The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Hoge’s Victory Lap

Posted on | June 14, 2013 | 53 Comments

After his stunning courtroom triumph today over the atrocious troll Bill Schmalfeldt, John Hoge recounts at length exactly what kind of atrocious troll Bill Schmalfeldt is:

On 14 February, I received 40 tweets in less than one hour from @BreitbartUnmask ranting about Lee Stranahan, Aaron Walker, and me. Just after midnight on 15 February, I posted a notice on this blog and on Twitter addressed to @OldUncleBastard, @BreitbartUnmask, and @OccupyRebellion demanding that they stop communicating directly with me.

Now this relates to two sections of Maryland law, Harassment (§3-803) and Misuse of Electronic Communication (§3-805), that Hoge had read and which apparently Schmalfeldt hadn’t.

Understand this: It is one thing to say mean things about someone, but another to say mean things to someone.

The use of e-mail or Twitter to communicate hateful messages to someone — when the recipient has demanded that you cease such communications, notifying you that further messages will result in a complaint under the above sections of the law — is quite foolhardy.

And . . . Bill Schmalfeldt is quite a fool.

Such a fool is Bill Schmalfeldt that he supposed he might bring legal action against Hoge — don’t ask me to explain that — and listened to some of his online friends (including “Breitbart Unmasked”) who encouraged him to think that he, Schmalfeldt, was actually a victim.

Sadly, no.

Friday afternoon I talked to a friend, an attorney of no small reputation, who was somewhat skeptical of the use of Maryland’s law in this manner, which he felt might establish a bad precedent — a chilling effect on free speech, as it were. And so I began to say in a very serious way, how deeply I was concerned about the possible infringement of Bill Schmalfeldt’s First Amendment rights.

Then I laughed and laughed and laughed.

After I’d finished laughing — it took a while, I gotta tell ya — I eventually went over to Hoge’s blog and hit the tip jar. Everybody should.

And then you, too, can laugh and laugh and laugh and . . .

 

Category: Bill Schmalfeldt, The Kimberlin Files

Chicago School System’s $1 Billion Deficit Forces Layoffs for 850 Teachers, Staff

Posted on | June 14, 2013 | 24 Comments

Is this the Hope or the Change?

The worst fears of Chicago Public School teachers and staffers were confirmed Friday when district officials announced it was laying off some 850 employees.
“Given the historic financial crisis facing our District, next year’s budget will not come without painful decisions, which is why we are making tough choices at central office in order to minimize impacts to our classrooms,” said CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett in a statement Friday. “We will continue this work over the next several weeks to further identify reductions to central office spending to help close the District’s $1 billion deficit and make sure that every dollar helps protect precious classroom funding.”
Affected employees are those in the 55 schools closing at the end of the current school year as well as those slated for “turnaround”, WBEZ reports. CPS said a portion of those losing their jobs were either probationary teachers or teachers with unsatisfactory performance reviews.

(Insert “recovery summer” joke here.)

 

Category: Budget, Chicago, Education

Peace Order Against Bill Schmalfeldt: A Defeat for the ‘Troll Rights’ Movement

Posted on | June 14, 2013 | 31 Comments

Bill Schmalfeldt of Elk Ridge, Maryland

John Hoge has the peace order granted today by Maryland Judge Thomas Stansfield, forbidding Bill Schmalfeldt from contacting Hoge.

People who have followed this story know that, in June 2012, Schmalfeldt began cyberstalking Aaron Walker, whose legal conflicts with Brett Kimberlin had become a subject of widespread public attention. From there, Schmalfeldt steadily expanded his target range to include all of Walker’s supporters, including Hoge. By November, when Schmalfeldt took over the pro-Kimberlin site “Breitbart Unmasked,” he made himself a general nuisance. Schmalfeldt’s vicious attacks on Lee Stranahan’s family were particularly distressing. Did I mention that in July 2012, Schmalfeldt created a “Dead Andrew” site to mock the late Andrew Breitbart and disparage Breitbart’s conservative colleagues?

Trying to get judges to understand how the Internet works has proven problematic in the long struggle against Team Kimberlin. Today was a rare victory, as Aaron Walker reports:

Tae Kim showed up as Schmalfeldt’s attorney again, and did present the argument that electronic harassment is not harassment.  The judge rejected that out of hand.
It is also worth noting that Schmalfeldt was also subpoenaed to produce documents.  He refused to comply with that, a fact that Hoge’s able counsel, Zoa Barnes, exploited repeatedly to show that Schmalfeldt didn’t respect the law.
So the case was pretty straightforward from there.  Barnes established that Schmalfeldt had been told repeatedly to stop contacting Hoge and despite being told by numerous people (including a judge), he just kept going, even up until last night.  The judge found the conduct to be harassment, comparing it to junk mail, and granted the peace order.  For the next six months, Bill Schmalfeldt will be prohibited from contacting Hoge by any means.  He can talk about him—that is his First Amendment right—but he can’t actually contact him.

Something else Aaron Walker reports: Brett Kimberlin showed up in court for Schmalfeldt’s hearing.

This is something Schmalfeldt will not explain — this is what the document subpoena was about — because the facts would not likely be flattering to Schmalfeldt’s patron. It is a reasonable surmise that Schmalfeldt’s communications would show the extent to which his harassment of Hoge, Walker and others was undertaken with the encouragement of Brett Kimberlin and Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser. Walker and others believe they have been the targets of an orchestrated campaign of harassment aimed at Kimberlin’s enemies.

One might argue that Bill Schmalfeldt is merely a nutjob, but Kimberlin’s presence at today’s court hearing certainly suggests that the focus of Schmalfeldt’s madness was not entirely random.

Check John Hoge’s blog for further news.




 

 


Category: Bill Schmalfeldt, The Kimberlin Files

The Politics of Feeling

Posted on | June 14, 2013 | 40 Comments

“You can’t do that.”
   But it makes me feel good.
“It’s against the law.”
   Then we should change the law.
“Why?”
   Because it makes me feel good.
“Who cares about your feelings?”
   Hater.

Why does the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” appear in our Declaration of Independence? Most people don’t know enough about history or political philosophy even to understand why this is an important question. Instructed with the simple-minded sentimentalism of an elementary school pageant, people cling to the phrase — along with whatever other bits and pieces of their education managed to stick in their minds — with the fierce emotion of a toddler clinging to his mother. Urging such a person to examine the facts critically is likely to produce antagonism, as if you were somehow unpatriotic for insisting that actual history is preferable to flattering mythology.

Diana West’s new book American Betrayal dares to question some of the sentimental gush about the 20th century that too many of us have swallowed without thinking about it, and the problem is that once people integrate false narratives into their worldview, it’s very hard to get them to re-examine their erroneous beliefs.

That’s why I’m calling attention to “the pursuit of happiness,” that curious phrase of Thomas Jefferson’s which ought to arouse more curiosity than it usually does. There is a timely relevance to this matter, but rather than explain that “ripped from the headlines” factor up front, let me continue with the philosophical discussion and let shallow minds look elsewhere for something to arouse them.

The formula of rights that Jefferson meant to invoke in the preamble of the Declaration was “life, liberty and property” — John Locke’s summary of what fundamental goods of the citizen the government was supposed to protect as the justification of its existence. It helps here to quote Jefferson’s preamble at length:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Please read this carefully and ask, “What’s the point?”

How odd that Americans so seldom ask this question. Thomas Jefferson (who drafted the Declaration as part of a committee that also included Benjamin Franklin and John Adams) wasn’t engaged in some abstract philosophical discussion, after all.

The Declaration was written with a purpose: To rally support for the American rebellion, first among the colonists themselves; secondly, among the English people, as a means of undermining political support for the measures undertaken by the Crown to suppress the rebellion; and finally, as an appeal for support from England’s rival powers in Europe, especially the French.

We are in danger of missing the point of the whole thing if we fail to understand the Declaration in this historical context. Yet most Americans nowadays know so little of actual history that they lack the means by which to contextualize the Declaration’s phrases which, without any facts to encumber them, are allowed to float around in our minds as abstract ideas divorced of any real meaning.

Jefferson invokes “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” as necessitating the Declaration: “Americans are not illiterate savages,” he is telling his readership, whom he knows to include ministers in the courts of France and other nations. In deciding to separate themselves from England and taking up an “equal station” as a nation in their own right, Jefferson says, the American colonists understand that they must justify their cause in the eyes of the world — to recount the grievances of a people oppressed by unlawful despotism — as “the causes which impel them to the separation.”

The very eloquence of Jefferson’s prose, its calm and dignified language, was arguably the strongest part of his argument. It signified that these Americans were not (as the British Crown viewed them) an inferior rabble, but rather men of quality, deserving of respect.

Well, what about that curious phrase, “the pursuit of happiness”?

Whereas Locke and others spoke of “life, liberty and property” as the rights government was supposed to protect, Jefferson did not speak of “property” for two important reasons:

  1. The colonists’ dispute with England arose over issues of taxation. Other European nations, France among them, taxed their people far more heavily than anything that King George III and his ministers had inflicted on the American colonies. If Jefferson had invoked property rights, this may have been interpreted as questioning all taxation, and may have conveyed the impression that the Americans were rebelling for narrowly selfish financial purposes.
  2. There was, after all, the matter of slavery. Among the species of “property” held by Americans were about half a million African slaves, and more than a few opponents of the colonial rebellion had chastised them as hypocrites for demanding a liberty that they denied their servants.

Now, here we might digress into a long examination of this seeming contradiction in the Declaration, which expresses in such elegant phrases a philosophy of universal equality, even though the man who wrote it was the owner of more than 100 slaves. That discussion, however, would be irrelevant to my point, namely that Jefferson’s famous phrase “the pursuit of happiness” cannot properly be understood outside its historical context.

What did Jefferson mean by “happiness,” anyway? Considering that this phrase occurs where “property” would be found in the classic Lockean formulation of rights, Jefferson means “happiness” not as some mere sentimental feeling, but rather in the sense of “good fortune,” which to an 18th-century mind, would mean what we today mean when we say “success” or “prosperity” — the contented enjoyment of the accumulated fruits of one’s labor. Of course, the mind of an 18th-century colonial plantation owner is so remote from our own culture that we might as well try to understand the worldview of the Pharoahs.

Still, my point is exactly this: Our sentimental reverence for these phrases — “We hold these truths to be self-evident” and so forth — hinders our ability to think about what the Declaration was really all about, and unless we have the maturity to transcend our childish emotionalism, we aren’t really thinking, but merely feeling.

This is how we end up in situations where the discussion of public policy is warped by the claim that our arguments are wrong because we might make people feel bad about themselves. Read more

Category: History

Who’s the Liberal: Hannity or Coulter?

Posted on | June 14, 2013 | 52 Comments

Sean Hannity has a bad habit of interrupting and hectoring guests he disagrees with and, in the case of the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, Hannity has evidently decided that criticism of Marco Rubio is impermissible. This led to an interesting exchange Wednesday night:

Hannity asked [Ann Coulter] what she would do about the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants who are already in the United States.
“This is a total fraud and a fig leaf that the American people can’t sleep at night,” Coulter responded, “because the situation is exactly the same today as it was –”
“You’re not answering my question,” Hannity interrupted. “You’re like a liberal.”
Ooh! That got a reaction.
“No, you are like a liberal, making a silly argument,” Coulter retorted. “It’s a straw man argument. Nobody cares. This idea that it’s an emergency, it’s a crisis — it’s preposterous. The same thing will happen as is happening now.”

You can watch the video at ViralRead. And obviously, Coulter is right: Hannity is “like a liberal,” because he is letting his emotional empathy with Marco Rubio overwhelm facts and logic. Also, he’s “like a liberal,” interrupting and hectoring his guest.

 


Category: Ann Coulter, Fox News, Immigration

LIVE AT FIVE: 06.14.13

Posted on | June 14, 2013 | 5 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Obama Authorizes Arming Syrian Rebels After Confirming Assad’s Use Of Chemical Weapons

Wagging the dog?

Wagging the dog?

May include unspecified “military support”


Polls Open In Iran’s Presidential Election
To boycott or to vote in an election likely to be rigged?


Supreme Court Says Natural DNA Not Patentable
However, man-made DNA can be patented



POLITICS
FBI Director Mueller Defends Surveillance Programs

FBI Director Robert Mueller

FBI Director Robert Mueller

Claims NSA programs conform to law, have been approved by Congress; has little to say on IRS probe


Nevada Governor Vetoes Background Check On Private Gun Sales

Opponents Of Arizona Medicaid Expansion Start Push For Referendum


Judge In Ft. Hood Shooter’s Court-Martial To Rule On Former Defense Counsels’ Objections To Working With Accused

Obama Under Pressure On Gay Rights

GOP Leaders Court Social Conservatives At Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference

ObamaCare Coverage For Low-Wage Workers May Not Be Affordable After All



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Prices Down On Asian Profit-Taking After Surge On Upbeat US Economic News: NYMEX $96.68, Brent $104.75
Time To Oil Up Your Portfolio?
Indian Shares Fall For Third Day, Ignoring Fitch Upgrade & Finance Minister’s Pledge
American Airlines Plans To Pack More People On Its Planes
Weekly Jobless Claims Fall To 334K
Steve Case Backs Clothing Startup That Sells Through Facebook
Law Enforcement Wants “Kill Switch” For Stolen Smartphones
Apple Reportedly Looking At Bigger Screens, Multiple Colors
Foursquare Time Machine Teleports You Down Memory Lane
Best Buy Adding Microsoft Mini-Stores At 600 Locations
Five Videogame Trends From E3 2013



SPORTS
Heat’s Big Three Step Up As Miami Takes Game Four

109-93 win ties NBA finals at two apiece

A’s Complete Sweep Of Yankees In 18 Innings

Davis, O’s Outlast Red Sox 5-4 In 13

Rangers Waste Another Good Start By Darvish

NFL To Limit Bags Brought Into Stadiums

Malkin, Penguins Agree To 8-Year Extension

Nats Start Building Momentum With 5-4 Defeat Of Rockies



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Lindsay Lohan Has Left The Building

Off to Malibu

Off to Malibu

Transferring from Betty Ford to Malibu clinic better suited for long-term rehab

Tish Cyrus Files For Divorce

Melissa McCarthy Finally Responds To Rex Reed’s “Tractor-Sized” Insult

Kylie Minogue: Pop Star, Fashion Darling…Who?

Rupert Murdoch To Split With Third Wife Wendi Deng

Emma Watson Plots “Queen Of The Tearling” Franchise With “Harry Potter” Producer

Stephen Spielberg Predicts “Implosion” Of Film Industry

Hair Majesty, Jennifer Aniston

LeAnn Rimes’ “Spitfire” Album Debuts To Disappointing Sales

Paris Hilton In “The Bling Ring”



FOREIGNERS
BJP Insists Narendra Modi Is The Man As Leaders Rush To Save NDA
Nicaragua Approves Rival To Panama Canal; Studies Begin
Erdogan Offers Concessions To Protesters
Speculation About Mandela’s Fate Seen As Cultural Taboo In South Africa
Zimbabwe PM Rejects July 31 Vote
Ethiopia Diverts Nile For Giant Dam, Raising Fears In Egypt, Sudan
Former ROK Spy Chief Indicted For Election Tampering
Czech PM’s Aide, Other Senior Officials Arrested In Anti-corruption Drive
PRC Lands Three Astronauts On Tiangong Space Station



BLOGS & STUFF
Stephen Crowder: Man Of Steel Joins Union! (Video)
Allahpundit: Here We Go
Israel Matzav: Obama – “We Will Know How To Respond”
Jawa Report: State Department Listed Supporters Of Terror Used Chemical Weapons On State Department Listed Terrorists
Blackfive: Obama Plays Wag The Dog With Syria
NRO Corner: Rubio Says Border Security Will Be Centerpiece Of Senate Debate
Bryan Preston: Either Leahy Gave Rubio An Out, Or Rubio’s Playing Into The Democrats’ Hands
Gateway Pundit: Obama Family Trip To Africa Most Expensive In History – Estimated Cost $60-100 Million
Legal Insurrection: Sometimes I Feel Like A Founding Fatherless Child
John McCormack: Pelosi Can’t Explain The Difference Between Gosnell Murders And Late-Term Abortions
Protein Wisdom: Six Big Problems With The Immigration Bill From Someone Who Has Actually Read It
Ann Coulter: If The GOP Is This Stupid, It Deserves To Die


It’s Friday, and that means your FMJRA links are due tonight at midnight. DO IT.


Category: Live at Five

Gary Herndon: ‘Model Citizen’

Posted on | June 13, 2013 | 56 Comments

Readers will recall that the attorney for accused sex offender Kaitlyn Hunt called her client a “model citizen.” And readers may also recall the evidence that the term “model citizen” apparently has a very flexible definition for “Free Kate” supporters:

“Beat her f**king ass, Emily! Beat her ass! Get that bitch!”

Bad causes attract bad people and yesterday I called attention to Gary M. Herndon of Charlotte, N.C., as exemplifying “The #FreeKate Criminal Caucus.” The aforesaid Herndon took exception to that characterization, claiming that the charges were dropped, yadda, yadda, yadda, and threatening legal action against me.

OK, would it surprise you to learn that Gary M. Herndon of Charlotte, N.C., was arrested at least four times between August 2009 and December 2011? The mug shots for each arrest:

Aug. 10, 2009: Trespassing

 

Aug. 24, 2009: Stalking

 

Dec. 7, 2011: Stalking

 

Dec. 7, 2011: Contempt of Court

There seems to be some error in the online records at Mugshots.com, as there are two different mug shots for arrests that the site records as occuring on the same day. But at any rate, so far as we know, Gary M. Herndon of Charlotte, N.C., was entirely innocent of all the crimes with which he was charged. Perhaps there was a conspiracy to frame him for stalking, trespassing, etc., and it may be that, except for this unfortunate two-year streak of arrests, Gary M. Herndon of Charlotte, N.C., has lived an entirely law-abiding life of unimpeachable rectitude.

His support for legalizing sex with 14-year-olds is therefore just what we can expect of such a model citizen, IYKWIMAITYD.

Hey, did I mention that Gary M. Herndon is an Obama supporter?

UPDATE: Readers will notice that Gary M. Herndon has decided that he has the right to comment at this blog, and that if any of his comments are deleted, this proves . . . he’s right! 

Also, if I call attention to the arrest record of Gary M. Herndon, he implies, this proves that I am in the throes of an “obsession.”

Uh, no.

When I began covering the Kaitlyn Hunt saga May 22, this story was all over the news; the Hunt family actually got interviewed on  the Today show. With the able assistance of many others, I steadily dismantled the lies and sophistry from which liberals had assembled the bogus narrative that portrayed Kaitlyn Hunt as a victim. And those who had jumped aboard the “Free Kate” bandwagon then either (a) recognized that they had been bamboozled, or (b) rationalized the situation to defend their emotional investment in the cause.

OK, fine — huddle inside the fact-free No Logic Allowed Zone where the Hunt family and their sympathizers tell you that their sweet little Kate did nothing wrong and that their attempt to overturn Florida’s-age of-consent law is not dangerous. Yet the “Free Kate” crowd is not content with that, and so we see people like Gary M. Herndon engaging in online attacks against Matthew Mason, Jeanette Runyon and others who have been part of the pushback against the Hunt family’s misleading victimhood narrative.

Notice that Gary M. Herndon, who was accused of trespassing and stalking, seems to think that the proprietors of Web sites do not have the right to decide who can participate in the discussion of the comments field. This involves a concept I’ve called “troll rights” — that people who hate you have the right to use your own bandwidth to stalk and harass you. (Please see my April 7 post, “Bill Schmalfeldt, Violentacrez, Barrett Brown and the Scourge of ‘Troll Rights’.”)

A characteristic attribute of the online behavior of sociopathic personalities is that when their anti-social behaviors lead to conflict, the trolls react by demonizing anyone who objects to their disruptive and/or abusive behaviors. Unwilling (or perhaps unable) to accept the validity of criticism, or to tolerate the conflict as a simple disagreement, they cannot walk away from the fight. Incapable of coping with shame, they lash out at their critics, accusing them of bad motives (mala fides) that serve to justify the campaign of vengeance aimed at the person they feel has wronged them.

Live long enough and pay attention, and this pattern becomes sadly familiar. Ancient wisdom is vindicated: Fools despise instruction, the wicked hate virtue, and liars hate the truth.

Another ancient truth: Hit the freaking tip jar. Sometimes I feel guilty getting paid to have this much fun with trolls. But not too guilty.




 

UPDATE II: Linked by Matt at Conservative Hideout, “Stalker Supporters and Degenerate Justifications.” Thanks!

 

Category: Crime, Kaitlyn Hunt

‘Mommy, Why Is an Orange Man on TV?’

Posted on | June 13, 2013 | 11 Comments

Many Fox News viewers have been struggling with feelings of despair, but won’t somebody please think about the children?

According to the lawsuit, a psychologist found that the boys have “approximately equivalent symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that included flashbacks, repeated thoughts and feelings associated with viewing the video of their father shooting himself in the head, re-experiencing trauma, sleep disturbance, and intrusive thoughts.”
The boys will require “long-term psychiatric and/or psychological treatment,” the lawsuit claims . . .

America blames Shepard Smith!

 

Category: Fox News
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