You are clearly a partisan hack trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for your own academic dishonesty.

Perhaps we would all be benefitted by making this discussion more general for the sake of discerning some boundaries.

Are U of M assets indeed paid for by and therefore owned by taxpayers?

Is the professor in question using equipment owned by the University of Minnesota?

Was the email generated during business hours at the University?

Is the professor paid by the University?

Does the professor have a job description or policy manual detailing the usage of University owned equipment for “personal” use? Is there a policy?

If publicly owned assets are used to generate benefit for political campaigns is that a violation of any stated institutional policy?

Is same a violation of any reasonable ethical expectation?

Is there an in-kind contribution according to Section 10 of Minnesota Statutes? How about FEC rules?

If the activity is deemed to be acceptable with regard to these simple questions then no biggie. Somehow, I doubt any reasonable person would conclude that there isn’t some level of impropriety in the form and tenor of the professor’s action.

I think it would be equally improper if a republican candidate were likewise assisted. Only difference is that there would be no question about the impropriety if the intended beneficiary was republican.

Elephant and Ass subject to the same standards.

Here’s the University’s policy on Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources.

http://process.umn.edu/groups/ppd/documents/policy/Acceptable_Use.cfm

A while back, Alan Fine, had a campaign event at Coffmann Union – the event was clearly unrelated to his research – so there are Republican faculty who misuse University resources also.

At the same time, what will happen as a result of this story in the AP, is that Humphrey Institute professors will be much more hesitant to connect students to campaigns because of this sort of thing.

You never know, though… he might be a Democrat by 2008 anyway.

We’ll all get that right next time, cup cake.

MDE, strong work, yet again.

To all Liberals: suck it.

Seems to me y’all are quick to judge the actions of someone based on assumptions that the same rights would not be provided to your guy.

Ms. Kenney was asked to be the organizer for Franken and she refers to herself as part of the campaign in the email she sent out.

This is a captive audience at a taxpayer funded university.

If this were simply a post of one opportunity among many, you’d be absolutely correct.

Jacobs recognizes the difference, why can’t you?

My school is private, but my point is that college is meant to provide us with opportunities. Michael, have you investigated by asking for all other emails pertaining to political opportunities provided by the staff? Granted, they wouldn’t give them to you because it’s a useless worth of time, but it just seems kinda funny to me that you pretend to freak out over this.

Stop with the petty, David Horowitz-esque, reaching attacks on someone who simply was trying to provide an opportunity to her students.

Stick to accepting illegal campaign contributions, picking a fizzle for Senate, and losing your SD’s legislative races.

They would see no inconsistency if they criticized a Republican for doing this exact same thing.

Kenney’s email response to you was so dismissive and smug. It reeks of the kind of pompous ivory-tower Leftist elitism that causes such skepticism among real human beings.

I think it is great that you are going to help ensure that they don’t simply use this preexisting taxpayer funded pool of potential sheep to mindlessly organize the Franken field operation.

Keep it up.

Or perhaps not.

Seems to me, you want equal treatment without making equal effort. Al Franken asked her to get the word out to the students, so she did. And rather than see if Norm Coleman would get equal treatment by making the same request, you just jump to the conclusion that he would not.

This is weak, even by MDE’s rapidly declining standards.

Dear HHH Students and Faculty,
I would like to present you with an opportunity to engage in thoughtful political discourse. I think it would be “loads of fun” to use University resources to conduct opposition research against blogger Michael Brodkorb. When we’re done with that, we’ll help out Franken.

Hugs and Kisses,

Sally

PS Just because I call this a personal email doesn’t eliminate the fact that I am using and encouraging the use of Univeristy resources for this blatantly politial act.

My parents (and other relatives) are teachers in the public schools. They are Republicans who keep their politics to themselves. It’s kind of shocking how nasty and narrow minded the Democratic teachers are. I wouldn’t last one month in a government school as I would not put up with the insults and ridicule the public school teachers give Republicans.

- Whining about waste of precious email resources for this is very shallow. Ever heard of spam? The U gets hit harder than any other Minnesota entity.

This whole thing is petty… oh wait, forgot where I was.

Government does stuff to entities like churches and businesses which can have a profoundly negative effect on them. Yet in the context of a political discussion, many liberals would just as soon silence them.

In this case, it is an agent of the government who is organizing for one side on our dime. That, to me, is terribly dangerous.

And James, even Larry Jacobs admonishes Ms. Kenney about this being an overreach and an abuse.

It’s improper, plain and simple. In fact, the use of government resources to drive political campaigns is about as close to the definition of propagandizing as I can think.

This is not a good thing.

It is far worse.

In the US Bank example, the FEC would be all over it and Liberal’s would be crying about Corporate Contributions.

However, I would much rather that happen (after all, business is affected by what Government does, so why shouldn’t business have the right to speak?) than have our tax money go to such organizing.

At least with the US Bank example, if they were organizing for Franken, I could vote with my feet and bank at TCF or Wells or any number of other options.

When our government uses our tax money to organize on a particular side, that is corrupt. And Drew gets it exactly right. This happens way too often in public schools, and is probably pervasive in local units of Government across the state.

The one part I disagree with the original post, and at least one comment, is that I do believe this makes it more difficult for Jacobs to be an impartial analyst on the race.

Whenever he speaks on the issue from here on out, in his capacity with the Humphrey Institute, I think this issue will lurk in the shadows (at least among close observers).

Notice it is to the “personal” server list at HHH. That list is for students, staff and faculty to use in the event you want to send out invites to personal parties, send pictures of your cats or anything else that does not have to do with official HHH buisness (i.e. all informal emails that are not appropriate to use the main email serves list for) You actually have to subscribe to this email list in order to get them, which I as a student never did.

I would expect Kenney to exercise better judgment than this.

Correct? If I were reading this correctly, Franken’s campaign is abusing public resources; and also violating campaign finance regulations.

Is this a fair interpretation?

Nice job Michael!

In Wright County we have educators carrying out the political agenda of the Teacher’s Union on public school assets virtually every election cycle.

They feel entitled, obviously, and no one bothers to listen when citizens complain. Bureaucrats only seem to listen when the complaints come from democrats. Go figure.

I can’t recall the last time public assets were used to promote a republican candidate for anything. Does anyone?

Is it true that Gluek’s has a new promotion where you get a special beer mug with unlimited refils and someone else pays your bar tab?

I think they call it the FrankenStein.

It appears that she was looking for some recognition of being connected in some kind of way to Franken. I doubt if he knows her.

To make it fair, she needs to contact the Coleman campaign (Sheehan), and have them submit the same opportunity for her to forward on to that exact list.

In college I received solicitations from Republicans all of the time (though I was active in the Rural Democrat Caucus).

The burning outrage is pretty phoney.

I’ll bet she can’t point to one example where she sent a similar email helping a conservative candidate.

What is much more troubling is that she obviously used a proprietary list of addressees – it’s no different than a US Bank employee using a proprietary US Bank list to send out a personal political solicitation.

I would like to remind Ms. Kenney that I (and other taxpayers) pay for the resources she, as an agent of the Franken campaign, are using to organize Franken’s imminent campaign operation.

I don’t support Al Franken, and I am strongly opposed to the use of my money to help his organization.

It is nice to see that Professor Jacobs is opposed to the Franken Campaign’s abuse of a taxpayer funded resource in the institution he helps lead. He seems to be doing the right thing in his criticism.