Science has become intensely political, at all levels. Science and universities have sown themselves to be non-meritocracies incapable of policing themselves while receiving and spending public money. So, yes, it makes sense that a politician is involved in the oversight.
Just to be precise, AG Ken Cuccinelli is Virginia’s elected official whose job is to protect the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is not now “a politician.” Therefore, his interests are not political. They are economic.
His investigation is warranted by his mission as Attorney General to protect Virginians from unwarranted incursions into freedoms, from illegal laws passed by Congress, and from taxes and increased cost mandated by EPA, if the data upon which they are justified is deemed to be faulty.
Based on the inability of the scientific community to police its own, the protests of these “810 academics” is laughable.
And I’m a Virginian with a Ph.D. Many “scientists” I’ve known are unbelievably arrogant, and adhere to the notion that only other scientists are qualified to critique their work.