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| Think it can’t happen to you? Think again. Posted: 26 May 2012 12:03 AM PDT As Jimmie has already so eloquently pointed out, yesterday was Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day, and–as expected–the conservative blogging community came together in a truly amazing way. Reading the stories that emerged yesterday was not as shocking to me as it may have been to many who live outside the realm of the political blogosphere and all that it entails. I have my own story, albeit far from the hell that bloggers like Stacy McCain, Mandy Nagy, Aaron Worthing, Patterico, and others have experienced. Most effective conservative bloggers experience harassment on a daily basis. It comes with the territory, and one either develops a very thick skin, or quits writing altogether. Earlier this week, my young friend Madeleine McCaulay announced, in an appearance on Fox & Friends, that she’d received death threats after voicing her opinion on gay marriage. The next day, another blogger friend emailed me, asking for advice on how to handle hate-filled comments from the left. These bloggers learned what many more did today–we can expect the uncivilized, shrill, often vulgar and downright dangerous rhetoric/actions of the left to grow exponentially as the 2012 election approaches. It’s simply how the left rolls. And they need to be exposed. When I started blogging in 2008, I was completely new to the world of politics. I voted, but was otherwise completely uninvolved. I didn’t claim to be an expert, just a mom expressing my own opinion, learning alongside those gracious enough to read my scribbling. My topic, however, was big news–after all, she was the first Republican woman to ever be nominated for Vice President. The local newspaper soon learned about my blogging, and ran a feature article that was originally intended to be a tale of two opinions–pro and anti-Sarah Palin. Because I was the only one to respond, the reporter ran a full feature article in the local section about my blog. This infuriated some local reporters, who decided they’d have a bit of fun at my expense. I made the mistake of reading the posts that were being written about me, and in a moment that showed my complete ignorance of journalistic terms, I left a comment poking fun at the misspelling of the word “lede” in one of the articles. This sparked a bit of a firestorm and, in the local media, I paid dearly for it. (many posts that were written are no longer available) Leftists began leaving comments under the online article, and one lovely woman decided it would be funny to post my street address and phone number for those wishing to make calls for sexual services. (which was soon removed, at my request) To be honest, I hated every second of the attention. I started blogging for two main reasons: to defend Sarah Palin, and to reach other women who–like me–were uninvolved. I wanted to make a difference and motivate others to jump in like I had. So, I knew I couldn’t throw in the towel. Instead, I continued to try to learn all I could about how to articulate the conservative political beliefs I’d claimed to espouse for so many years, and as I learned, I shared. Before long, I began receiving calls and–honestly–I thought they were pranks. Several came from local radio shows wanting me to do on-air debates with Democrat women. I was far from ready for that sort of thing, so I ignored the calls completely. Jokingly, I told my husband that the only media request I’d be responding to would be the one that came from Fox News. You can imagine, then, how surprised I was when he called to tell me that a producer from AC360 had left a message on the answering machine. “You have got to be kidding,” I told him. “Erase it.” He did not, and strongly advised me to return the call. Within a few days, a CNN crew came to my house, turned my living room into a makeshift set, and so began my first media interview. For several hours we filmed and at the request of Randi Kaye, the CNN reporter that interviewed me, six of my friends joined us for a portion of the interview to create a sort of round-table discussion. It went well, the cameraman was especially grateful that I fed him while he was there, and the producer was wonderful. I joked with them several times that they had completely changed my opinion about people from CNN. And they had. The CNN audience, however, was a different story altogether. Within seconds of the first mention of my blog on the Campbell Brown show on the evening of October 9, 2008, the haters began to flood my blog. I’m sure many were locals, after bloggers like Kyle Munzenrieder at the Miami New Times felt the need to follow my story, even suggesting I enjoyed the attention I was getting. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Hate would be too mild a word to express my sentiments for any attention I was getting. I started blogging to make a difference, and that’s truly all I cared about. I agreed to do an interview because I thought it might have a bigger impact and motivate more women like me to get involved. (and, by the way, it did) Once the show aired on AC360 that evening, I realized I’d made a huge mistake. Blogging novice that I was, I had put no counter or filter in place on the blog, so thousands of comments began rolling in. Because I was intent on keeping filth off my blog, I began to read each comment, and was soon overwhelmed with what I was seeing. Vile comments were pouring in faster than I could keep up, in what I believe was a coordinated attempt to completely shut down the blog. Before long, I gave friends passwords to the account so they could help me delete them as quickly as possible. Soon, we realized we weren’t going to be able to stop them, so I put a filter in place, and tried to digest what I was reading. The comments were unbelievable. There were threats of violence, not only against me but also against Sarah Palin. There were multiple threats against me, my children, and my husband–rape threats, death threats–and then the phone calls began. For months, phone calls would come at all hours of the night. Shortly thereafter, I began to receive hate mail at my home address–the address that had been posted in the comment section on the blog where the original article was reposted. Before long, there was even a blog created just to post hate about me and Sarah Palin, as if we were the best of friends. There were several women that seemed to be obsessed with taking me down. They would post at all hours of the day/night, were relentless in their pursuit, and…well…it was all rather eerie and didn’t stop until my family and I moved, and took measures that would ensure we were at least a little more protected than we were prior to this undertaking. The thing that I learned during the mild and thankfully fairly short-lived attack that was launched against me was that these attacks are coordinated. Several of the people who constantly made threats of physical violence against me repeatedly very proudly announced that they were working for the Obama campaign. While some scoffed at the notion, I did not. It is now widely known that the Tides Foundation, George Soros, and others are actively involved in trying to silence conservative bloggers. Wonder why? Conservative bloggers, along with Fox News, have become a much more trusted news source than many of the mainstream media outlets that have previously driven the narrative. The truth must be told, and apparently, according to domestic terrorists like Brett Kimberlin, must be stopped. But how in the world do we stop them? We expose them. For far too long, many of us who have been subjected to the harassment–regardless of severity–of these disgusting human beings have remained silent. Some of us have fought back in our own way, sometimes responding, other times ignoring (which drives them batty). We must remember, however, that we have truth on our side, and it is vital that we share that truth. We must remain strong, continue to rally like we did today, and expose these criminals for what they really are. Most importantly, we must not allow them to win. We must continue the fight for truth, we cannot falter. Will we stop them? Not completely. But we can certainly take measures to protect ourselves, and fight back. **Many who are reading this and other posts on this topic are completely taken aback by the lengths to which the left will go to stop people like Patterico and others from speaking the truth. If you’re one of them, you can help too. Please visit conservative blogs and show your support. Do so by reading and commenting once in a while! We love to hear from our readers–YOU are the very reason we continue to do what we do.**  |
| Why this #BrettKimberlin Thing Matters Posted: 25 May 2012 02:47 PM PDT
I know what you may be saying to yourself right now. “Jimmie, lying felon Brett Kimberlin has done some reprehensible things, sure, but why on Earth should I care what one guy I’ve never heard of is doing to a bunch of other people I’ve never heard of?”. That’s a great question. Here’s your answer. Because it can happen to you, too. Let’s say you find a political issue that really fires you up. It doesn’t have to be a national issue. Maybe your state wants to pass a voter ID law that ensures people can’t just walk into a polling place, give the name of a dead person or the Attorney General of the United States, and get a ballot without even a cursory attempt by the state to confirm they are who they say they are. This becomes a big deal to you and so you start a little blog to put your opinion into the public arena. You want to exercise your First Amendment rights just like everyone else. After a couple weeks, and a few posts, the phone rings in the office of your boss at work. On the other end is someone who professes awful and untrue things about you. You have to go in and explain yourself. Your boss believes you, this time, but why should this have happened in the first place? You put that on your blog, too, because it seems awfully germane to what you’ve been doing. It happens again. And again. It’s getting more difficult for you to do your job because you and your boss have to spend time dealing with the nuisance accusations. All that goes on your blog, including the name given by the person making the accusations. Then you get a knock at the door. There stands a police officer who serves you with court papers. It seems the person you named in your blog post has accused you of harassment and demands you take down blog entries and stop using his name. Now what? You have to go to court and fight this, but that’s going to take a day of leave from work (assuming you get paid leave, of course) and a lawyer. Ever priced a good lawyer? They’re not cheap. You spring for the lawyer after a long, and not entirely pleasant, conversation with your spouse during which you rearrange some of the family finances (Goodbye summer vacation. Goodbye new clothes for the kids for a few months!). You go to court and win. Problem solved, right? Not so fast. There’s another knock at the door a couple of days later. Another police officer stands there and this time he has a criminal summons for harassment and some other stuff. Your accuser claims you assaulted him outside the courtroom, menaced him, put him in fear for his life. You didn’t, but now you have to prove it. Another spousal conversation ensues during which there are some heated words. More shuffling of the family finances (Goodbye repairs to your family car. Goodbye dinners not made out of a box!). Another call to your lawyer. Before that court case can land, though, there’s a knock at the door in the middle of the night. You get up to answer it to find yourself shoved into your house by a masked man with a gun. He’s yelling at you — WHERE IS YOUR WIFE! WHERE ARE YOUR KIDS! ARE THEY ALIVE?? — and you croak out “yes” about the same time you finally figure out he’s a police officer. There are other officers, too, filling your house, tromping up the stairs, dragging you out into a waiting squad car. They wake your wife and kids, who have to see their Daddy taken away in handcuffs. Crying. Screaming. Questions you can’t answer because you’re under arrest. By the time you get to the police station, you learn that someone called 911, pretended to be you, and said you killed your wife. The cops thought they had a hot murder scene and sent in the SWAT team. Now you know, because you pay attention to the news, that sometimes things get a bit crazy when SWAT teams go into a house. People get killed — sometimes cops, sometimes innocent homeowners. You’re fortunate. Yes, you still have a court case or two and the bill for that lawyer has pushed well past your ability to easily pay for it, but you’re alive and your kids are alive. A few more days pass, uneventfully. You’re starting to feel more safe. Your lawyer is handling things in court. To be sure, your defense isn’t quite a slam-dunk, but you’ll come out of it okay, albeit lighter in your pocketbook by many thousand dollars. Then your wife calls from her work place and her voice trembles in a way that raises the hairs on the back of your neck. Her boss got a telephone call from the same guy who called you, a guy whose background you know because he’s reportedly done it to other people as well. This time he dropped a few more nuggets and one of them was a reference to where you live. Think about that for a second. This guy who apparently knows where you live? He was convicted of setting bombs all over the town of Speedway, Indiana. One of those bombs was in a high school parking lot while an football game was going on. It crippled the man who picked it up. This same guy, police say, plotted to get rid of at least one witness and others who prosecuted his case and planned to have someone plant another bomb in the hopes it would help overturn his conviction. Obviously, it is time to pack up and go. That’s going to cost more money, though. It’ll also uproot your kids from their schools and friends. Your life will change in one of the biggest ways possible, and you’ll still have to come back for the court proceedings. In the meantime, though, that one issue that brought you to the public arena in the first place, what happened to that? You haven’t been able to write much about it. You haven’t been able to get to any of the public meetings or report on the legislative hearings. You haven’t been able to talk to your friends and neighbors about it — all they want to know about are the court cases and the job thing and what the heck happened last night with that SWAT team? The issue is nearly forgotten because you’re in a fight for your freedom and ability to live peaceable as a responsible citizen of your community. That, folks, is why this story is important. The story of lying felon Brett Kimberlin’s lawfare efforts, his various criminal convictions and schemes to deal with those convictions through yet more violent crimes, the massive amount of money left-wing groups have poured into his political non-profit organization, and the work he’s done win the U.S. State Department through that group, are all about the First Amendment and what I see as his attempts to use our civil and criminal legal systems to stop people from freely engaging in the political process. My hypothetical story (and it is entirely hypothetical though I’ve provided a few illustrative links) may never happen to you or anyone you know. But you can’t be entirely sure of that. I thought I was until I learned that my friend Stacy was leaving his home, uprooting his family, and heading off to Parts Unknown. What lying felon Brett Kimberlin and his political allies have done to Mandy Nagy, Aaron Worthing, Patterico, Stacy McCain, and others (including Senator Orrin Hatch) is unconscionable. It ought to make you just a little bit angry. None of us ought to stand for it, and that includes out elected officials who have it within their power to make life very difficult for lying felon Brett Kimberlin and anyone else who abuses our legal systems to squelch the First Amendment rights of ordinary law-abiding citizens. Ace has it exactly right here. It’s going to take Congressional action to look into the possible abuse of the 501(c)3 charity and to make sure such abuse is far more difficult in the future. It’s going to take Congressional action to punish harassment and intimidation that squelch free speech. It’s going to take Congressional action to ensure that vexatious litigant laws get passed and have real teeth in them when they do. Your free speech is at stake here. What happened to Stacy, et. al. can happen to you. But there are a few things you can do to make that less likely.
Get involved. Help out, even if it’s just with a ten dollar donation. There’s a reason political speech is protected as carefully as it is in the Constitution and we all must make sure it stays that way.  |
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