Category: Blogging

Did Roger Shuler Violate Alabama Law by Impersonating an Attorney as ‘RogerS’?

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Portrait of a Kook: Roger Shuler

On Oct. 24, Patterico called attention to a commenter using the name “RogerS” at BreitbartUnmasked.com, a site rather notorious for attacking enemies of Brett Kimberlin and Neal Rauhauser. Conspiracy theorists won’t believe it was just a coincidence that, the day before Patterico published that post, authorities in Shelby County, Alabama, arrested blogger Roger Shuler on contempt of court charges.

Speaking of coincidences, however, when Brett Kimberlin fanboy Bill Schmalfeldt reported the arrest of Schuler, he described Shuler as an attorney — and Shuler is definitely not an attorney, so we have to wonder where Schmalfeldt got that mistaken impression.

Oh, Patterico, can you please tell us what “RogerS” was doing?

One of the cast of little transparent sock puppets at Breitbart Unmasked is a fellow who goes by the handle “Roger S.” This “Roger S” was recently on the site talking up the high quality of Kimberlin’s recent RICO lawsuit. My God, Roger S says, the defendants ought to be scared. And Roger S should know! He himself is a lawyer who has handled RICO lawsuits himself! With devastating results!

Hmmmm. So it seems that “RogerS” was presenting himself at a pro-Kimberlin site as an experienced attorney, and pro-Kimberlin blogger Bill Schmalfeldt erroneously “reported” that Alabama blogger Roger Shuler is an attorney. Just a coincidence?

Aaron Walker examines the evidence suggesting that this is not a coincidence, that Schmalfeldt and “RogerS” were in frequent communication, and that Schmalfeldt knew that “RogerS” was Roger Shuler of Alabama and, apparently, believed the bogus claims by “RogerS”/Shuler that he was indeed an experienced attorney.

Readers may examine that evidence and decide for themselves what to believe. Roger Shuler’s got himself a whole heap of trouble down in Alabama nowadays. Having frequently (and unsuccessfully) gone to court as a pro se litigant, Shuler is now on the defense against some very experienced attorneys, including the formidable Bill Baxley.

One might pity Shuler, were it not for the type of atrocious defamation that has been Shuler’s ouevre as a blogger. And if Roger Shuler was indeed “RogerS,” what about this comment?

RogerS on September 20, 2013 at 5:29 pm said:
Well, I think Kimberlin has it correct in his suit, saying that Mr. McCain is not a “legitimate journalist.” Legitimate means that the journalist follows legitimate rules of ethics established by legitimate governing bodies. As you have made abundantly clear, Mr. McCain refuses to follow these legitimate rules of ethics. Instead, he engages in what is obviously malpractice journalism, just as a lawyer who violates the rules of ethics on a wholesale level engages in malpractice lawyering.
I would go even further, and say that Mr. McCain could never be hired by a legitimate media or news company because of his serial violations of the rules of ethics. I believe that he knows this and that is why be engages is his smear blogging tied to tip jar donations.
Mr. McCain is a blogger, a smear blogger, but he is not a journalist as that term is used in the profession. As an attorney, I have no doubt that a federal judge will agree with Kimberlin’s portrayal of Mr. McCain.

Ahem. What horribly false things to say about me, “RogerS.”

Sitting your ass in the Shelby County Jail now, aren’t you, “RogerS”?

Maybe I should just let bygones be bygones, and work myself up some sympathy for Roger Shuler’s constitutional rights.

Trying.

Trying real hard.

Gosh, this is embarrassing.

Despite my profound commitment to the First Amendment, and my concern about “prior restraint” issues in the Shuler case, for some reason I’m unable to work up any sympathy at all for Roger Shuler.

Tell you what: Have yourself a look at the various comments of “RogerS” at BreitbartUnmasked.com and tell me what you think.







Now, it just so happens — lo and behold! — that on Oct. 31, “RogerS” showed up in the comments at BreitbartUnmasked.com to deny that he is Roger Shuler. “Xenophon” vouched for this and, of course, we can always trust what an anonymous blogger says when vouching for the veracity of an anonymous commenter, right?

See, there are coincidences and then there are coincidences. As anyone can see from the comments I’ve screencapped, “RogerS” had been commenting quite frequently: Oct. 17, Oct. 18, Oct. 19, Oct. 21, Oct. 23 and then . . . silence, beginning the same day Roger Shuler was arrested in Alabama, continuing for a full week until, after Aaron Walker pointed out that it is a crime in Alabama to impersonate a lawyer, suddenly “RogerS” pops up to say he is definitely not Roger Shuler.

What kind of coincidence do you think that was? And don’t you think that authorities in Alabama, who seem to be very zealous in their enforcement of the law, might be able to get a subpoena to determine whether Roger Shuler was indeed the phony lawyer “RogerS”?

Because it seems to me that if there were probable cause to suspect Roger Shuler of actually committing a crime — as opposed to a mere contempt of court problem regarding civil litigation — they could get a search warrant for Roger Shuler’s computer.

However, that’s just common sense talking. I am not a lawyer, and I sure as hell would never impersonate a lawyer on the Internet.

 


Carol Shuler, Mrs. Kook Blogger

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Roger Shuler is the Alabama blogger who has been smearing those corrupt! fraudulent!! Republicans!!! who are in a conspiracy!!!!

Anyway, the Karl Rove-led GOP conspiracy — ELEVENTY!1!1! — against Roger Shuler involved the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department, which arrested the paranoid kook Oct. 23 on a bench warrant for contempt of court after Shuler skipped an Oct. 18 hearing in one of the several defamation lawsuits against him. Here is a video in which the kook’s wife, Carol Shuler, describes her husband’s arrest:

Watching that video, do you feel a certain sympathy for this woman? Her life has been upended because, unfortunately, she married a kook, and doesn’t seem to realize what a kook her husband is because, frankly, she’s not quite the sharpest tool in the shed herself.

Being dimwitted is not a crime, of course, and neither is being crazy, but when you let people like that have Internet access, you have to expect a certain number “running with scissors” injuries.

That video was posted by the heinous Karoli Kuns. In justification of the adjective “heinous,” I’ll let my fellow defendant Kimberlin Unmasked explain why Karoli is part of “Team Kimberlin.”

And did I ever mention that Andrew Breitbart despised Karoli?

Look, I’ve never made a secret of my political beliefs: All liberals are wrong about everything at all times. But there is a difference between being merely wrong and being actively evil. Karoli and her Team Kimberlin comrades are actively evil. Attorneys tell me that calling people “evil” is a constitutionally protected expression of opinion. Attorneys laugh when I say, “No, it’s a Neutral Objective Fact.”

And speaking of attorneys, the eminent First Amendment champion Ken White of Popehat has a few words for Karoli:

Monday, Karoli felt comfortable letting the court sort it out when Brett Kimberlin sues people for blogging, and not drawing conclusions about whether Kimberlin’s complaint is political or his targets’ speech is protected:

I don’t write any of this with an intention to hold blog court, nor is this post intended to take up the cause of justice for Brett Kimberlin. That’s the province of Popehat and his gang of libertarian lawyers. The court will decide this case, and as part of that decision they’ll have to decide what constitutes free speech and what does not.

Friday, Karoli felt comfortable saying that the court’s contempt order in Roger Shuler’s case is wrong, that the case against him is political, and that his speech is protected:

Blogging is not a crime, and having bloggers tossed in jail because you’re the son of a powerful politician with your own ambitions is a dangerous precedent that has not escaped the scrutiny of many, without regard to whether we are right or left.

I’m tempted to be uncouth.

No, sir, Mr. White — leave that job to me! And this is probably a good place to mention that Ken’s a liberal, which means he’s also wrong (as a matter of Neutral Objective Fact) but not evil, thank God.

 

BomberSuesBloggers.com

 

Slimy Dishonest Scumbag Todd Purdum Compares ObamaCare to Brown v. Board

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Ace of Spades dismantles the preposterous nonsense whereby Todd S. Purdum tries to blame Republicans for the failure of ObamaCare.

It’s kook stuff: “calculated sabotage by Republicans,” a phrase redolent of Stalin-era Soviet propaganda blaming problems on “saboteurs,” and then totally throwing down the rhetorical gauntlet:

The GOP faithful then kept up their crusade past the president’s reelection, in a pattern of “massive resistance” not seen since the Southern states’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

Whoa! Hold on there, Sparky! The Department of Bad Analogies just issued a recall on that sentence, which is part of an emerging pattern of Wrong History as Political Journalism. First it was James Fallows invoking John C. Calhoun, then it was Colbert King invoking Jefferson Davis, and now Purdum goes all Brown v. Board on us?

Instead of trying to gin up invidious racially charged comparisons like this, maybe liberals could actually enlighten their readers by making the apt comparison to FDR’s National Recovery Administration, an unworkable anti-competitive price-fixing scheme that was eventually struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

But Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States isn’t taught in schools the way Brown v. Board is taught, and our nation’s press corps is full of clever half-educated liberal fools like Todd Purdum who can’t distinguish between their partisan prejudices and objective fact.

By the way, you may be wondering, who is this Todd Purdum guy?

The name rang a bell, and he only joined Politico three months ago, but he had a long, rich history of liberal bias before then. Of course, he’s an Ivy Leaguer (Princeton, ’82) and worked for the New York Times, becoming White House correspondent in the 1990s before marrying Bill Clinton’s first press secretary, Dee Dee Myers. Purdum left the Times in 2005 and joined Vanity Fair as national editor, where he established a reputation for blatant unfairness. His savage attack on Hillary in 2008 inspired Bill Clinton to denounce Purdum:

“He’s a really dishonest reporter,” Clinton said during the tirade that followed, according to Fowler’s report. “And I haven’t read (the article). There’s just five or six blatant lies in there. But he’s a real slimy guy.”
Reminded that Purdum is married to his former press secretary Dee Dee Myers, Clinton responded in part: “That’s all right — he’s still a scumbag.” The former president added: “He’s just a dishonest guy — can’t help it.”
Clinton went on to observe: “It’s all politics. It’s all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don’t think anything about it. But I’m telling ya, all it’s doing is driving her supporters further and further away — because they know exactly what it is — this has been the most rigged coverage in modern history — and the guy ought to be ashamed of himself. But he has no shame. It isn’t the first dishonest piece he’s written about me or her.”

The Slimy Dishonest Scumbag Todd Purdum — hey, just quoting a Democrat because I’m all about bipartisanship, see? — went on to publish one of the most hateful Palin Derangement Syndrome outbursts ever to make print, notorious for this paragraph:

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy” — and thought it fit her perfectly.

Whatever you think of Sarah Palin, she’s a paragon of humility compared to our thin-skinned self-regarding Narcissist-in-Chief.

As I’ve previously noted, however, in career fields where liberalism enjoys hegemonic dominance — including academia, the entertainment industry and especially journalism — being a liberal is an acceptable substitute for any virtue. In such environments, if a coward wishes to be praised for “courage” or a liar wants to be lauded for his “honesty,” he need merely be a dutiful outspoken liberal, and he will be showered with encomiums. Just as the wretched drunken womanizer Ted Kennedy was awarded laurels as a heroic champion of women’s rights — Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment — so it was that Politico‘s hiring of the utterly despicable Todd Purdum was celebrated in July by editor-in-chief John Harris:

Todd S. Purdum, who over 30 years in journalism has fashioned a deserved reputation as one of the most perceptive reporters and elegant stylists of his generation, is coming to POLITICO in September.  . . .
Todd will maintain a strong affiliation with Vanity Fair. As a contributing editor, he will continue to write longer profiles and historical essays on its pages. POLITICO will be his home for the wealth of more in-the-moment reporting and observations that are in Todd’s head and his notebook at any time. Todd, Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair, and I all believe this will be a winning arrangement from every perspective.

It’s magic: Any mendacious scumbag can be transformed into a “perceptive reporter” and an “elegant stylist,” merely by being liberal.

 

 


Bill Schmalfeldt Lies to @SilverbergDave: Failure and the Exact Opposite of Truth

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Bill Schmalfeldt ranting, 2011. (Image via Thomas Anderson at Vimeo)

“Bill Schmalfeldt doesn’t have principles. Bill Schmalfeldt doesn’t have values. Bill Schmalfeldt doesn’t have beliefs. Bill Schmalfeldt has enemies, and then nothing, a black and dank and empty void of sullenness.”
— Ken White, Popehat, Aug. 6

Arguing with a sociopath is generally a waste of time, and if you dedicated yourself to exposing every malicious lie Bill Schmalfeldt tells, you would never have time for anything else. Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t call my attention to Schmalfeldt’s compulsive dishonesty and, while I know many readers have grown weary of hearing about his constant vile behavior, occasionally he does something so hatefully false that I simply cannot ignore it.

Bill Schmalfeldt has a habit of getting himself banned. He got banned from Daily Kos because of his grossly offensive anal rape “satire,” and has been repeatedly banned from the Examiner. In September, Schmalfeldt attempted to sneak back onto the Examiner as “Lester Klemper,” and when his unwelcome presence was (predictably) rejected, he unleashed obscenity-strewn threats of vengeance:

As I said at the time, this is typical Schmafeldt: The Dire Warning of Terrible Consequences — dreadful woe shall befall ye whom he hates.

What followed instead was Schmalfeldt’s complete humiliation at the Oct. 16 hearing on John Hoge’s peace order, and the subsequent rejection of Schmalfeldt’s appeal in the case. Keep in mind that, prior to the Oct. 16 hearing, Schmalfeldt had repeatedly boasted that he would prove Hoge guilty of perjury (!) with the predicted result that Hoge would leave the courtroom in handcuffs.

Threaten, threaten, threaten. Fail, fail, fail.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Meanwhile, however, Schmalfeldt had announced that he would begin writing for DigitalJournal.com. Schmalfeldt’s evident motive was that being published somewhere beside his own blog was necessary to Schmalfeldt’s defense of his harassment as “journalism.”

Of course, this was futile: Maryland’s harassment statute doesn’t have a Journalism Exemption. Schmalfeldt never got a chance to argue this in the Hoge v. Schmalfeldt hearing. Nevertheless, Schmalfeldt was a diligent DigitalJournal.com contributor, writing 56 articles between Sept. 25 and Oct. 27, generating 19,000 page-views. (That’s not bad, really, although by comparison this month I’ve published more than 150 posts with more than 300,000 page-views.)

It looked like Bill had found a home at DigitalJournal.com, but then he screwed it up because, as Ken White said, Bill has enemies.

Vengeance on his enemies is Schmalfeldt’s raison d’être and, after a month of being on his best behavior at DigitalJournal.com, he fell off the wagon and used an Oct. 25 article about the arrest of Alabama smear-blogger Roger Shuler to suggest that somehow Ali Akbar and I were responsible for Shuler’s arrest. That prompted Ali to write an e-mail to DigitalJournal.com publisher David Silverberg, and this false accusation was deleted from Schmalfeldt’s article.

But then in a follow-up article on Oct. 27, after name-checking me again, Schmalfeldt made a nameless reference to Lee Stranahan, which has been preserved by Aaron Walker:

Right wing bloggers don’t even need to have something actually happen to them to get the right wing blogosphere up in arms.
One writer for the extremist right wing blog Breitbart.com claimed a phony rape threat from a man with a progressive neurological disorder who lived 1,400 miles away from him. He sent the police to the man’s house, then cried to whoever would listen that he needed money, lots of money, so he could relocate his family. Right wing bloggers from coast to coast came to his aid, exhorting their readers to raise money for this man, who continued with his claim of death and rape threats from a man who would have to ask his wife to drive him the 1,400 miles to commit this imaginary crime the right wing blogger created in his mind.

I wrote to Silverberg asking that my name be removed from that article, and the above-quoted passage was also removed, so that all that remains of the Stranahan reference in the article is this:

In this climate where a right wing blogger can lie about a threat that never existed and raise thousands of dollars to “move” — and then not even change apartments — the left wing media establishment (such as it is) should be shamefaced over their lack of concern about an older man who is nursing his bruises behind bars while his wife remains barricaded in her house.

Ridiculous. You can read Aaron Worthing’s account and decide for yourself whether the rape threat was “phony,” and you can also read Stranahan’s own account, “Bill Schmalfeldt: The Stranger Who Harassed My Family.” Decide for yourself whether what Schmalfeldt was doing could be described as Ethical Journalism.

What was happening at DigitalJournal.com repeated a familiar pattern: Schmalfeldt was trying use his access to somebody else’s platform to pursue his personal enemies, the unprofessional behavior that got him banned from the Examiner in December 2011:

Bill,
I am yet again forced to discuss your column after you continued to (1) make your OBN articles personal, rather than talking about what such an organization is attempting to do and its potential implications, and (2) continued to reply in an antagonistic manner within the comments sections / Facebook.
Due to the continued disregard for projecting yourself in a professional manner, I am forced to suspend your access to our publishing platform again.
This was not how I hoped things would work out, but I’m no longer in a position to justify the amount of effort we as an organization have to put in to mitigate the complaints your work is constantly receiving. I wish you well on your blog.-
Best regards,
Kevin Staunton
Director, Northeast & Mid-Atlantic Regions

Bingo: “[T]he amount of effort we as an organization have to put in to mitigate the complaints your work is constantly receiving.”

That was in December 2011, when Schmalfeldt was pursuing his insane jihad against “Operation Burn Notice” (OBN), a Facebook group that opposed the recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Months before I ever heard of the guy, Schmalfeldt’s habits were making him obnoxious to management at the Examiner. Now, in October 2013, he has repeated the pattern at DigitalJournal.com, recycling his smears against Stranahan, Akbar and me with no legitimate journalistic purpose. And today, apparently in a snit because his articles were being edited, Schmalfeldt announced his resignation by publishing an e-mail exchange with Dave Silverberg:

Dave:
First, let me express my gratitude for taking me back, I appreciate it very much and have tried very hard to abide by your rules. I have no problem with you or the site, and I will always have a soft place in my heart for you guys.
It is clear that I can’t turn from side to side without being attacked by the trolls who have decided that I have to be denied from doing any writing anywhere for anybody. Nor am I particularly agreeable to having to defend myself to my editor whenever one of these trolls raises a stink with you. This is how they are trying to get me fired. I choose not to grant them that trophy.
So, with great regret, and to save you and your publication any further difficulty with these criminals (not hyperbole), I offer you my resignation. If you choose to accept it, please advise.
And again, I am an appreciative and humble servant.
Thanks again for the opportunity.
Bill Schmalfeldt

Hi Bill,
We respectfully accept your resignation, and we sympathize with your situation. They are relentless, those people following you around online.
Thanks for your time on the site, and we hope you still check out the news content and vote and comment, as you like.
Note your Digital Journalist status has been removed.
Wishing you the best,
David

This is such a steaming heap of nonsense, I scarcely know where to begin debunking it. Schmalfeldt was not being “attacked by the trolls.” Rather, he was using his DigitalJournal.com access to make defamatory accusations against three innocent people who just happen, coincidentally, to be targets of Brett Kimberlin’s wrath.

Bill’s version of events is the exact opposite of truth: He was not being attacked, he was attacking. He is not a victim, but a victimizer.

Contrary to his claim that “trolls” want to prevent Schmalfeldt “from doing any writing anywhere for anybody,” nobody paid any attention to his DigitalJournal.com writing until there were specific complaints made by specific people about two specific articles.

As far as anyone “trying to get [Schmalfeldt] fired,” that description fits exactly one person: Bill Schmalfeldt, whose repetition of his previously demonstrated bad habits was the sole cause of the problem.

However, notice — as did Aaron Walker — how in attacking Lee Stranahan, Schmalfeldt referred to himself in the third person as “a man with a progressive neurological disorder.” Were DigitalJournal.com readers informed at any time that the author of that article was the same person who made the “phony rape threat” against Stranahan?

Because . . . ETHICS!

So, having tried unsuccessfully to use DigitalJournal.com as a platform for pursuing his own vindictive obsessions, now Schmalfeldt dishonestly claims victimhood as an excuse for his latest failure.

And isn’t crazy “a progressive neurological disorder”?

 

Inmate Number 288928

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Roger Shuler, Shelby County Jail inmate No. 288928

“Shuler is his own worst enemy. . . . He seems to enjoy being his own lawyer. He has given his only client some bad advice.”
— U.S. District Judge William Acker, Jan. 28, 2011

“At some point during the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, a substantial segment of the Democrat Party went nuts. Or maybe they were always nuts, but during the Bush years all these liberal kooks logged onto the Internet, and they have been plaguing America with their lunacy ever since.”
— “Crazy in Alabama,” The American Spectator

It’s all fun and games until you get fired from your job, get sued for defamation and land your ass in the Shelby County Jail, eh?

The weirdness of Roger Shuler is perhaps not a subject of general interest, as editors would say, and the Kook Rights Movement is still a fringe phenomenon, but as an example of a social trend, I think there’s something to see here that is worth contemplating.

Rather than to front-load this post with a lot of navel-gazing and pontification, however, let’s update you with some actual news:

A court injunction that led to the arrest of an Alabama blogger last week could imperil free speech rights, a national organization said Monday. “Legal Schnauzer” blogger Roger Shuler was arrested Wednesday and held without bond in the Shelby County, Ala., jail on a contempt of court charge after he refused to comply with a preliminary court injunction that prohibited him from continuing to repeat accusations against the son of former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley.
“Unfortunately for bloggers and free speech advocates, the injunction in the Shuler case could have a chilling effect,” Ali A. Akbar, president of the National Bloggers Club said in a press release Monday. “As a result, the National Bloggers Club believes the injunction, not the case itself, poses the real threat to bloggers.” . . .

Read the whole thing at Viral Read, and ask yourself this important question: Was Roger Shuler sane before he started blogging?

It’s a question I occasionally ask about myself. A certain minimal level of craziness is probably necessary for success in this racket, but as wildly gonzo as this trip sometimes gets — and hey, I’m being sued for RICO, along with Glenn Beck, Simon & Shuster and a deputy D.A. in Los Angeles County — you don’t want to spin out of control.

My remarkable success in monetizing insanity depends on keeping a close eye on the mental tachometer. If it ever goes beyond the sort of hypomanic range where the “good crazy” happens, it could turn into a full-blown psychotic meltdown and, fun as it may be to watch that kind of total freakout as a spectator, it’s never much fun for the performer.

Sept. 12, 2012: Barrett Brown rants about his plan to ‘destroy’ an FBI agent

But why bring up Barrett Brown at this point, really? There is a parallel between what happened to Barrett and what happened to Shuler. Both of them had underlying personal issues that, while obvious enough to the observer experienced in dealing with kooks, were not apparent to those who saw them as heroic crusaders for certain political causes.

Let’s face it: A lot of the people involved with Anonymous were (and are) dangerously crazy and among the hacker groupies, the fanboys and wannabes, there wasn’t a lot of the kind of objectivity that would lead them to ask, “Is Barrett Brown a lunatic?”

Glory days: Barrett Brown interviewed by Michael Isikoff, 2011

With his boyish appearance, his rumbling baritone “Take Me Seriously” voice and his innate penchant for pretentious bullshit — he loved to throw around SAT-prep words like “erudite” — Brown was able to convince a lot of unskeptical people that he knew what he was talking about and had it all under control. But he was a mentally disturbed junkie the whole time, cleverly faking his way through the media charade, hiding his personal grudges behind a lot of paranoid political gibberish and slowly sliding toward a state of complete desperation:

“I know what’s legal, because I know what’s been done to me and if it’s legal when it’s done to me it’s going to be legal when it’s done to f**king FBI Agent Robert Smith, who is a criminal, who is involved in a criminal conspiracy. . . . Uh, anyway, so that’s why Robert Smith’s life is over. And when I say his life is over I don’t say I’m gonna go kill him, but I am gonna ruin his life and look into his fuckin’ kids, because Aaron Barr did the same thing, and he didn’t get raided for it. How do ya like them apples?”
— Barrett Brown, Sept. 12, 2012

Maybe you’ve never watched that video, the third and final episode in the Barrett Brown YouTube Epic Meltdown Series (Part One and Part Two), and maybe you’ve never read the transcripts (Part One, Part Two, Part Three) to see just how insane he really was. The fact that his deluded admirers have tried to depict him as a First Amendment martyr doesn’t change the basic truth: Barrett Brown was crazy.

And something else to notice: There is nobody on the Right who is (a) as crazy as that, and (b) celebrated as a hero for being that crazy.

No, not even me.

If you ever go off the deep end and threaten to “destroy” an FBI agent, vowing to kill any cops who try to stop you, your only hope to be embraced as a hero is to do so in the name of a left-wing cause. There certainly are some dangerous kooks who could be politically categorized as “right wing,” but they’re not getting sympathetic write-ups in The Weekly Standard, whereas you can see Barrett Brown depicted as a sort of romantic renegade in Rolling Stone.

This creates an incentive for bad behavior on the Left that has no parallel on the Right, and it’s time we stop pretending that there is a moral equivalence, because there really isn’t. When you see a kook like Barrett Brown or Roger Shuler spin out of control and get himself arrested, there is a certain logic to them doing this in pursuit of a left-wing agenda, because the Left offers incentives to such behavior, especially the hope of becoming a Heroic Martyr for the Cause.

OK, enough with the pontification, for now at least, and let me get back to the serious business of pimping my latest column:

Roger Shuler runs a blog in Alabama called “Legal Schnauzer.” To be more accurate, Shuler was running that blog until he got arrested last week for violating a court order. As of Monday afternoon, Shuler was still being held without bail in the Shelby County Jail as inmate number 288928. The charge that landed Shuler in jail was contempt of court, to which was added a resisting arrest charge. Maybe he should change the name of his blog to “Illegal Schnauzer.”
The contempt of court charge against Shuler stemmed from a defamation suit brought against him by Robert R. “Rob” Riley Jr., a prominent Birmingham attorney whose father, former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, is a Republican. Shuler seems to believe all Republicans are “corrupt,” engaged in “fraud,” and conspiring against him. After getting fired from his university job in 2008, Shuler has spent the past several years clogging the courts with lawsuits — filed pro se, which is to say, with Shuler acting as his own attorney — and filling the Internet with accusations against those corrupt and fraudulent Republicans he insists are out to get him. What windmills were to Don Quixote, Republicans are to Roger Shuler. His weird obsession might be harmless, if it weren’t for the fact that he keeps publishing defamatory claims on his blog. . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator, because I’m just crazy enough to explain this kind of insanity to normal people.




 

 

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Obvious Truths of the Obama Age

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Professor Glenn Reynolds, who knows a thing or two about effective Internet sites, discusses the HealthCare.gov debacle:

So the Obamacare website doesn’t work, and nobody knows when it’ll be fixed. Administration officials are pointing toward late November, but they’ve had more than three years to work on it. In about the same amount of time after John F. Kennedy’s “we choose to go to the moon” speech, we’d already put people into orbit and brought them safely to earth. It was obviously the signature effort of the Obama administration, but it was a flop. Forget launching to the moon; we can’t even launch a website now. What does that tell us?

It tells us that Obama was elected because a majority of voters are stupid, but we already knew that. Next question, Professor?

 

Roger Shuler: Another Kook Succumbs to ‘Investigative Blogger Syndrome’

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Portrait of a Kook: Roger Shuler

“Shuler has not shown that any clearly established right has been violated. His only alleged evidence is a recorded phone call that he says supports the notion that he was terminated because of the political content of his blog. However, Shuler’s own transcript of the phone call shows only that his time spent researching content for his blog during working hours was a factor — and an ‘insignificant’ one, at that — in his termination. There is no evidence to suggest that the political content of his blog was a factor at all. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the UAB defendants on this claim.”
— 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, July 3, 2012

“There is not a grain of truth to warrant the horrible defamation published by you regarding our client. Each has no factual basis. Your outrageous, despicable conduct will be addressed in another forum: the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama.”
— Bill Baxley to Roger Shuler, Aug. 16, 2013

Before I get around to explaining what kind of lunatic Roger Shuler is, let’s stipulate a few hypothetical possibilities: Maybe Rob Riley had an affair with Liberty Duke, maybe Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange had an affair with Jessica Medeiros Garrison, maybe U.S. Circuit Court Judge William Pryor once posed nude back in the 1980s.

Any one or all of those accusations made by Roger Shuler might be true, without changing the conclusion that Roger Shuler is a kook.

Alabama Blogger Jailed, Apparently For
Not Obeying Order to Stop Publishing
Certain Information about Politician
— Reason, Oct. 25, 2013

That headline bothers me, and not merely because there are too many disgruntled kooks like Roger Shuler filling up the Internet with terabytes of lunacy, harassing and smearing innocent people.

The fact that Ali Akbar was one of the subjects of Shuler’s smears is certainly highly relevant to my interest, but maybe you don’t like Ali and maybe you don’t give a damn about me, either. My job is to explain to you why this particular kook — a demented inhabitant of the paranoid fringe — is typical of a general problem that affects you, even if you’re not a Republican who has been smeared by this kook.

In 2008, Shuler got “dooced,” i.e., fired from his job because of his unauthorized blogging. This happens to people. Maybe it’s wrong that it happens, but it is not social injustice, and it’s certainly not grounds to claim that you’re the victim of a corrupt political conspiracy, even if your plight gains sympathetic coverage from your allies.

Alabama US Attorney denies any involvement
in university editor’s termination
— Raw Story, July 11, 2008

U. of Alabama at Birmingham Editor Says
He Was Fired Over His Political Blog
— Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2008

OK, so you got fired for blogging, and you’ve got allies celebrating you as a martyr for First Amendment rights. But when push comes to shove — when you sue your former employer and are required to show actual evidence of your victimhood — you lose.

Because you are a loser.

Then you decide to double down on losing.

See, here’s the thing: Winners take responsibility for their failures.

This is not pleasant or agreeable. Nobody likes to admit to themselves that they screwed up, nor does anyone relish the moment when they look at their latest screw-up and recognize that it bears a strong resemblance to their previous screw-ups, so that there is an actual pattern to their failures, indicative of an intrinsic personality flaw from which they can never really hope to escape.

“Wherever you go, there you are,” as the old saying has it, and yet we all know people who never learn that lesson. They go through life repeating the same pattern of failure, and always externalize the blame, in order to protect their damaged egos from shame.

But why bring up Bill Schmalfeldt at this point? Well, it seems that (a) Schmalfeldt helped peddle the ridiculous Ali Akbar-Karl Rove gay affair libel that Roger Shuler promoted last year, (b) that Schmalfeldt is now promoting the “First Amendment martyr” narrative about Shuler’s arrest on contempt charges last week, and (c) there is a striking resemblance between the modus operandi of Schmalfeldt and Shuler.

Ali Akbar examines how these two kooks operate, claiming that they can do any damned thing they want to do, because journalism.

Shuler is not a journalist, he’s an ax-grinder, a guy who has a personal grievance that he disguises as a political crusade which, however sane it might have seemed when he began it, has turned into the ideé fixe of an obsessed fanatic. Roger Shuler has become a kook.

“Corrupt + Republican + Karl + Rove” — let the reader count how many posts by Shuler’s Legal Schnauzer blog have contained that particular combination of words. It’s a lot, including one on Sept. 14, 2008, with this provocative headline:

The Palin Doctrine: Lie, Steal, Cheat, Threaten

Scarcely two weeks had passed since Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain’s running mate, and Shuler denounced Palin as the epitome of corrupt evil of which he himself claimed to be a victim:

So there you have it, the Palin Doctrine: Lie, Steal, Cheat, Threaten. It’s a fascinating and evolving story on the national stage. But as I sit here in Shelby County, Alabama, and ponder what I’ve witnessed for the past eight years, I can’t help but think, “Despite what the pundits say, there is nothing fresh and new about Sarah Palin. If you have lived in Karl Rove’s Alabama, this kind of chicanery is old news.”

Perhaps the pattern is self-evident without my having to elaborate too much: Choose some pre-demonized political scapegoat, attribute to them malevolent action and malicious motive, compare them to those whom you allege have victimized you, and then use your own accusations as a pretext to justify further accusations against them.

Now, all you need to do is to add the magic ingredient: Describe what you are doing as “investigative journalism,” include a lot of noise about “corruption” that your more gullible readers can accept as an explanation of why these doers of foul deeds are getting away with it, and dismiss as irrelevant any facts or logic to the contrary.

You have now succumbed to Investigative Blogger Syndrome.

The most famous example of this paranoid kook motif is Barrett Brown, the former Anonymous spokesman who flipped out in September 2012, uploaded a bizarre YouTube rant about his plans to “destroy” an FBI agent, and is now in federal custody in Texas.

Here’s how I described Barrett Brown’s stock in trade:

Like the rituals of certain South Pacific islanders, the Cargo Cult Journalist hopes that his simulacrum of what he ignorantly imitates will magically bring the same result as the real thing. Cargo Cult Journalism is the kind of stuff we once encountered in smudgy mimeographed newsletters, “underground” newspaper tabloids, cheaply printed pamphlets and self-published books by crackpots who warn about conspiracies involving the Bavarian Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission and/or the Military-Industrial Complex. In the digital age, however, many people have trouble distinguishing between this kook-fringe imitation of “reporting” and genuine journalism, a distinction blurred by the increasingly shabby quality of product issued by respectable organs of the mainstream media.

There are reputable people who want you to believe Barrett Brown is a First Amendment hero and a political prisoner. Democrat Underground claims Shuler is a “political prisoner,” too. Did any of these people say a word of complaint when Brett Kimberlin had Aaron Worthing arrested last year? No, of course, they did not. And, in point of fact, Roger Shuler celebrated Kimberlin as a hero:

 In a delicious example of “turnabout is fair play,” Kimberlin has used right wingers’ tactics against them — causing the recent arrest of one thug, the outing of another as a criminal, and the transmission of a notice to others that they face possible legal action…
Key bloggers have written anonymously, but Kimberlin was able to determine their identities and bring legal action against them.

The man whom Shuler called a “thug,” Yale Law alumnus Aaron Walker, offers an erudite discussion of Shuler’s legal predicament:

No, Mr. Shuler, you were plainly playing cheerleader to an anti-freedom-of-expression thug. The most charitable interpretation is that you were such a partisan hack on this that you refused to see how you were cheerleading a clear violation of my First Amendment rights, that you were engaged in willful ignorance and cheering on a precedent that might be used against you in the future.
So part of me feels it is just deserts when I learned that recently you were ordered not to blog about something, that you were found to be in contempt of that order, that you were arrested as a result and when you allegedly resisted arrest, you were beaten to some degree because of it. I admit that part of me chuckled, reading back over your old post praising what Kimberlin had done to me.
But even Brett Kimberlin’s bootlickers have rights.

Roger Shuler, Shelby County Jail inmate No. 288928

Let’s pause to ask: Is there a moral equivalence between the reporting that I and others have done about Brett Kimberlin and the kind of Investigative Blogger Syndrome act that has landed Roger Shuler in the Shelby County Jail as Inmate No. 288928?

It’s a fair question, and there have been many times in the past 17 months that I’ve stopped, stepped back and asked myself whether I’ve gone down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. But the list of people who’ve endured the same pattern of harassment is long enough that, even if I were not a defendant in the federal RICO suit Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al., the story would still be newsworthy.

Crazy as hell, yes, but still newsworthy:

Like Kimberlin’s past acts of anti-free-speech thuggery, his tactics serve to remind people of the very facts he seeks to bury.
With the filing of this lawsuit, more people will learn that Brett Kimberlin was convicted for setting off numerous bombs, one of which blew off a man’s leg. More people will learn of his dishonest machinations to avoid paying a wrongful death judgment to the widow of the man whose leg Kimberlin blew off — a Vietnam veteran who survived the war, but could not survive the pain of the wounds Kimberlin inflicted. More people will learn that, when he set off those bombs in Speedway, police suspected him of complicity in the murder of a grandmother of a young preteen girl, with whom Kimberlin had had a relationship that many people (including the grandmother) considered inappropriate. . . .
Kimberlin’s actions are not rational — but then, “rational” is not a word you would typically use to describe a violent criminal sentenced to 50 years in prison for maiming a man with a bomb. . . .

And here’s the key difference: I didn’t pick a pre-demonized scapegoat. I didn’t claim that the story I’m covering proves corruption by Eric Holder or President Obama or some other conspiratorial combination of Democrats. Trust me when I say that there are plenty of people who can’t figure out why Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser hasn’t been arrested yet. And well do I recall some people last year telling me, “Stacy, you’ve got to show how this is connected to Obama.”

Except I can’t, and don’t pretend I can. To this day, most people have never heard of Brett Kimberlin and, even if it were demonstrated that there was a secret deal whereby the Justice Department agreed to look the other way while Kimberlin funded an elaborate scheme to destroy Andrew Breitbart and cripple conservative New Media, I seriously doubt this would ever be noticed by the New York Times.

No, I have no delusions of grandeur or fantasies of heroic vindication, which is what motivates ax-grinding kooks like Roger Shuler.

Maybe these differences are rather nuanced. Maybe this whole thing is too “meta” for most people to care about. But I’m not in the Shelby County Jail, and Roger Shuler is — because he’s a kook.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

 

BomberSuesBloggers.com

 

Legal Woes Mount for Alabama Anti-GOP Conspiracy Theory Blogger Roger Shuler

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Roger Shuler, Shelby County Jail inmate No. 288928

The arrest of “Legal Schnauzer” blogger Roger Shuler, which I reported Friday at The American Spectator and blogged about here in the wee hours, has tipped over quite an interesting row of dominoes.

As recently as Oct. 19, a certain “RogerS” was boasting of his expertise in RICO lawsuits and claiming that perjuring bomber Brett Kimberlin’s lawsuit against bloggers was a legal tour de force:

Oh, no! An anonymous Breitbart Unmasked commenter calling himself “Roger S” asserts that he has handled many many RICO lawsuits, and Brett Kimberlin’s is super awesome and is going to make him a lot of money! Honey, where did I put the checkbook? Looks like it’s time to write a big fat settlement check to Mr. Convicted Bomber, because he is going to kick my ass in court! Experienced RICO Lawsuit Expert “Roger S” says so!

If, as some have suggested today, “RogerS” is actually the self-same Roger Shuler (Shelby County Jail inmate No. 288928), then his comments at a pro-Kimberlin web site are what lawyers called “evidence.” Speaking of lawyers, an Alabama attorney today e-mailed Roger Shuler:

From: [Influential Montgomery Lawyer]
Date: Sat, Oct 26, 2013
Subject: Cease and Desist to Roger Shuler from Ali Akbar re: Karl Rove
To: [email protected]

Mr. Shuler:
Please see the attached correspondence. It is a demand from Mr. Ali Akbar that you cease and desist all false, defamatory, and reckless comments about Mr. Akbar, specifically with respect to your false allegations Mr. Akbar engaged in a gay love affair with Karl Rove. In addition, it is a demand you delete and retract all such false and defamatory allegations within 10 days or face swift and certain legal action.
Sincerely,
[Influential Montgomery Lawyer]

While it is contrary to my personal creed to file lawsuits, it appears that certain communications published by Roger Shuler may be material to my defense in both the state and federal lawsuits Brett Kimberlin has filed against me and other bloggers (it’s probably unfair to call Simon & Schuster a “blogger”), and I have politely requested access to specific information relevant to the case.

Do inmates in the Shelby County Jail have e-mail access? Probably not, and so it may take a while for Ali’s lawyer to get a reply.

“Swift and certain legal action” — truth and justice, baby.

 

BomberSuesBloggers.com