Whose E-Mail Is It, Anyway?

Last month, Stephan Thompson, deputy executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, filed a request under the state?s open-records law asking the University of Wisconsin at Madison to turn over copies of e-mails from William J. Cronon, a tenured professor of environmental history. The request appears to have been prompted by Cronon?s political activism, including a blog post and an op-ed essay in The New York Times. In both, he criticized Gov. Scott Walker and conservatives in general.