ALEC And The Modern Conservative Movement
By now, you've probably heard about the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a group founded in 1973 that helps conservative legislators with pre-drafted legislation they can handily introduce into their houses and senates. It seems ALEC drafted the anti-collective bargaining bills in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, and had a hand in the 2010 anti-immigration law in Arizona. This is exactly the kind of organization I described in Confused on the Left, Blinded by the Right (Part II, Blinded) over a year and a half ago, and contains many of the same characters. ALEC was, after all, founded by Paul Weyrich, the same fellow that founded the Heritage Foundation (and in the same year).
I mention ALEC because ALEC's little droogies in office in Wisconsin are unhappy about Professor Cronon's guide to the organization and his New York Times history of conservative politics through the ages. In response -- and most likely in retaliation -- they have started legal proceedings to obtain all of his (pertinent) emails that happen to use his UW-Madison email address. The professor explains:
My little ALEC study guide succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Within two days, the blog had received over half a million hits, had been read by tens of thousands of people, had been linked by newspapers all over the United States, and had been visited by people from more than two dozen foreign countries. . . .
What I did not anticipate-though I guess I should have seen it coming, given everything else that has happened in Wisconsin over the past couple months-was the communication that the University of Wisconsin-Madison received on Thursday afternoon, March 17-less than two days after I posted my blog-formally requesting under the state’s Open Records Law copies of all emails sent from or received by my University of Wisconsin-Madison email address pertaining to matters raised in my blog.
The professor has good reasons not to release everything the Wisconsin Republican Party wants, reasons like student and professional confidentiality. The courts should definitely weigh in on which emails seem even pertinent to the file request . . . or even whether the file request is a legitimate use of the Open Records Law. He points out, though, that this is not really the main point:
It doesn’t take a great leap of logic to infer that Mr. Thompson and his colleagues aren’t particularly eager to have a state university professor asking awkward questions about the dealings of state Republicans with the American Legislative Exchange Council. This open records request apparently seemed to Mr. Thompson to be a good way to discourage me from sticking my nose in places he doesn’t think it belongs.
I confess that I’m surprised to find myself in this strange position, since (as I said in my earlier blog post) my professional interest as a historian has always been to research and understand the full spectrum of American political opinion. I often spend as much time defending Republican and conservative points of view to my liberal friends as vice versa. (For what it’s worth, I have never belonged to either party.) But Mr. Thompson obviously read my blog post as an all-out attack on the interests of his party, and his open records request seems designed to give him what he hopes will be ammunition he can use to embarrass, undermine, and ultimately silence me.
One obvious conclusion I draw is that my study guide about the role of ALEC in Wisconsin politics must come pretty close to hitting a bull’s-eye. Why else would the Republican Party of Wisconsin feel the need to single out a lone university professor for such uncomfortable attention?
The professor's posts are long, but well worth the read. I hope to read or hear of this in my local main-stream media news, but in the meantime I'll not be holding my breath.
Kerfuffle via Pharyngula.
I mention ALEC because ALEC's little droogies in office in Wisconsin are unhappy about Professor Cronon's guide to the organization and his New York Times history of conservative politics through the ages. In response -- and most likely in retaliation -- they have started legal proceedings to obtain all of his (pertinent) emails that happen to use his UW-Madison email address. The professor explains:
My little ALEC study guide succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Within two days, the blog had received over half a million hits, had been read by tens of thousands of people, had been linked by newspapers all over the United States, and had been visited by people from more than two dozen foreign countries. . . .
What I did not anticipate-though I guess I should have seen it coming, given everything else that has happened in Wisconsin over the past couple months-was the communication that the University of Wisconsin-Madison received on Thursday afternoon, March 17-less than two days after I posted my blog-formally requesting under the state’s Open Records Law copies of all emails sent from or received by my University of Wisconsin-Madison email address pertaining to matters raised in my blog.
The professor has good reasons not to release everything the Wisconsin Republican Party wants, reasons like student and professional confidentiality. The courts should definitely weigh in on which emails seem even pertinent to the file request . . . or even whether the file request is a legitimate use of the Open Records Law. He points out, though, that this is not really the main point:
It doesn’t take a great leap of logic to infer that Mr. Thompson and his colleagues aren’t particularly eager to have a state university professor asking awkward questions about the dealings of state Republicans with the American Legislative Exchange Council. This open records request apparently seemed to Mr. Thompson to be a good way to discourage me from sticking my nose in places he doesn’t think it belongs.
I confess that I’m surprised to find myself in this strange position, since (as I said in my earlier blog post) my professional interest as a historian has always been to research and understand the full spectrum of American political opinion. I often spend as much time defending Republican and conservative points of view to my liberal friends as vice versa. (For what it’s worth, I have never belonged to either party.) But Mr. Thompson obviously read my blog post as an all-out attack on the interests of his party, and his open records request seems designed to give him what he hopes will be ammunition he can use to embarrass, undermine, and ultimately silence me.
One obvious conclusion I draw is that my study guide about the role of ALEC in Wisconsin politics must come pretty close to hitting a bull’s-eye. Why else would the Republican Party of Wisconsin feel the need to single out a lone university professor for such uncomfortable attention?
The professor's posts are long, but well worth the read. I hope to read or hear of this in my local main-stream media news, but in the meantime I'll not be holding my breath.
Kerfuffle via Pharyngula.