Scary Stuff in the Blog World

Only for many, it has spilled over into the real world. People have lost their jobs, had to flee their homes, and had swat teams called to their homes via hoax phone calls. Ugly. Here's some longer background information on the Speedway Bomber. Conservative blogger Aaron Worthing, actually Aaron Walker, details his claim that the subject of the above video attempted to 'out' him for the purpose of making his name and home address known to those who might object to his 'everybody Draw Mohammed Day," and then frame him for a crime he didn't commit. It's long, but well documented. Apparently, a new harassment technique is to call the local SWAT team from an anonymous phone, claim to be the person you wish to harass, give that person's number, and then tell the SWAT team you've just killed your family. The sort of psychopaths who do this like to be on the phone with their victims when the SWAT team arrives. This happened recently to Patterico, or Patrick Frey. Guess who was on the phone with him, even though it was kind of late at night? Now he heads a 501C3 nonprofit, and guess who donates? Michelle Malkin writes:

Over the past eight years that I’ve been blogging and operating Internet media companies, I’ve witnessed or experienced firsthand some of the most unhinged behavior against conservatives — from individual harassment and intimidation, to e-mail bombs and e-mail hackings, to troll infestations, distributed denial of service attacks, coordinated spam block attacks, and death threats. Over the past twenty years that I’ve worked in daily opinion journalism, written books, and traveled across the country speaking in every type of venue, I’ve always believed that the most effective response to attempted censorship of conservatives is more speech, not less. More. Louder. Bolder. For conservatives online, it is also a time-tested truism that there is great strength in numbers. When bloggers, activists, video content creators, and Twitter users on the Right unite behind common principles — fighting jihadi propaganda, exposing corruption, calling out media bias, following the progressive money trail, holding the Republican Party’s feet to the fire, etc. — we can accomplish uncommon things.

There's a comprehensive read here. Here's a newspaper report at the time- note that according to the report, while still in jail, he attempted to hire one man to kill the assistant US Attorney who handled his prosecution and a witness. He attempted to hire another man to commit a 'copycat style' crime while he was still in jail, so that police would be convinced he wasn't the killer. And he attempted to hire somebody to lure the attorney and a witness into a compromising situation and video tape them. There is so much more. Here Stacy McCain outlines a very ugly campaign against Tea Partiers. It's vile. It's by Neal Rauhauser (“Stranded Wind”). Patterico explains his understanding of the connection between Kimberline and Rauhauser here. Now note this from Protein Wisdom= 'Stranded Wind' authored post titled "Organized Intimidation? Ambush Time." (it's been removed, you can see it through the Wayback Mchine), and this excerpt:

I carefully considered publishing the particulars of how I am handling this and I feel openness has merit. The right has a core of calculating leadership but their most vocal supporters are quite often prey to all sorts of conspiracy theory. Planting the idea (quite true) that some of their not so crazy sounding second and third tier players may be Progressive agents will amp up the paranoia and drive the entire community further to the fringe as they seek to weed out our people.

People engaged in provocative online conduct feel insulated; they’re in the comfort of their own home, if they’ve engaged in a little bit of caution they may feel completely anonymous, and this emboldens them. Specifying the strategy we’ll use to break their anonymity won’t permit any mitigation on their part without adjusting their behavior, which counts as a win for us. We’re dealing with people who have likely had no interaction with the court system beyond a traffic ticket; the potential for a pro se litigant to force them into expensive, long distance, lengthy, discovery laden litigation doesn’t seem to cross their minds. The reality of travel, or frightful expenses, or summary judgments needs to be made real. We probably need to make a very visible example of at least one of them before the rest understand.

Keep in mind that for many Progressives, confronting them with facts is provocative conduct that must be punished, or at least shut up.

And note that this is guy has been defended by so-called Progressives, funded by them, often allowed themselves to be led down a very dark path by him:

Kimberlin was convicted as the so-called “Speedway Bomber,” who terrorized the city of Speedway, Indiana, by detonating a series of explosives in early September 1978. In the worst incident, Kimberlin placed one of his bombs in a gym bag, and left it in a parking lot outside Speedway High School. Carl DeLong was leaving the high school football game with his wife when he attempted to pick up the bag and it exploded. The blast tore off his lower right leg and two fingers, and embedded bomb fragments in his wife’s leg. He was hospitalized for six weeks, during which he was forced to undergo nine operations to complete the amputation of his leg, reattach two fingers, repair damage to his inner ear, and remove bomb fragments from his stomach, chest, and arm. In February 1983, he committed suicide.

He left a bomb in a gym bag in a high school parking lot? Updated to add- see Popehat's excellent post where he explains once again that free speech isn't free speech if it's only for people we like. Then scroll down to Ted Francis' comment that no, basically, people he doesn't like do not deserve free speech, and anyway, he paid his debt to society and Kimberlin's victims deserved it. And remember that Kimberlin blew a leg off a man, a total stranger. He has refused to pay off the civil suit judgment against him filed by that man's widow- to this day.