National Day of Blogger SILENCE

Let's parse this. Shall we?

A group of left wing thugs is using threats, lawsuits, and frivolous SWAT raids (!?) in an attempt to silence bloggers who expose their antics. 

Fear not! Ace of Spades has a plan.

The plan is to respond to attempts to silence us by...being silent.
...
...
...

That'll learn'em!

I think this is silly.
Besides, I generally blog about fluff, and I only have about 6 readers anyway.

So FOO! on that 'being quiet' crap.

Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day was moderately successful in getting this some coverage, so it seems that a linkaroozy is a better plan.

First, Let us review.

Aaron Walker, who blogged under the name Aaron Worthing did a couple of posts on Brett Kimberlin, a thug and convicted terrorist who has been the recipient of a fair amount of leftwing money and is reportedly a business associate of one Neal Rauhauser. This led to some quite disturbing harassment of Walker by Kimberlin. Walker posted a comprehensive Teal Deer on that harassment which caused a bit of buzz in the right-o-sphere.

There is a much more concise round up of that here.

The harassment that Aaron Walker endured to that point  included quite a bit of SLAPPing.

Popehat Blog explains SLAPPing.

  SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. A malicious or frivolous lawsuit that chills speech

Read the whole thing.

Ultimately this SLAPPing got Walker and his wife fired from their jobs, as their employer could not employ people who were being stalked by a mad bomber (for liability reasons) ... getting outed as right wing bloggers probably didn't help.

(This brings to mind the case of Paul Mirengoff being forced to stop blogging when he was revealed to be a blogger at Power Line. )

Well this put a bee in several other blogger bonnets and they started blogging about Kimberlin. This led to the next acronym we are going to learn today, and that's...

SWATTing


It turns out that last year, the blogger who goes by the handle 'Paterrico' had had a run in with these people and as a result had been pulled out of his house at gunpoint just after midnight. Someone had called 911 and said that there was a murder in progress in Paterrico's house, and the murderer was heavily armed. The police naturally sent in the SWAT team. Paterrico mentioned this incident in a post on Walkers troubles and shortly thereafter  Red States Erik Ericson was SWATed as well.

I've linked to Pattricio's post on the incident before, but if you haven't read it you should. It goes into considerable detail regards the open discussion of and threats of lawfare by these people.

Some of the things they are doing:

Publishing bloggers home addresses..
Filing workplace complaints
SLAPPing
Frivolous stalking claims.
 
...and of course SWATing, which can get someone killed.

Not listed there: Threats

RS McCain a journalist who had been covering the story on his blog recieved info from Kimberlin that Kimberlin knew where his wife worked and where Stacy lived. Stacy and his family are now taking an extended vacation at the super-secret blogger safehouse (far beneath the earths crust).

All this brings us back to Aron Walker who not only lost his job as retaliation for posting true facts about a left wing terrorist, but on March 29th he went to court to deal with yet another frivolous claim by Kimberlin.

He was then arrested.

There is more on that here, here and here.

A few days later Ali Akbar had his family threatened.
More on that here and here.

...and that sums up our previous posts on this.

Since then there have been a few developments.
Eugene Volokh is working pro-bono to help Aaron Walker.
The story has gotten a brief mention on FOX.
RSMcCain managed to get a story to the American Spectator from his bunker. It's a nice summary and makes the important point that that the whole thing was set in motion when various righties acted on a tip from far left blogger Seth Allen, who was appalled at the association several on his side had with goons like Kimberlin. Despite being somewhat to the left of Marx, Seth was also subject to some crazy and expensive SLAPPing from Kimberlin as well.

There is a legal defense fund for Walker here.

Popehat has further thoughts on what has transpired on the legal front in recent days.

Senator Saxby Chambliss is asking for federal action....I'm grateful but skeptical as I'm afraid that this will not stop at prosecution, but will result in some new law that will have all manner of unintended consequences.
*****************************
Yesterday there was a tangentially related development.

While not directly related to this particular drama there was, yesterday, a startling example of the same sort of thing.

Specifically SLAPPing...

The whackadoodle prosecutor in the racially charged Zimmerman/Martin case has threatened to sue Harvard...because Alan Dershowitz pointed out the holes in her case. (UPDATE: Professor Jacobson has the letter!)


The Dersh^tm speaks...

If Angela Corey doesn’t like the way freedom of expression operates in the United States, there are plenty of countries where truthful criticism of prosecutors and other government officials result in disbarment, defamation suits and even criminal charges.

We do not want to become such a country.

Indeed we don't.
...and that is why all of this matters.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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