Bill Cronon / Hilary Fey Cronon

Holding true to Republican form, the Wisconsin GOP is coming down hard on their preferred sort of target: a relatively powerless individual who opposes the Republican agenda in any way.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin has sent a request to make public the emails of a single college professor who also happens to be a critic of recent Republican policy initiatives in Wisconsin. Talking Points Memo lays out the story:

Bill Cronon -- or William Cronon, as I think of him -- is a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin. A few days ago he wrote an oped in the Times critical of Gov. Walker and his push to abolish collective bargaining rights for public employees in Wisconsin. About a week before that, he wrote a blog post -- the first in a new blog called Scholar as Citizen -- examining just who's behind this big anti-union push. He focused on a group called ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council).(...) Less than two days after Cronon published the blog post, the Wisconsin Republican Party filed a state open records request to gain access to Cronon's personal emails to get a look at what communications or discussions or sources or anything else went into writing it. (…) Here's the request (reprinted from Cronon's blog)... From: Stephan Thompson

Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 2:37 PM

To: Dowling, John

Subject: Open Records Request Dear Mr. Dowling, Under Wisconsin open records law, we are requesting copies of the following items: Copies of all emails into and out of Prof. William Cronon's state email account from January 1, 2011 to present which reference any of the following terms: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell. We are making this request under Chapter 19.32 of the Wisconsin state statutes, through the Open Records law. Specifically, we would like to cite the following section of Wis. Stat. 19.32 (2) that defines a public record as "anything recorded or preserved that has been created or is being kept by the agency. This includes tapes, films, charts, photographs, computer printouts, etc." Thank you for your prompt attention, and please make us aware of any costs in advance of preparation of this request. Sincerely,

Stephan Thompson

Republican Party of Wisconsin

It's hard to conceptualize this as anything but an attempt by the Republican Party of Wisconsin to discredit all of their critics by looking for a couple of questionable emails in the personal files of one of their critics. Further, the request cuts against the spirit of transparency laws, which are intended to help relatively powerless individuals learn about the activities of very powerful organizations. In this case, a very powerful organization, the Republican Party of Wisconsin, is using the law to go after one of it's relatively powerless critics.

In response to questions about why they were using the open records law to go after one of their critics, the Republican Party of Wisconsin basically told anyone asking to STFU. Greg Sargent:

"Like anyone else who makes an open records request in Wisconsin, the Republican Party of Wisconsin does not have to give a reason for doing so. “I have never seen such a concerted effort to intimidate someone from lawfully seeking information about their government.

Quick interruption—since when is a state political party a "someone." Anyway, back to the statement:

“Further, it is chilling to see that so many members of the media would take up the cause of a professor who seeks to quash a lawful open records request. Taxpayers have a right to accountable government and a right to know if public officials are conducting themselves in an ethical manner. The Left is far more aggressive in this state than the Right in its use of open records requests, yet these rights do extend beyond the liberal left and members of the media. “Finally, I find it appalling that Professor Cronin seems to have plenty of time to round up reporters from around the nation to push the Republican Party of Wisconsin into explaining its motives behind a lawful open records request, but has apparently not found time to provide any of the requested information."

The Republican Party of Wisconsin, with virtually the entire government of the state of Wisconsin at it's disposal, is actually portraying itself as the weaker party here. Conservative persecution complex truly knows no bounds. They can run a whole state, but still believe that some academic who publishes books about the environmental history of New England is oppressing them.