The Other McCain

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

Somebody Tell Nina Totenberg Her Buddy Brett Kimberlin Is Making News Again

Posted on | May 28, 2012 | 80 Comments

“The tale-teller was a short fellow who needed to be looked up to, who consistently sought relationships with females much younger than himself, who could boast to an eighteen-year-old woman he’d just met on a bus that he was ‘one of the strongest men in the world.'”
— Mark Singer, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin (1996), Page 312

“In e-mails and Web postings from Kimberlin’s two organizations, Justice Through Music and Velvet Revolution, he intersperses occasionally useful pieces of information . . . with a hefty portion of bunk, repeatedly asserting as fact things that are not true. . . . Kimberlin has found a home in the blogosphere . . .”
— Massimo Calabresi, Time magazine, “The Wizard of Odd,” Jan. 5, 2007

“Using two popular leftist blogs, the 56-year-old from Bethesda, Md., has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public and left-leaning foundations by promising to put conservatives he disagrees with in jail, often with offers of large rewards. So far — without success — he has called for the arrest of Karl Rove, Andrew Breitbart, Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue, Massey Energy Chairman Don Blankenship and other high-profile public figures.
“A review of tax filings for Kimberlin’s blogs, ‘Velvet Revolution’ and ‘Justice Through Music,’ raises troubling questions about whether his ‘nonprofit’ operations are dedicated to public activism — or are just a new facade for a longtime con artist.”
— Ed Barnes, Fox News, “Leftist Blogger’s Criminal Past Raises Questions About His Real Intent,” Oct. 19, 2010

“In sworn testimony in a court proceeding involving Seth Allen, Kimberlin falsely claimed to have been ‘secretly exonerated’ (???) of the heinous crimes for which he was convicted in 1981.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Lying Felon Can’t Stop Lying,” May 24

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
In the fall of 1988, when convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin was still locked up in federal prison and claiming to have sold dope to GOP vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle, every political reporter in the country wanted to write about Kimberlin. In his 1996 book, Mark Singer recounts how National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg spoke to Kimberlin two or three times every day in late October and early November 1988.

So why, 24 years later, are Nina Totenberg and the rest of the elite media ignoring what their old friend’s been up to lately? Tom Blumer of Newsbusters asks, “Where Is the Establishment Press?”

Leading blogger Robert Stacy McCain has decided that he and his family must leave their home and that they can’t go back; he officially describes his location as “whereabouts unknown.” On Friday, Patterico, an assistant DA by day, revealed a campaign of harassment involving “workplace complaints, publication of personal information such as home addresses and pictures of residences, bogus allegations of criminal activity, whisper campaigns, frivolous legal actions, and frivolous State Bar complaints.” Oh, and he was “SWATted” — he had his home stormed by a SWAT team, complete with a police helicopter and a spotlight. Someone pretending to be him “called the police to say I had shot my wife.” An audio expert Patterico hired concluded that “it is probable” that the hoax call was placed by a Kimberlin associate known to have tweeted a public threat against himself and his family.
Erick Erickson of RedState got “SWATted” Sunday evening; this time, “Someone called 911 (pretending to be) from my address claiming there had been an accidental shooting.”

This is a complicated story and difficult to tell. So far as I know, it started in October 2010 when Mandy Nagy of Breitbart.com published her 3,600-word article about Kimberlin. Also in 2010, Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser, a Democrat campaign consultant, was accused in the “TwitterGate” episode of targeting Tea Party activists for obscene harassment online. (Also see, “Democrat Cyber Stealth Revealed: Neal Rauhauser & Radical E-Thugs,” Patrick Read, Oct. 13, 2010.) In 2011, one of the online activists who helped push the Anthony Weiner scandal into the news, Mike Stack got “SWATted” and has subsequently pressed charges of harassment against Rauhauser.

Liberal blogger Seth Allen (@prepostericity) was critical of Kimberlin and Brad Friedman, partners in the tax-exempt non-profit Velvet Revolution. Allen was sued by Kimberlin. Allen got legal assistance from attorney Aaron Walker, who blogged under the pseudonym Aaron Worthing. Walker then became a target of Kimberlin’s harassment, with the result that both Walker and his wife lost their jobs.

Such is the story that I learned on May 17, when Walker published his 28,000-word account of his entanglement with Kimberlin. Immediately recognizing this as a newsworthy story, I began reporting about it on my blog. Four days later, on May 21, Kimberlin contacted my wife’s employer, raising security concerns for the employer and causing me to leave my home in order to be able to continue reporting the story without potentially endangering others.

Reacting to Kimberlin’s harassment of Allen, Walker, myself and others, Lee Stranahan declared that Friday, May 25, would be “Everybody Blog Brett Kimberlin Day” — with remarkable results. As a journalistic fugitive, I continued reporting the story:

The story continues gaining momentum. The Sunday “SWATting” of Erickson, a CNN contributor, guarantees that this story won’t go away soon. Michelle Malkin has published a “to-do list” for those who want to put a stop to the intimidation and harassment:

The massive blogburst about convicted bomber and online terrorist ringleader Brett Kimberlin ended on Friday, but this is an ongoing legal, financial, and emotional morass for the targets. And it has now entangled new victims. It is precisely because each and every blogger, Twitter users, activist, talk show host, and podcaster is potential new prey for sicko Kimberlin and his cabal that we must all stand together.

“Online terrorist ringleader” is a rather strong term. I prefer Jimmie Bise Jr.’s neutral objective phrase, “Lying Felon Brett Kimberlin,” but why quibble over semantics at this point?

What we have here is a remarkable news story, and the story is not about me. It’s not about Aaron Walker or Mike Stack or Seth Allen or Patrick Frey or Erick Erickson or Mandy Nagy.

This is a story about Brett Kimberlin. What is truly dumbfounding is that Kimberlin’s old media buddies like Nina Totenberg think we’re too stupid to notice them ignoring it. 

 Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

 

 

UPDATE: Linked by Andrea Shea King at Radio Patriot, Bob Belvedere at Camp of the Saints, That Mr. G. Guy, Da Tech Guy, That Innocuous Girl and The Lonely Conservative — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

Thanks also to all the many readers who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund to help defray the expense involved in this unexpected road trip to the Undisclosed Location.

 




 

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:

 

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Meghan, You Ignorant Slut

Posted on | May 28, 2012 | 39 Comments

“Last week, I went on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show PoliticsNation to talk about extremism in the Republican Party. As a socially liberal Republican, this happens to be a topic I know a lot about. On the show, I told Sharpton that many Republicans treat me like a freak, especially the extreme-right members of my party. I went on to say that I don’t understand the appeal of extreme bloggers such as Michelle Malkin and the late Andrew Breitbart. That’s all I said, but it only took a few hours before my comments were posted out of context on a variety of blogs that suggested I was viciously attacking Breitbart. My Twitter feed exploded with insults, including the suggestion that I should kill myself.”
— Meghan McCain, The Daily Beast, “Cut It Out, Internet Bullies!”

Let’s start here: In what sense, Cousin, are you a Republican?

Because I’m trying to think of any recent occasion in which you have actually done anything to help the Republican Party.

Nothing immediately comes to mind.

Instead, you go on TV (and write columns of insipid nonsense for Tina Brown) denouncing Republicans and conservatives as extremists.

Michelle Malkin — extreme!

Andrew Breitbart — extreme!

In fact, I think your resentment toward them is not a matter of issues or ideology, but simply the fact that the “extremists” you denounce are actually more popular than you.

You seem to be under the delusion that you are entitled to demand respect from the honest people you insult, simply because your family is rich and your father is a senator. You are a stereotype of the spoiled little rich girl who can’t understand why people don’t automatically kowtow to her whims.

So while you’re whining about people calling you a “fat pig” on Twitter, other people are actually dealing with far more serious forms of harassment and intimidation. Yet I don’t seem to recall you saying one word about the plight of Aaron Worthing, and you were notably MIA on “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day.”

Your selfishness is the root of your problems, and if you had any valuable skill or talent, I’d say you were impairing your usefulness by your ill-considered antics. As it is, you’re just another obnoxious D-List celebrity bimbo, and they’re a dime a dozen.

Category: Meghan McCain

ERICK ERICKSON GETS SWATTED

Posted on | May 27, 2012 | 85 Comments

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
The news reached me by phone tonight, just as I was trying to get to sleep: Someone has targeted Red State’s Erick Erickson with the same dangerous hoax that had previously been used against Patterico.

UPDATE: Erickson writes at Red State:

Last week we spent a lot of time writing about Brett Kimberlin and the incident involving blogger Patterico where someone spoofed his phone number and told 911 he had shot his wife.
Tonight, my family was sitting around the kitchen table eating dinner when sheriffs deputies pulled up in the driveway.
Someone called 911 from my address claiming there had been an accidental shooting.
It wasn’t nearly the trauma that Patterico suffered, but I guess the Erickson household is on somebody’s radar.
Luckily it was two sheriffs deputies who knew me and I had already, last week, advised the Sheriff’s Department to be on the look out for something like this.

It’s no secret that I sharply criticized Erickson during the 2012 presidential primary campaign, but last week he mentioned me in writing about the Kimberlin case, which was a gracious gesture. This situation is more important than individual personalities.

UPDATE II: Instapundit: “Really, if the goal is to keep people from writing about Brett Kimberlin, this doesn’t seem like the way to do it.”

Indeed, given that Erickson is a CNN contributor, this incident certainly should provide the mainstream media a solid reason to stop ignoring the Kimberlin case.

UPDATE III: Patterico: “Anyone else think CNN is going to talk about SWATting now?”

UPDATE IV: Now the top thread at Memeorandum.

Category: Crime, Red State, Terrorism, The Kimberlin Files

Brett Kimberlin’s Heiress Aunt Helping Fund His Tax-Exempt Harassment

Posted on | May 27, 2012 | 161 Comments

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Convicted felon Brett Kimberlin is the nephew of a wealthy Maryland woman who has contributed to a foundation that helped fund a 501(c)3 organization of which Kimberlin is the director. Kimberlin’s activities have recently attracted widespread attention because of his attempts to intimidate and harass bloggers who wrote about his criminal history.

Harriet Crosby, 66, reportedly an heiress to the General Mills fortune, was one of the original donors to the Threshold Foundation, which contributed $20,000 to Kimberlin’s Justice Through Music Project in 2008, according to database research I reported May 19.

The Threshold Foundation was started by a group of wealthy devotees of environmentalism and trancendental meditation. The foundation’s “very liberal” view, researcher Ron Arnold has written, “saw American society as rife with injustice and in need of radical transformation.” Threshold has been affiliated with the Tides Foundation, linked to left-wing billionaire George Soros.

A 2009 profile of Crosby in the alumni magazine of the elite Putney School — a private academy in Vermont, where the annual tuition is $46,900 for boarding students — described her as “active” in the tax-exempt non-profit group Velvet Revolution, which Kimberlin helped start in association with liberal blogger Brad Friedman.

Velvet Revolution gained notoriety by making unsubstantiated claims that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election through vote fraud. A 2007 Time magazine profile of Kimberlin described how he “found a home in the blogosphere” by “repeatedly asserting as fact things that are not true.” At one point, Kimberlin offered a $100,000 reward for proof of his assertion that President George W. Bush’s re-election was obtained through vote fraud, a reward that was never paid. Velvet Revolution has also unsuccessfully sought criminal prosecution of various public figures including GOP strategist Karl Rove, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the late New Media entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart.

The connection between Kimberlin and Crosby — verified by a 2009 article in the Montgomery County (Md.) Gazette — was reported today by Tee Zieldors, who credits independent blogger Seth Allen (whose Twitter account is @Preposterocity) for the tip. 

It was Allen’s writings about Kimberlin that resulted in him being the defendant in a lawsuit brought by Kimberlin. Allen’s lawyer, Aaron Worthing, subsequently drew attention to his own experiences with Kimberlin in a 28,000-word account on May 17.

Kimberlin is scheduled to appear in a Maryland court Tuesday for a hearing about a “peace order” he has sought against Walker.

* * * * *

The National Bloggers Club has created KimberlinFiles.org to help call attention to the Kimberlin case and, as the non-profit goup’s president Ali Akbar says, to enable “supporters to make financial donations to a relief fund as a show of support.”

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

UPDATE: Linked by Legal Insurrection, Da Tech Guy, The Camp of the Saints, Little Miss Attila, That Innocuous Girl and Daley Gator — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:


Category: Aaron Worthing, Crime, Terrorism, The Kimberlin Files

The Mighty Scott Adams

Posted on | May 27, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Nails Socialism in a panel:

Amazing how the “nobody wins unless everybody wins” mentality means that failure is the new success.

Category: humor

Brett Kimberlin Really Hates Racists, Eh?

Posted on | May 27, 2012 | 50 Comments

“For three months, Kimberlin resided at the federal prison in prison in Terra Haute, Indiana, in a unit reserved for convicts awaiting long-term assignments to other institutions. . . . He had resisted a sexual predator by tossing powdered chlorine cleanser in his face. The predator was African American, Kimberlin told me, and as he fended him off he shouted, ‘You f–king n–r! You motherf–kng n–r! Get the f–k away from me! I’ll kill you, you motherf–r!’ Kimberlin enjoyed telling this story.”
— Mark Singer, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin (1996), Page 183

Category: The Kimberlin Files

S.E. Cupp Photoshop Was Foul; What About Roseanne’s Glasses?

Posted on | May 27, 2012 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

This blog was distracted by the #BrettKimberlin story and caring for a 10-month-old, respectively. So we’re just catching up with Really Important Things, like the tawdry attack on S.E. Cupp in Hustler. As if Newsweek needed any more pornographic ideas for its covers.

Green Party presidential hopeful and all around ignis obscurus Roseann Barr was in typical, douse-fire-with-gasoline form on the subject of Cupp:

“Your defense of women who hate women is more disgusting than putting pics of penises in their mouths, excuse me!” she tweeted, after Ms. Magazine co-founders Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan chose to stand behind Cupp.
After Morgan responded over Twitter, saying she was not defending S.E. Cupp’s “atrocious” politics, but rather, standing up for a fellow woman, Barr unleashed a fury of related tweets:
“…defending the indefensible [S.E. Cupp and her politics] is not a common sense thing-it leads to lemming-like thought patterns [in my opinion]”
“…when a woman who works to dispossess women is attacked- i dont think we should come 2 her aid”
“@secupp what goes around seems to come around.”
“sometimes feminist spokeswomen are pro-censorship, and that wont work in America. Supporting woman haters ‘rights’ backfires on them.”
Some of her tweets are certainly more intelligible than others, but the meaning is quite apparent: S.E. Cupp somehow deserved to be foully targeted because of her politics.

Never mind what happened to Cupp: what went wrong with Roseanne’s wardrobe? Read more

Category: Barack Obama, Celebrities

Only Another 21 Or So ‘Worst Weeks Ever’

Posted on | May 26, 2012 | 19 Comments

by Smitty

. . .until Americans can tell BHO just how much we love him, with finality.

Via Red Alexandria. I can only predict the news will get weirder between now and then.
Hayward at Human Events:

What I believe we are seeing here is the beginning of a “preference cascade,” a term made popular by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame. It’s a fascinating concept, applied originally to the process by which oppressive governments fall.
A large population can be dominated by a small group only by persuading all dissenters that they stand alone. Most of their fellow citizens are portrayed as loyal to the regime, and everyone around the dissident is a potential informer. A huge dissident population can therefore be suppressed, by making them believe they’re all lonely voices in the wilderness… until the day they begin realizing they are not alone, and most people don’t support the regime. The process by which dissent becomes seen as commonplace, and eventually overwhelming, is the preference cascade.
. . .
That’s what began happening over the past couple of weeks: a large number of people discovered it’s okay to strongly disapprove of Barack Obama. His popularity has always been buttressed by the conviction – very aggressively pushed by his supporters – that disapproval of his personal or official conduct is immoral. You’re presumptively “racist” if you disagree with him, or at least a greedy tool of the Evil Rich, or a “Tea Party extremist.”

I feel so bad for Barack. No, I don’t.

Category: Barack Obama
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