Tim Sprinkle

Virginia’s Rampaging New Attorney General

This craziness is a lot easier to watch now that I no longer live in Virginia.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli started the week by attempting to cover up the offending left breast of the Roman goddess Virtus on the Virginia state seal worn on the lapels of his staff. Last night he dropped the effort and issued a statement indicating he'd decided to stop trying to make Virtus more virtuous. Designed by a committee that included George Wythe, George Mason, Robert Carter Nicholas, and Richard Henry Lee, the bare-breasted Virtus has been on the state seal since 1776. A version has been on the state flag since 1861. But when Cuccinelli tried to put Virtus in a burqa this week, the darling of the Tea Party movement explained without irony: "Just because we've always done something a certain way doesn't mean we always have to continue doing it that way."

Seriously?

The problem with Breastgate was that it distracted from Cuccinelli's other efforts to press the legal machinery of the commonwealth into the service of his own agenda. Between his thwarted attempts to rescind anti-discrimination policies for gays and lesbians at Virginia universities, his one-man lawsuit against Obamacare, his recent approval of a new state policy allowing sectarian prayer by state police chaplains at public events, and his lawsuit suit against the EPA for attempting to regulate greenhouse gases, Ken Cuccinelli has become the Where's Waldo of Fox News stories. But his latest attack—against the University of Virginia's climate science researchers—is more troubling than his assault on bare-breasted Romans.