McIlheran: In Defense Of Witch Hunts

Professor William Cronon is a history professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.  He is also a blogger who wrote an eye-opening piece on how the Koch Brothers and their ilk are funding and controlling this recent assault that we have seen in recent weeks, not only on the working people of Wisconsin, but all across the country.

Within days, the Wisconsin GOP came down like a gang of locust, making a very specific open records request.  It was obvious by their choice of words to search for that their only concern was to throw a wide fishing net in their expedition in hope of finding some stray tidbit that they could conflate and use in an effort to discredit his good name.

Patrick McIlheran, resident GOP spokesman at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (motto: Have you unsubscribed yet?) tries a pathetic attempt to justify the GOP's witch hunt (emphasis mine):

Schneider points out something else: The left has freaked, loudly enough to shake some conservatives, because the Wisconsin Republican Party ran a freedom of information request on Cronon's UW e-mail account. Was the professor using the equipment provided by taxpayers to play politics? Inquiring minds are curious, but the left behaves as if to request the records was itself some kind of suppression of the professor's free thought.

The question for McIlheran is this: On what grounds do you suspect that Professor Cronon was using the government's computer to write his blog?

Having some experience myself with what Cronon is currently going through, I have to wonder.

Is it based on some baseless and artificially created "proof" as the right is wont to rely on, since the truth and reality rarely supports their positions?

Or is it because they so often don't do the ethical thing that they naturally presume no one else does either?

Or is Charlie Sykes their director of research?

As McIlerhan would say: Inquiring minds are curious...