Who Will Protect the Freedom to Blog?

[Geee]

National Review:

Free speech is under fire. Online thugs are targeting bloggers (mostly conservative, but not exclusively) who have dared to expose a convicted bomber, a man who is now a perjuring vexatious litigant enjoying a comfy life as a liberally subsidized social-justice operative. Where do your elected representatives stand on this threat to our founding principles?

On Wednesday, Senator Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.) bravely stepped forward to press this vital issue. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Chambliss decried the “harassing and frightening actions” of Internet menaces who recently have gone after several citizen journalists and activists of the conservative new media.

Representative Kenny Marchant (R., Texas) added his voice, telling Holder in a statement that he is “very afraid of the potential chilling effects that these reported actions may have in silencing individuals who would otherwise be inclined to exercise their Constitutional right to free speech.” And the American Center for Law and Justice, a leading conservative free-speech public-interest law firm, announced it was providing legal representation to the National Bloggers Club — a new-media association that has provided support and raised funds for targets of this coordinated harassment. (Full disclosure: I volunteer on the National Bloggers Club board of directors.)

The ACLJ described the importance of the case very simply: “Free speech is under attack.”

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Chambliss and Marchant called specific attention to one terrifying tactic against these bloggers: SWAT-ting. These hoaxes occur “when a perpetrator contacts local police to report a violent incident at a target’s home.” Callers disguise their true identities and locations in order to provoke SWAT and police forces into descending on targets’ homes in a high-firepower response that is potentially deadly.

Online conservatives — and now ABC News — have reported three recent SWAT-ting victims: New Jersey–based Mike Stack, a blogger and Twitter user targeted last summer after he helped expose the shady social-media activities of then–N.Y. Democratic representative Anthony Weiner; California blogger Patrick Frey, a deputy district attorney at Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office who recently posted on his blog (Patterico.com) a bone-chilling account and audio of his summer 2011 SWAT-ting; and CNN contributor and RedState.com managing editor Erick Erickson, whose Georgia home was targeted by a faker who claimed an “accidental shooting” there late last month.

[Geee]

Online Armageddon

Somewhere between the time in October 2010 he threatened to sue Patrick Frey and the decision last week to make a similar threat toward Ali Akbar, Brett Kimberlin crossed a Rubicon of desperation and burned the bridge behind him. In the past three weeks, Kimberlin and his allies have escalated their deceitful war against conservative bloggers to the point that it cannot be ignored, and must now be fought to a conclusion with the entire political world watching.

A convicted perjurer and drug smuggler, Kimberlin became infamous as the "Speedway Bomber" who terrorized an Indiana town in 1978. Kimberlin somehow managed to secure a well-funded role in the progressive movement after being released from federal prison in 2001. Ten days ago, when I covered Kimberlin's bizarre activities in an American Spectator column ("Terror by Any Other Name"), the director of the 501©3 non-profit Justice Through Music Project was just beginning to gain renewed attention. On May 25, a broad spectrum of conservative online activists joined together for "Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day" to call attention to Kimberlin's harassment and intimidation of bloggers who wrote about his criminal history.

During his 17 years in federal custody, Kimberlin became a skillful "jailhouse lawyer," filing more than 100 legal proceedings on his own behalf and, over the past two years, he has deployed those methods in a series of lawsuits and criminal accusations against his chosen targets. Another non-profit Kimberlin co-founded, Velvet Revolution, made headlines by offering rewards for evidence of wrongdoing by public figures including GOP strategist Karl Rove and U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue. And then a left-winger who used the alias "Socrates" began to speak out on a number of Internet forums, expressing his suspicion that Kimberlin and his Velvet Revolution partner, prominent liberal blogger Brad Friedman, were running a dishonest scam.

 

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/06/08/online-armageddon

[Valin]

@Geee

 

I've been doing updates on this story here

 

Here's the thing the big left wing sites have been silent about this.