Hi, Clif --

This is is in response to your interesting (and unhelpful) e-mail of
7/7/2005. (It has, of course, been posted on the Internet so that
people can see which side of this situation you unfortunately chose to
be on at this point. Let's hope that changes.)

"McCann, Clifton E." wrote:
>
> Dear Mr. Heigl,
>
> I have been asked to respond to your June 29, 2005 email to American
> Mensa's web coordinator.

So you aver. Please provide the actual name(s) of the human being(s)
who purportedly asked you to do this.

> For reasons previously provided by American
> Mensa and its attorneys,

This hardly a true statement. American Mensa has not previously
provided me with any coherent "reasons" for singling out Minnesota Mensa
for harassment of its Webmaster, and its attorneys have not previously
provided me with any coherent "reasons" for this either -- please
enumerate these reasons.

> American Mensa disagrees with your positions

So you allege, and you don't run American Mensa. This has to be a
patently false statement by definition. As American Mensa states in
every possible way (and requires on every page of Mensa websites),
"Mensa does not hold any opinion ...".

Please enumerate the names of the actual human beings who "disagree with
my positions."

You see, Clif, my main positions are that Mensa Membership By-Laws are
not to be blatantly violated, and that Local Groups must scrupulously
honor any signed written agreements to which they are signatory.

So it is very helpful to positively identify any individuals within
Mensa who disagree with those positions, as it is questionable whether
they have any place in this organization, and they certainly should not
be allowed to be in any positions of leadership or authority.

> and is unwilling to redirect the minnesotamensa.org domain name.

I want to be perfectly clear on this -- you are acknowledging, in
writing, on behalf of American Mensa, a deliberate refusal to comply
with a legitimate request by a Local Group Webmaster to correct an
incorrect domain name pointing?

> Should
> you wish to post information on Minnesota Mensa's website, please
> contact Minnesota Mensa directly.

That is an absurd suggestion. As Minnesota Mensa Webmaster, if I wish
to post information on Minnesota Mensa's website, I simply fire up
Microsoft FrontPage, load the Minnesota Mensa website master image from
my hard disk, put in whatever additional information should be on there,
and click the Publish button. Up it goes, to Minnesota Mensa's website,
now located for over a month and a half at mn-mensa.org, since our
previous domain name was hijacked in blatant violation of Mensa
Membership By-Law IIID.

> Thank you for your concern about Minnesota Mensa,

I have a greater concern that you let yourself get suckered in to being
on the wrong side of this controversy. What you should do is to
investigate the facts and reality of the situation and act according --
if you choose to be part of this, I highly recommend your being part of
the solution rather than part of the problem.

> and in particular your
> concern about the proper forwarding of Minnesota Mensa-related email. We
> will forward your concern to Minnesota Mensa.

Who is "we"? I have *your* name; please provide the actual name(s) of
the other human being(s) that will also be forwarding my concern. And
the "forwarding" address for Minnesota Mensa-related e-mail is now
(position)@mn-mensa.org.

Though actually, this is a website concern, so you must mean forwarding
my concern to the Minnesota Mensa Webmaster, and that's me
(webmaster@mn-mensa.org), and I hardly need my concern forwarded back to
me, do I? (What were you thinking?)

What we *need* is for the old minnesotamensa.org domain name to be
pointed to http://64.246.62.111/~minneso/.  While I moved our website to
a new domain name as soon as ours was wrongfully hijacked, it would show
Mensa-level intelligence for all Minnesota Mensa domain names to point
to our genuine website and not an incompetent rogue site.

I'll say again, Clif, that you should acquaint yourself with the facts
of this situation. It is currently in the middle of being investigated
within Mensa, and I am expecting that the investigator will eventually
opine against people blatantly violating Mensa Membership By-Laws, and
in favor of Local Groups honoring any signed written agreements to which
they are a party.

Which has been my position from the start, and I hardly think it would
enhance your reputation, or Venable's, for you to be on record
advocating to the contrary once these issues are settled in my favor and
things get back to normal.

Sincerely,

Al Heigl

Webmaster,
Minnesota Mensa

--

Alan Heigl
Mill City Records
P.O. Box 177
Northfield Minnesota 55057-0177
507-663-6090

>
> Sincerely yours,
>
> Clif McCann
> ==========================
> Clifton E. McCann
> Venable LLP
> 575 7th Street, N.W.
> Washington, D.C. 20004-1601
> 202-344-4000; 202-344-8300 (Fax)
> 202-344-8162 (Direct)
> cemccann@venable.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Al Heigl [mailto:webmaster@minnesotamensa.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2005 2:38 PM
> To: WebCoordinator@AmericanMensa.org
> Subject: RS: Unauthorized tampering with Local Group website access
> Importance: High
>
> Originally sent Wed, 29 Jun 2005 02:19:14 -0500
> -----------------------------------------------
>
> Dear American Mensa Web Coordinator:
>
> You have recently come into temporary possession of the domain name
> registration for the Minnesota Mensa website, minnesotamensa.org.
>
> (I say "temporary" because it was done in direct violation of Section
> IIID of the Mensa membership by-laws, and once *that* aspect of it is
> sorted out, I will expect the domain name registration to be returned to
> us forthwith.)
>
> At any rate, temporary registration assignment of our website domain
> name in no way implies permission to tamper with access to our website.
>
> Somebody at your end of things, whether through ignorance, gullibility,
> and/or malice, has improperly moved the DNS pointing to a different name
> server and, instead of keeping it pointed where it belongs, has set up a
> redirect to a very wrong location -- our old former website
> (mnmensa.org) which was decommissioned almost three years ago, and has
> unfortunately been a rogue site ever since. (Lately, it looks like it's
> been turned over to some high school kids to practice their "blogging"
> on.)
>
> As Minnesota Mensa Webmaster, I have given no one permission to redirect
> our domain name away from our website, nor do I have any intention of
> doing so in the future.
>
> This mistake needs to be corrected, and quickly.
>
> I respectfully request that you have our domain name minnesotamensa.org
> pointed correctly to our actual website.
>
> (I believe aiming it at http://64.246.62.111/~minneso/ should do it.
> You'll know that it's right when the home page that comes up is the same
> as the home page at one of the reference mirror locations
> http://www.millcityrecords.com/mnmensa/.)
>
> Since it would be unbelievably dumb to have done otherwise, I will
> assume that whoever made this error still has kept the mail forwarding
> aliases intact, so that e-mail to, for example,
> locsec@minnesotamensa.org will reach the intended recipient. (And we
> have a new LocSec and First ViceSec as of 5/31/05, so those ones may
> need to be updated.)
>
> I will thank you in advance for your prompt attention to this matter.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Al Heigl
>
> Webmaster,
> Minnesota Mensa
> --
>
> Alan Heigl
> Mill City Records
> P.O. Box 177
> Northfield Minnesota 55057-0177
> 507-663-6090
>
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