Marc Morano, former environmental communications director to Senator Jim Inhofe and the Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, recently published on his Climate Depot website the email address of conservative MIT climate scientist and hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel. As a result, Emanuel was deluged with hate mail that not only threatened his life but also threatened his wife. (MotherJones has the full story.) Other climate scientists and their family members have been threatened with torture, rape, and murder in the past, so it’s likely that similar threats were involved here.

I’m not a lawyer, but I thought threats of violence, if deemed credible, are crimes. Not only that, but given that most emails cross state borders, credible threats via email would thus be federal crimes. I my understanding is correct, Morano could be abetting the commission of a federal crime every time he publishes a climate scientist’s email. And this isn’t the first time Morano has published private email addresses, nor the first time such publications led to threats of violence. Morano has done this repeatedly in the past, and will likely continue to do so in the future until he’s legally prevented from doing so. Morano knows that people are threatened when he publishes their emails, so he must approve of such threats. The feds should investigate Morano’s possibly criminal behavior before someone like Emanuel, or an innocent bystander like a scientist’s spouse or child, is attacked.

It tells you a lot about someone’s character when they’re willing to condone threats of violence. That’s the kind of person Marc Morano is. And it tells you a lot about the character of the people who have employed or funded Morano too, like Sen. Inhofe, Rush Limbaugh, Newsbusters, and the ExxonMobil-funded libertarian think tank the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.