electrolyte tanks; as the electrolyte flows past a porous membrane in each cell, ions and electrons flow back and forth, charging or discharging the battery.

Voltage and current capacity are defined by the chemical reaction used and the number, size, and connection of the individual battery cells. Energy storage capacity is defined by the size of the electrolyte storage tanks. Recharging simply means reversing the current flow - or putting in fresh electrolyte.

More here.

SENATOR BOB BENNETT’S LOSS at the Utah Republican convention a ‘Damn Outrage,’ ‘Non-Violent Coup,’ and part of larger intolerant GOP narrative.

Wow. The ‘nonviolent coup’ remark is particularly ironic ... I always thought that the ability to vote to remove from the leadership of your organization someone who isn’t performing to your expectations was called democracy.