by Smitty

I cannot believe this. #BrettKimberlin‘s associates have now literally gone after my family. Prayers please.

— Ali A. Akbar (@ali) June 4, 2012

 

Ace of Spades: National Day of Blogger Silence — This Friday

On Friday, this site will be absolutely dead-silent, which is what Brett Kimberlin and his stalker crew seeks, and what the media and our supposed Representatives in Congress would permit.
The only post on Friday will be a bold-faced Open Letter to Congress, urging them to act and not attempt to pass the buck to others.
They are our representatives; we would like some representation.
They vowed to defend and protect the Constitution; they can honor that vow now.
I will post links of Congressmen’s and Senator’s email addresses and offices and phone numbers, and urge every concerned American citizen to let them know, in no uncertain terms, that a crime in progress against the First Amendment (and people’s safety) is occurring, and we humbly request they take this seriously.
They are literally going to get someone killed. That is their endgame here.
Will the media and Congress pretend “we didn’t know” when this happens?
ABCNews knows.
The Weekly Standard knows.
The Daily Caller knows.
And many, but not yet all, Congressmen and Senators know.

This blog will (likely) follow Ace’s lead. I’m sure my Congressman will listen to a polite petition. He could surprise me and take action, too. That hope exists.

Update: linked at The Daley Gator

Update II: More at American Power. Furthermore, Stacy spoke to Ali and got this quote:

“World War Three.”

The nature of the offense is that the allegedly Brett Kimberlin-linked site “Breitbart Unmasked” (no linky love for these clowns) apparently thought it was cool to post photos of the location of some family members of Ali.

Now, I have not ever seen Ali in an other-than-gentlemanly mode. I shall strive to keep it that way.

Update III: linked at The Camp of the Saints

Update IV: linked at The Conservatory, Da Tech Guy, and The Lonely Conservative. Plus reporting at Twitchy.

Update V: linkage from The Fellowship of the Perpetually Aggrieved, hogewash, Ameryx le Gallois, Conservative Hideout, and The Rio Norte Line.

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
The phrase quoted in the title is from a Firedoglake diarist who accurately calls the Brett Kimberlin story a “complex saga, as densely peopled and subplotted as a 19th century Russian novel.” While I resent the suggestion that I’m involved in any sort of “hysteria” — vigilante or otherwise — I’m linking the FDL diary because it offers a rather concise summary of how this story connects to the WeinerGate scandal.

As explained in a previous post, Neal Rauhauser’s involvement with Brett Kimberlin apparently began in 2011. In February of this year, Rauhauser published a bizarre eight-page document (“Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?”) expressing the belief that he and Kimberlin were targets of a conspiracy involving Andrew Breitbart and many others, including Mike Stack, who played a key role in exposing Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner’s online sexcapades.

Rauhauser is a fanatical “Weiner Truther,” believing in a conspiracy theory version of the WeinerGate scandal in which the congressman was the victim of a “set up” hoax perpetrated by Andrew Breitbart and/or shadowy Republican operatives. This left-wing tinfoil-hat stuff doesn’t really interest me, but it explains Rauhauser’s apparent obsession with Mike Stack, who is believed to be the only person who knows the true identity of “Dan Wolfe,” the guy who first spotted the incriminating Twitter message from Weiner. It also explains some other things, as reported by Rosie Gray at BuzzFeed in her story on the “Weiner Truthers”:

A major locus of modern Weiner trutherism is BreitbartUnmasked.com, a site “dedicated to unmasking the underbelly of Andrew Breitbart and his crew of rogues, criminals, wannabe journalists, various right wing extremists and the religious intolerant,” per its “About Us” section. Breitbart Unmasked features a large GIF of Breitbart’s face morphing into a mask, and lists the name of everyone in Breitbartworld, from editors of Breitbart.com to people only tangentially related.
One of its related Twitter accounts, @OccupyRebellion, regularly tweets about Weinergate and the alleged conspiracies therein. . . .
[Joseph Cannon observes:] These twilight warriors are obsessed with hacking and related matters. Some of them claim to have worked with Anonymous and LulzSec and allied organizations.

There is widespread suspicion that Brett Kimberlin is behind the “BreitbartUnmasked” site, which has access to information that could only have come from Kimberlin, and which is fixated on Kimberlin’s enemies to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Continue reading ‘A Faint Whiff of Vigilante Hysteria’: Weinergate’s Kimberlin Connection →

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
I’m about 1,200 words into a long follow-up post — trying to connect more of the scattered dots in the Brett Kimberlin orbit — but meanwhile I see Patterico has added important background on the Neal Rauhauser “Kookpocalypse” drama:

After Aaron Walker went to court to get a peace order based on the [“Kookpocalypse”] site, Rauhauser sent me and others an email titled “Aaron Walker murder/suicide risk” that said, among other things:

Given Walker’s state of mind I would say his wife might find him hanging in the garage tonight when she gets home from work. Another possible outcome would be a two digit body count from some mosque in Virginia after Aaron goes full tilt Jared Loughner on the congregation. Someone who knows his wife or real world associates in Virginia should take steps to get him hospitalized before something grim happens.

My emphasis. Note the reference to Aaron’s wife. Bringing spouses into the harassment is a common tactic with this crowd.

Read the whole thing at Patterico. Rauhauser (who has boasted of being armed with a Glock 9-mm pistol) was making ominous threats online, Kimberlin was pursuing a ruthlessly vindictive strategy of legal and workplace harassment against Walker, and when Walker tried to put a stop to it, Rauhauser suggested that Walker was contemplating some act of desperate violence.

Keep in mind that the “Kookpocalypse” that Rauhauser kept hyping turned out to be his release of an instant classic of paranoid literature — “Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?” — as part of a 530-megabyte package of “data” that Rauhauser delivered to the FBI and New Jersey police who, if they bothered to take one look at it, could have drawn only one conclusion: Neal Rauhauser is a demented crackpot.

Patterico points out that Rauhauser’s attempt to conjure up a conspiratorial connection between Mike Stack and others in his “Kookpocalypse” scenario is a drastic failure: Mike Stack had nothing to do with Seth Allen, Mandy Nagy, Aaron Walker or Patterico. Stack seems to feature prominently in Rauhauser’s weird tale only because Stack was involved in the WeinerGate saga. That incident was unrelated to Brett Kimberlin, but Rauhauser is obsessed with what he calls the “Weiner smear” and so these things are all connected inside Rauhauser’s feverish brain.

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

In a previous item, I mentioned that former Raw Story reporter Larisa Alexandrovna is an “indefatiguable defender” of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin. Some other writers (not me) have suggested a closer relationship between Raw Story and Kimberlin. A week ago, Raw Story issued this official statement:

Raw Story was founded by John Byrne in 2004, and has only ever been owned by John Byrne (and minority-stake owner Mike Rogers, who joined in 2009). Roxanne Cooper became the publisher in October 2010, shortly before Ron Brynaert ended his tenure at the publication. Since March 2011, the editorial direction has been under the management of Megan Carpentier, who has complete editorial discretion separate from management.
Brett Kimberlin and Velvet Revolution are not now and never have been involved in the ownership, management or editorial direction of Raw Story. Neither Carpentier nor Cooper had ever heard of Kimberlin or Velvet Revolution prior to the start of the events described by Aaron Worthing, Mandy Nagy and Patrick Frey.

Just had to include that for the record.

‘Speedway Bomber’ Brett Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in 1981

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
While researching further background material, I happened upon a November 2011 post at DFQ2 in which Seth Allen discussed Brett Kimberlin’s ties to the left-wing news site Raw Story. Allen was particularly interested in Larisa Alexandrovna, a former Raw Story reporter who is an indefatiguable defender — or perhaps we should say, idolator — of Kimberlin.

In October 2006, a contributor to Democrat Underground discovered Kimberlin’s criminal past and wrote a post asking, “Is it smart to have our cause of election reform tied to a known, convicted bomber?” Alexandrovna posted 13 comments on that thread defending Kimberlin as having been wrongly convicted, secretly exonerated, etc.

What caught my eye in the DU thread, however, was not Alexandrovna’s defenses of Kimberlin, but rather the biography of himself Kimberlin had published — quoted in Comment #15 on the thread — while promoting his band, Epoxy:

Epoxy arose out of the hellish depths of Brett’s time in prison for exercising his First Amendment rights to speech and political activity. Without any trial, Brett was hauled off to federal prison after being targeted by right-wingers who wanted to punish him for being a musician, writing a book and speaking out about politics.

What a sociopathic liar he is.

Of course, there was a trial. Kimberlin wasn’t imprisoned “for exercising his First Amendment rights,” nor was he “targeted by right-wingers.”

His crimes were committed during the Carter presidency, and the prosecuting attorneys included John J. “Jack” Thar, who is still alive and well and practicing law in Indiana. 

You could ask Jack Thar whether he is a “right-winger” who “targeted” Brett Kimberlin “for exercising his First Amendment rights.”

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 

 

UPDATE: Raw Story Disavows Ties to Kimberlin.

Linked by Nice Deb and That Mr. G Guy — thanks!

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
As September 2010 came to an end, Neal Rauhauser’s “beandogs” operation was rapidly imploding. Using his “WingNutWatch” Twitter account, Rauhauser had “organized a group of E-Thugs meant to harass, threaten, provoke, disparage, intimidate, verbally assault, berate & employ hate-speech against those not in agreement with his brand of politics,” as conservative blogger Patrick Read said at the time.

The “TwitterGate” story was a brief blip in the blogospheric consciousness: An ugly online spat between Left and Right that seemed rather silly to those who did not grasp two key facts:

1. Rauhauser was a paid consultant with the Progressive PST firm, providing “social media” services to Democrat candidates; and
2. Rauhauser has described himself as a “hacker.”

Fact 2 could be dismissed as mere boasting — Rauhauser may have exaggerated his hacking skills — yet it is nonetheless relevant in light of Fact 1: Why would candidates for public office hire someone who bragged of his ability to engage in deceptive and potentially criminal activity? What services did Rauhauser’s clients expect him to deliver?

Whatever Rauhauser was getting paid for, what he was evidently doing in 2010 — as Patrick Read and others have documented — was organizing and directing a mob of pseudonymous Twitter trolls who sent a steady stream of abusive comments at Tea Party activists online. Care to see a few of the messages sent by Rauhauser’s “beandogs”? (Warning: Extremely Graphic Language.) Continue reading When Neal Rauhauser Complained About ‘Menacing’ and ‘Cyberstalking’ →

Professor Glenn Reynolds asks: “How’s that brass-knuckles reputation management working out for you?” 

The professor links an excellent examination of the legal precedents in Aaron Walker’s case by Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Suffice it to say, Walker got railroaded.

“This could happen to you. It could happen in a context utterly unrelated to politics as you understand them. . . . Crazy stalking can happen to anyone for any reason.”
— Popehat, “Brett Kimberlin and Aaron Worthing: Censorship And Retaliation Through Lawfare”

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
In my Thursday account of the connections between Neal Rauhauser and Brett Kimberlin, I noted that within half an hour of Judge C.J. Vaughey’s ruling in Tuesday’s Maryland court hearing — which resulted in the arrest of Aaron Walker — a photo image of the ruling was Tweeted by @AnonyOps. This is a Twitter account “Rauhauser is suspected of using,” I reported, and @AnonyOps subsequently denied this suspicion.

Very well, then — yet we have no explanation of how @AnonyOps obtained that photo first, and this still demonstrates a connection that seems more than coincidental. Selah.

Not content merely to deny being Rauhauser, however, @AnonyOps then put up a blog post denouncing Aaron Walker as “Islamophobic” and calling me a “white supremacist.”

Such accusations, you see, are part of the belief system by which the far Left justifies its lawless radicalism: Because their enemies are all, in one way or another, guilty of political ThoughtCrimes (a category that the Left is always willing to expand and re-define as necessary), the Left need not be scrupulous as to the means by which it advances its goals.

If you buy into the premises of their argument, then the conclusion logically follows that any outcome other than the complete triumph of the Left — the extermination of all resistance — is unacceptable, and whatever foul, unjust and illegal actions are necessary to accomplish that triumph can be justified.

Thus, the infamous radical slogan, “By Any Means Necessary,” which is ultimately a totalitarian formula. David Horowitz, who saw through the Left’s amoral nihilism, once mentioned the humorous sign that a Berkeley businessman put in his shop window after radicals gained control of that city’s municipal government: “That which is not mandatory is prohibited.” Continue reading Radicals Justify Their Evil by Invoking Their Presumed Moral Superiority →