The Media’s Complicity in the Birther Issue

The Media’s Complicity in the Birther Issue

via Commentary Magazine by Peter Wehner on 5/30/12

Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu does a fine job schooling CNN's Soledad O'Brien over Donald Trump and the so-called birther issue. In saying this, I should point out that I would go further than the Romney campaign in repudiating Trump, who is a noxious figure in American politics. What Trump is doing in calling into question Obama's citizenship is attempting to delegitimize the president, to argue that his presidency is unconstitutional and that he is alien. Crossing that line damages our political discourse and American politics more broadly.
There's of course no rulebook one can consult when it comes to the matter of repudiating supporters. It's a judgment call that has to be done on a case-by-case basis. In the case of Trump, who is a prominent Romney supporter, his attraction to conspiracy theories deserves a strong rebuke. When a political party gives a home to those who peddle in paranoia – a home to self-promotional cranks — it leads to an erosion of credibility.  Romney ought to say so.
With that said, CNN is complicit in this political circus as well. My point isn't that the issue shouldn't be covered at all; it is that, as Governor Sununu points out, the network is fixated on Trump and the birther issue. It's drawn to it like a moth to a flame in a pitch-dark night. Here's the problem. Bill Maher donated a million dollars to a super PAC supporting President Obama, and to my knowledge Obama hasn't distanced himself from Maher's crude attacks on women. Yet CNN seems remarkably indifferent to this story. I wonder why.

Beyond that, it's worth pointing out the media's tendency to bemoan what it promotes. There are dozens of significant and complicated topics that CNN could explore with care. But it has decided to hyper-focus on Donald Trump and the birther issue. That's bad enough. But what makes it worse is when some in the media then saddle up on their high horses and lament that lack of seriousness in American politics. They pretend what they most want is a sophisticated and elevated conversation about the weightiest issues facing our nation and the world. They deride politicians for focusing on trivialities, even as they are the ones putting the spotlight on the trivialities and demanding politicians address them.
"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise," C.S. Lewis wrote. "We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." In our time, Professor Lewis could have added that the press gives a platform to stupid distractions championed by buffoonish figures — and then complains about the low state and childish nature of American politics.

Stacy McCain on Swatting and Terror

Stacy McCain on Swatting and Terror

via Patterico's Pontifications by Patterico on 5/29/12

His column is here.
If you missed the blog this weekend, keep scrolling. There was a lot going on, including my likely swatter calling in to an Internet radio show and taunting me; Brett Kimberlin's Wikipedia page coming back after a long hiatus; and much more.
I was supposed to be on Laura Ingraham this morning but it was rescheduled.
Now SCROLL!

Government conspiracy

From the Morning Jolt from NRO"

3. How Do Our Most Irrational Foes Get Formed?

I was actually thinking these thoughts before I heard the news that somebody "SWATed" Erick Erickson of RedState and CNN -- that is, anonymously called his local police with a false report of a shooting, to harass Erickson and his family and perhaps hope for some police raid to go . . . quite wrong.

I think our culture's ratio of crazy-people-to-non-crazy-people is getting out of whack.

There have always been crazy people in every society. And mind you, I'm not talking about psychosis or hallucinations. I'm just referring to people who develop an obsession and whose focus upon that obsession makes... public life more challenging for the rest of us.

In the past, if you had a worldview that was far from the mainstream, you had to seek out people who agreed with you, and sometimes that was hard. There was a good chance that you would encounter lots of people who would say, "What on earth are you talking about? That's crazy! How could you possibly believe that?"

Enter the Internet. The good news is, if you really want to talk about obscure bits of history, or political issues, or sports, or pop culture, chances are, there's some online community for you. Of course, this applies to every interest, including the bad ones -- hate groups, child pornographers, extremists of every stripe. (In the book about online social networks, Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky discusses anorexia support groups online where the anorexics encouraged each other to remain anorexic.) And of course, with the Internet, every conspiracy theorist can finds dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people who find their theory completely plausible and in fact convincing, and provide reinforcement. It's the Pauline Kael effect on a massive scale; everyone they know -- or more specifically, the majority of the people who they interact with online -- believe the government arranged 9/11 or whatever.

(Walking through a Barnes & Noble this weekend, in the remainders bin I saw Jesse Ventura's latest, 63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read. Now . . . if a guy like Jesse Ventura can collect all of these documents in one book, and get that book published and distributed in every major chain bookseller in America . . . then our skepticism of the effectiveness of government bureaucracies is proven well-founded once again. Or the government doesn't really care if we read those documents. I'd like to think that if the documents really were the sort of thing the government didn't want us to read -- say, the NOC list -- the government would have a better method of keeping the information secret. Although having the documents published by Jesse Ventura could be a fantastic reverse-psychology method of making sure no one takes them seriously.)

So I can't help but suspect that we have more crazy people walking around than in the pre-Internet days. Again, I'm not talking about hearing voices or the other off-the-charts categories of crazy. Just the all-consuming obsession with a particular topic: Since this is a political newsletter and chances are you're interested in politics, chances are we're going to encounter folks who just have some sort of unhealthy level of focus on a particular topic or political figure or belief that "they" are responsible for almost everything that goes wrong in this world.

In a way, this kind of modern ease of slipping into an obsession is a luxury. You get the feeling that in past generations, perhaps there was some other all-consuming goal -- a societal one like avoiding the Black Plague, or westward expansion, or beating the Nazis and Japanese -- that occupied the minds of most of the populace. To be crazy meant you weren't dealing with this potentially life-threatening problem, and as a result, you would probably die earlier than normal.

Modern life is safer and better, thankfully. We don't fear smallpox, an invading army, or rabid beasts; few of us fear dying from exposure or hunger. Making ends meet has become a bit more challenging, but even with the seemingly endless economic hard times, many places have 99 weeks of unemployment insurance. For the unemployed and under-employed, the lack of work means limited money but a surplus of time. Time easily spent online, and time spent alone: "Today, more than fifty per cent of U.S. residents are single, nearly a third of all households have just one resident, and five million adults younger than thirty-five live alone." Perhaps idle hands really are the devil's workshop.

The computer -- the glowing screen that I'm typing these words on, and that I spend large chunks of every weekday and weeknight staring at -- is not great for reinforcing one's sense of reality. From my interactions online -- this newsletter, e-mail, the comments in response to the Campaign Spot, Twitter, etc. -- it would be very easy for me to conclude that the public at large is a) as interested in politics are I/we are and b) as conservative as I/we are. And then I finish writing the Jolt, go about the actions of daily life and child-rearing, go to get my morning coffee, and throughout my morning's travels, I encounter many, many people who appear to spend little or no time thinking about politics.

When we see people behaving in a way that seems so inexplicable to us -- political activists who seem consumed with vindictiveness towards those who disagree, and hell-bent on inflicting whatever misery they can upon those whose only sin is to express a contrary opinion -- it probably reflects a worldview shaped by words on a screen, and interaction with a very small and unrepresentative group, focusing on topics that are obscure and odd to most of the general public. (Yes, I realize about half of that description applies to all of us.) They wear the obscurity of their cause as a badge of honor; they are the few enlightened ones, while the rest of the "sheeple" sleepwalk through their lives. Those who express contrary opinions aren't just exercising their First Amendment rights; they're perpetuating the system of injustice. They cannot be permitted to continue doing such seemingly innocuous acts; only the harshest and most brutal retaliation will intimidate them into silence. After all, the end justifies the means. Everyone they talk to agrees. Well, everyone they type to, at least.

--

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So, here’s a question: Since you’re being programmed by outside sources on a day in, day out basis, why not run some of your own programming that’s designed to make your life better? There are a number of ways to do it.

Brett Kimberlin Gets His Wikipedia Entry Removed

Brett Kimberlin Gets His Wikipedia Entry Removed

via Patterico's Pontifications by Patterico on 5/27/12

[UPDATE: I have heard once again from the Wikipedia editor who removed Brett Kimberlin's Wikipedia entry. He refuses to tell me who claimed Kimberlin had been the victim of a harassment campaign. He evidently has no regrets about his decision even though Kimberlin has now been exposed as making repeated bogus claims of harassment.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia is moving to restore an entry after an absence of several months, and currently links Kimberlin to an entry on the Speedway Bombings. Over 700 versions of the article await review.]
I have described Brett Kimberlin's campaign of harassment against his critics as "brass-knuckles reputation management." The idea is to intimidate and harass anyone daring to bring up Kimberlin's extensive criminal history. There are other examples I'm aware of that can't be fully told for various reasons, although I hope the victims choose to tell them.
But one of the most concerning aspects of this reputation maintenance campaign is the way history is rewritten. And one example of that is the way that Kimberlin's Wikipedia entry was whisked away from view on September 14, 2011.
Let's look at the reason the editor gave for the deletion:


Oh, really? There was a harassment campaign against Brett Kimberlin, was there?
And here I thought it was the other way around. Here I thought he was the guy harassing others. Silly me!
And we certainly can't discuss in public the reason that accurate facts are being whisked away from a source that 4 out of 5 suckers consider reliable.
The idea that there is a harassment campaign against Brett Kimberlin is a reputation management theory that has been pushed for months by Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, and Ron Brynaert — three people who engaged in the extraoardinary and very real harassment campaign against myself and other critics of Brett Kimberlin.
So where did the Wikipedia editor get the idea that there was a harassment campaign against Brett Kimberlin? In early May 2012, I decided to write the editor, Richard Symonds, and ask why the page was deleted.
Our dialogue follows.

I wrote:

Hello. My name is Patrick Frey and I operate a blog at patterico.com. I am interesting in knowing why you deleted the Wikipedia page on Brett Kimberlin. I have seen the deleted page and it was quite well sourced, with links to TIME Magazine and other news publications.
There was an entire book about this individual written by Mark Singer, a New Yorker writer. There is simply a wealth of reliable information out there about Kimberlin.
I read the reasoning for the deletion and did not understand it. I wonder if you could enlighten me. Thanks very much.
Patrick Frey
Patterico.com

Symonds responded (emphasis mine):

Patrick,
I deleted the article back in September as a volunteer, because it served as an attack page. It was sourced, but was also unduly negative, and written by people who "had an axe to grind". Although some of the facts were sourced, there was an undertone of maliciousness in the way that the article was written.
Mr Kimberlin was not a paragon of virtue, but the article as it stood simply painted him as a man with no positive qualities at all, which is obviously problematic in a neutral encyclopedia.

I responded:

If the facts are sourced and accurate, perhaps the negative picture is accurate. Mr. Kimberlin is a man convicted of violent crimes. Portrayals of violent criminals tend to be largely negative, do they not? It sets a disturbing precedent to remove accurate facts from a neutral encyclopedia because those facts portray a violent convicted criminal in a negative light.
Also, how do you know the authors had an "axe to grind"? Who made this claim to you?
And why would that matter if the facts are accurate?

Symonds haughtily blew me off:

Patrick,
I've answered your questions and I have no real interest in discussing foreign politics with a blogger by email on my day off. The decision I made was backed up by others, the creators of the article were banned by the community, and I barely even remember the while episode. The whole event was entirely run of the mill, the sort of thing that happens on Wikipedia every day, and I have no real interest in left or right wing politics in North America.
All the best,
Richard Symonds

Note that he didn't explain who had complained about the entry. My response suggested that I planned to blog about this:

Politics? I did not say a word about politics. This has nothing to do with politics. I simply asked why a factual article was removed. I find it odd that you would bring up politics when that has nothing whatsoever to do with what I asked you.
You say you answered my questions, but in point of fact you have not. I asked a couple of follow-up questions which were not answered at all: 1) who told you the authors of the article had an "axe to grind" and 2) why would that matter if the facts were accurate?
You're entitled to refuse to answer my questions, but please don't say you have answered all my questions when you haven't.
If you want to wait until it's no longer your day off, be my guest. I do not plan to publish anything about this today anyway.

In response, this Wikipedia editor Googled me, found several false claims made about me — mainly from Kimberlin's band of defamers — and presented them as examples of "reliable" facts:

You are a right-of-centre blogger who has an interest in a left-of-centre individual. You've also been threatened with legal action by him, it seems – in my opinion, politics, and general 'bad blood' is involved here. I am answering your questions below, although I do so as a volunteer, and you must be aware that my memory of this non-event is hazy at best:
The community decided that the authors have an axe to grind due to their conduct. One of the authors behaved in a threatening manner towards a new editor. None of the editors showed any interest whatsoever in editing about other topics, even when asked to stop editing about Mr Kimberlin. Their interest in publicising their views about Mr Kimberlin (and his family) was more important to them than the general advancement of knowledge, ergo, they had a 'conflict of interest'.
Furthermore, their comments towards new users – described by an uninvolved administrator as 'truly chilling' – showed that they harmed our project, rather than helped it
The problem is, I would have thought, obvious. Let me give you an example, using phrases I've literally just picked up out of Google:
"John Patrick Frey is a blogger and LA city prosecutor obsessed with the liberal bias of the Los Angeles Times. He has a long memory, especially for all things LA Dog Trainer Times. He has been reported as having harassed Jamie Gold, and has been accused of running a "infamous right wing extremist hate blog"".
They're all facts that can be backed up by reliable sources, and they have a hint of truth about them, but they paint a biased and patently untrue version of events. The way that sentences in a neutral article are constructed is just as important – if not more so – as the facts out of which the sentence is built. The article, as written, had that sort of problem.
I'd be interested to know what version of the deleted article you have – there are two flying round, one of which is less 'problematic' than the other!

Again, emphasis is mine.
"Reliable sources," eh? I responded:

In your response, you construct a description of me that you say is composed of "facts that can be backed up by reliable sources." Yet your description is nothing of the sort. I am a blogger. I am not an "LA city prosecutor." [I am an L.A. County, not city, prosecutor, speaking in his personal capacity, as always. --ed.] Calling me "obsessed" is not a "fact" but a characterization. Calling my letters to the LAT Readers' Rep "harassment" is a tendentious characterization and not a "fact." Calling my blog an "extremist hate blog" is a tendentious characterization and not a "fact."
Please tell me what "reliable sources" you used to determine these "facts" about me.
There is a difference between tendentious claims and factual claims that can be supported by reliable sources in the media.
For example: one version of Kimberlin's Wikipedia entry said: "In 1981, Kimberlin was convicted of a series of bombings that took place in Speedway, Indiana in 1978." That is simply a matter of public record — as are his convictions for drug smuggling, perjury, and impersonating a federal officer. Yet you deleted these facts from Wikipedia.
If Charlie Manson were to file or threaten lawsuits against anyone who has ever written about his criminal history, that would not change the facts about his criminal history. I am not asking Wikipedia to rely on my blog for the facts regarding Brett Kimberlin. But there are numerous court decisions, articles in mainstream media, and even a published book by a New Yorker writer, testifying to the facts surrounding Kimberlin's record. For Wikipedia to whisk the facts regarding his record away based on the arguments you have made is Orwellian, and casts serious question on the reliability of Wikipedia as a source for information.
I am attaching a screenshot from one version of the Wikipedia article. It appears to be pure fact. It contains nothing about Kimberlin's family, just facts. The one opinion I see is that his claims about selling pot to Dan Quayle are called "false." That cannot be established as fact, and rather than deleting the article outright, editing out the word "false" would have been the truly neutral and factual action to take.
Have you ever heard from a fellow named Neal Rauhauser concerning Brett Kimberlin? Is he one of your "reliable sources" for information about me?

Here is the screenshot I sent Symonds of a version of the Wikipedia entry I found on someone's Facebook page.


Once again, Symonds blew me off:

Patrick,
I'm afraid that our views on neutrality differ rather wildly. I'm not really sure that I can help you any further without inflaming something which, for me, is a non-issue. As a result, you should probably leave a note at the Wikipedia Administrators Noticeboard if you have serious concerns about the actions I took as a volunteer in this case.
I stand by the actions I took in my capacity as a volunteer administrator.

I responded:

Nah, I'll just blog about it instead. I think people will find this "non-issue" very revealing indeed, as well as the questions of mine (like the one about Neal Rauhauser) that you have refused to answer.

In his final email, Symonds claimed he had never heard of "Neal Rauthouser" — which is not how Rauhauser's name is spelled. (Was he seeking deniability or did he just not try to spell it accurately?) He also agreed that "facts are facts" but that "in this case we didn't think they were represented accurately."
In an odd twist, Ron Brynaert — who has furiously been portraying himself as an enemy of Rauhauser's and a critic of Kimberlin's, despite the similar nature of his tactics and theirs — wrote a post about the deletion of the Wikipedia article. He wrote his own version and submitted it. I don't recommend going to Brynaert's site, but here is a safe link to a Google cache of Brynaert's post, where you can read this amusing passage from Brynaert's submission:

Since October of 2010, conservatives have hounded Kimberlin about his bombing conviction, after articles were published at a website owned by Andrew Breitbart and other conservative blogs that questioned donations to his non-profit. Lawsuits and back-and-forth online battles have transpired between progressives backing Kimberlin and bloggers on the right ever since.

Brett Kimberlin could not have written it better himself. According to Brynaert's submission, Kimberlin is being "hounded" by conservatives, and his extensive harassment campaign against us is really nothing but a blog war between the left and the right.
That's exactly what Kimberlin wants you to think. Also from Brynaert's entry:

During his imprisonment, one of the victims from the bombings killed himself, and Kimberlin was held liable for the death and a $1.61 million dollar judgment was awarded to the widow. An appeals court later ruled he wasn't directly responsible for the suicide, and the judgment was reduced to $360,000 but it's unclear if Kimberlin ever paid anything.

Yeah, except that the judgment of that intermediate court of appeals in 1993 was itself reversed in 1994, by the Indiana Supreme Court.

In the present case, the complaint alleged intentional injury. Kimberlin's federal criminal conviction, through collateral estoppel, discussed in Issue 1(c), supra, establishes his conduct as malicious and thus intentional rather than negligent. Moreover, Carl's DeLong's death, although occurring more than four years after the explosion, was within the scope of harm intended by Kimberlin's intentional criminal conduct. Under such circumstances, we decline to treat suicide as independent intervening cause protecting a highly culpable defendant from liability for his victim's death. We hold that an action may be maintained for death or injury from a suicide or suicide attempt where a defendant's willful tortious conduct was intended to cause a victim physical harm and where the intentional tort is a substantial factor in bringing about the suicide.
[T]he jury finding of damages in the amount of $1,250,000.00 does not appear outrageous at first blush. The verdict does not indicate passion, prejudice, or partiality rather than reasoned assessment. We decline to find the wrongful death judgment to be excessive.
. . . .
As to the damages awarded for Mrs. DeLong's separate personal injury claim, the defendant asserts that the $360,000 verdict was approximately 18 times her special damages and therefore excessive. In response, the plaintiff notes evidence demonstrating the particularly painful nature of her injuries from the bomb blast and her ordeal during treatment, including multiple surgeries and permanent continuing pain and impairment established by medical testimony. . . . In the present case we find no basis for finding the verdict for Mrs. DeLong's injuries to be excessive as a matter of law.

$1,250,000.00 plus $360,000 is $1.61 million. The state's highest court upheld that judgment. Once again Ron Brynaert is seen to be misrepresenting the facts in a way that benefits Brett Kimberlin.
It's almost as if Kimberlin's supporters tried to whisk away any mention of him on Wikipedia — and when they got caught, tried to replace the entry with something that sounded neutral, but actually benefited his point of view.
Almost!
Anyway, since yesterday's blogburst, it appears that all of a sudden Wikipedia is taking a second look at Symonds's deletion. On Symonds's talk page, someone writes:

There's a lot of discussion about Brett recently, and it must be surprising for individuals to find no article about him.

Symonds the Wikipedia editor responds in part:

That's fine, but I recommend you have a look at the related deletion review. The previous article was written by some people with rather a large axe to grind! I've had a couple of emails from right-wing bloggers, but nothing from anyone I'd trust to write a neutral article.

Never mind that the original article was almost entirely accurate! Another person chimes in and says:

Going through the deletion review, I'm not seeing a clear cut consensus to support the deletion. It seems like the action primarily taken because of objections to the users who had created the article in the first place. Also, I think the condition to "start from scratch" is overly burdensome. Yes, the article is almost entirely negative, but there's nothing stopping someone from adding balance once the article is restored. Keep in mind that the behavior being alleged against Kimberlin involves inappropriate and extreme efforts to suppress negative but accurate reporting on his past. If you are in possession of ORTS information complaining about "harassment", please note that many have accused Kimberlin of filing bad-faith harassment claims in the past.

No kidding!
By the way, I wrote Symonds again to ask him the question he never really answered: who told him about this supposed harassment campaign. Oddly enough, he has not responded.
It seems like our little blogburst might be working to get history re-rewritten to conform itself to the truth, rather than the "truth" as determined by a small band of thugs determined to intimidate anyone who tells the actual truth.
Who knew that telling the truth was so dangerous and so difficult?

Articles: Gay Marriage: The Hidden Agenda

Articles: Gay Marriage: The Hidden Agenda

But why is gay marriage inimical to the traditional matrimony?  How does society suffer if it gives legal sanction to the cohabitation of gay couples and bestows upon them the rights traditionally granted to spouses?  In short, an approach based on individual rights is a bum steer.  Legalization of same-sex marriage compromises the institution of marriage and thus undermines the family built on the foundation of marriage.  

A Marriage Tail

A Marriage Tail « Public Discourse

Abraham Lincoln once asked how many legs a dog has if we call a tail a leg. The answer, he said, is four: calling a tail a leg does not make it so. We chuckle and move on.
But what if people began to argue that a tail really is a leg? They might say that what defines the leg is that it is an appendage of the dog’s body, that it contains bone and muscle covered with skin and fur—just like a tail. Tails just happen to come out of the body at a different angle than other legs. When a tail hangs down low, who can tell the difference?

....

The call for same-sex marriage involves a similar misdefinition. Marriage is often characterized today as follows: 1) two people 2) who love each other 3) want to perform sexual acts together, so 4) they consent to combine their lives sexually, materially, economically 5) with the endorsement of the community. Since same-sex couples can meet the first four criteria, how can society refuse the fifth?
It is easy to see why this would be a cause of aggravation, not only for same-sex couples who wish community endorsement of their relationships, but for millions of others. If the criteria stated above actually define marriage—and in contemporary Western society, many have come to view marriage as no more than this—then refusal to acknowledge and endorse same-sex relationships is a rank injustice, nothing but an exercise in bigotry or stupidity.
Typically, marriage does in fact have these characteristics. But why does marriage have these characteristics? Remembering why will help us to remember how they show themselves in a relationship that has the essence of marriage—and how that is often different in other relationships.

 And if he's wrong, and this is not a misdefinition, then we get to the question of why society should support an institution such as marriage.  Why should it?  Why do "really-close-friends-who-like-each-other-a-lot" enjoy special recognition of that fact from society and the government?

If sexuality did not naturally bring us offspring, it is hard to explain why it exists, whether you believe in a purely material evolution or a loving designer of the universe, for it would serve no purpose. If sexual acts did not naturally lead to offspring, it is just as hard to explain how marriage would have appeared in human history, for it would serve no purpose.
Religions may bless marriage, but they did not invent it. Because it involves such profoundly important human realities, it is no surprise that sex and marriage have religious significance. But sex and marriage have existed as long as there have been human communities.

Stephen J. Heaney believes that reproduction is the key point of marriage. A tail is not a leg because it never serves to support or propel a dog.  Same-sex relationships are not marriages because sex within one can never result in offspring.

In previous articles, I have asserted that if sex did not naturally lead to children, no one would ever have conceived the idea of marriage.
....
But this is where it must be pointed out that the act in which opposite-sex couples wish to engage has a very public outcome: children. Let me put my initial assertion another way: if sexual intercourse between a man and a woman always and naturally led to the same outcome as genital contact between two people of the same sex—that is, pleasure, increased feelings of closeness, even affirmation and love, and nothing else—no one would ever have come up with the idea of marriage.
The best that can be said about the contemporary face of “marriage”—the deliberately childless union, or union built around the desires of adults, with children a secondary and dispensable characteristic—is that it is entirely parasitic on the proper idea of marriage. Impossible to imagine on its own, it takes real marriage and strips it of the thing that gives it meaning, yet continues to refer to it by the same name. That means that the notion of “same-sex marriage,” which relies entirely for its conceivability on the notion that marriage exists for the desires of adults, is by that fact two levels removed from reasonableness.

The Conservative Blogosphere Introduces Kimberlin 2012

The Conservative Blogosphere Introduces Kimberlin 2012

via Breitbart Feed on 5/25/12

The conservative blogosphere today launched a version of the Kony 2012 tactic, introducing readers to a man named Brett Kimberlin and his fellow far-leftists. The movement was sparked by several incidents, most recently the reported intimidation of Aaron Worthing and RS McCain, and the sensational story of the "SWATting" of Patterico.
There is an organizational effort by the institutional left--of which Kimberlin is a well-connected part--to silence conservatives, both in the "real" world and through  social networks like Twitter. As these bloggers note, the best disinfectant is sunlight.
The story is complex and required reading. Settle in and check out the links below, including the fantastic work done by Breitbart.com's Liberty Chick.
More from Mccain
Meet the Soros-funded Brett Kimberlin
From Malkin:

Hi: I had no idea that foul Brett Kimberlin was still around, causing trouble. Your posted info was quite a shock. That guy should still either be locked up, or he should have been pushed into a dark corner to slink away and stay hidden in the dark.
I lived in the county N. of Indpls when the "Speedway Bomber" was creating so much havoc in Speedway, which is a separate community surrounded by Indianapolis. His work was just that of a terrorist, because no one person or business was the point of his attacks; they were random, and that is why so many people were so upset.
To show how "smart" he was, at the time, he drove a used Mercedes sedan, and he was having trouble with it, so he took the car to the big Mercedes dealer in Indpls, and he just told them to fix all his problem, and he gave them the keys to everything. One of my friends at the time was about the best Mercedes mechanic there was, and I knew him through his sports car racing, in which many of my friends particpated. So he worked on the car, and he had to get into the trunk, and he had the keys and permission, so there was no legal question about his right to access. When he opened the trunk, he immediately saw explosive material and what looked like bomb making equipment. He and the dealership were so alarmed, they called the Indpls PD, who recognized some of the components as what they were looking for, so they contacted the Speedway PD. It took a lot of police work to make the case, but they finally did and got a conviction of Kimberlin. He was the crazy, irrational bomber who terrorized the entire area.
I also worked with the daughter of the man who was so seriously injured, and was in so much pain, that he killed himself. The daughter never got over it; the pain and loss of her father bothered her all the time, and she finally ended up quitting her job, saying she couldn't concentrate on her work anymore. The damage of such crazy people goes on and on.
Yes, our justice system let us down again. I can't believe that crazy guy is still causing trouble as was described. I believe it, but such should be impossible. Decent, normal-thinking people need to stick together.
Thx for info.
Bill [redacted] (former Indiana Circuit court judge)

- Swatting bloggers and other harassment
- Top signs you are being harassed by the Speedway Bomber
- Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day
- Exposure Day for Brett Kimberlin
- Operation Brett Kimberlin
- New American terrorism: "swatting"
- Shining a light on Brett Kimberlin's tactics
- Standing with RS McCain
- What Brett Kimberlin did, according to the 6th circuit 
- " ... journalist Stacy McCain was forced to leave the state due to threats to his family ..."
- "I don't scare easily ... but when Brett Kimberlin takes interest in you ..."
There are a ton of links. It's currently tops at Memeorandum.
This is the untold story of how a private citizen was nearly killed when someone set up a swat of his house, with audio of the fake 9-11 call.

Friday is Everybody Blog About #BrettKimberlin Day *UPDATED*

This seems to be a good aggregation of posts about Brett Kimberlin.

Friday is Everybody Blog About #BrettKimberlin Day *UPDATED*

via Bookworm Room by Bookworm on 5/23/12

Before today, I'd been aware of Brett Kimberlin in only the vaguest possible way, since his name suddenly seemed to be popping on various sites I visit.  Since his name didn't actually ring any bells, I didn't stop to educate myself about him.  This morning, though, I've had a crash Kimberlin course and, friends, it's ugly.  It's also something that requires action from as many people as possible in order to use the sunlight of free speech to bleach out the ugly and costly lies that Kimberlin is propagating against conservative bloggers.
First, a few facts.
Kimberlin is a convicted bomber.  He even has a nickname:  "The Speedway Bomber."  Back in 1978, he set of a series of eight bombs in Speedway, Indiana, one of which blew the limbs off Vietnam Vet Carl DeLong, who later committed suicide because of his injuries.  Kimberlin is also a convicted drug dealer.  In 1988, he claimed that he sold drugs to Dan Quayle, but there was nothing to corroborate this claim.  Given Kimberlin's far left politics, it's reasonable to believe that he was lying for political effect.  Incidentally, you won't be able to discover any of this through Wikipedia — it's been scrubbed.
Kimberlin, who is out of prison, has now made it his life's mission to go after conservative bloggers to have had the temerity to mention him online.  Michelle Malkin explains:

Over the past year, Aaron Walker (who blogged as "Aaron Worthing"), Patterico, Liberty Chick, and now Stacy McCain have been targeted by convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin because they dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did. The late Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin and company.
I have spoken directly with both Patterico and Aaron about their ongoing battles.
The mainstream press, not just the conservative blogosphere, needs to hear and report their stories.
This is a convoluted, ongoing nightmare that combines abuse of the court system, workplace intimidation, serial invasions of privacy, perjury, and harassment of family members. McCain was forced to move with his family out of his house this week, and has just gotten a small taste of what Aaron and Patterico have been enduring over the past year. Aaron and his wife were fired from their jobs after their employer feared the office would be targeted next. Convicted bomber Kimberlin has filed bogus "peace orders" against Aaron, when it is the Walkers who are the victims, not the perpetrators.
And Patterico's plight will send chills up your spine when he is ready to tell it.

For more information about Kimberlin's behavior, Lee Stranahan put together a short video:

Kimberlin's legal actions are not intended to protect himself against unwarranted slander from conservatives.  Instead, they are aimed at squelching free — and truthful — speech.  His theory is that, if he makes free speech too costly, using a combination of physical threats and legal costs, people will stop speaking.  He's not alone in this belief, since he's managed to fund his lawsuits with help from various far-left groups that are also deeply committed to ensuring that America's First Amendment protections are reserved only for pre-approved Leftist speech.
Lee Stranahan offers the best (indeed, the only) way to respond to someone who relentlessly abuses the Free Speech rights America grants — MORE SPEECH:

This is no war of words; Kimberlin is a serial litigator who has filed over 100 lawsuits by his own account and he takes people to court, claiming they are harassing him. He calls their employers.  I stand with all these people, some of whom are my friends. I'm launching a new effort on my own that I hope will help.
The only effective way to fight Brett Kimberlin is for as many people to research and write about him as possible. 
So I'm declaring this Friday, May 25th as Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day.
Here's what you do to take part…

1. Research Brett Kimberlin on your own. Don't trust secondary sources; look for the orginal articles articles published about him, too.
2. On Friday, May 25th — write an honest, factually accurate post about what you learned and what your OPINION is. Brett may try and sue you, so be accurate, factual and separate fact from opinion.
3. The post doesn't have to be long — ANYTHING helps.
4. After you post, Tweet, share, whatever — get the post out there.

As you can see, I'm doing my part right now, by getting the May 25 ball rolling. Indeed, the ball is already rolling, with sufficient numbers of people writing on this subject for Kimberlin's list of assigned targets to have grown exponentially. Eventually, there'll just be too many targets and, with luck, this guy will quietly slink away.
On May 25, of course, I'll write again about Kimberlin. Can you do something to help out too?
UPDATE OF OTHERS BLOGGING:
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds
iowntheworld.com
The American Thinker
Walter Olson at Overlawyered
Blazing Cat Fur
Donald Douglas at American Power
The American Catholic
The Lonely Conservative
Kathy Shaidle at Five Feet of Fury
Nice Deb
Sundries Shack
PJMedia Tatler
Dan Riehl
Film Ladd
The Coalition of the Swilling
DaTechGuy
Richard Fernandez
Legal Insurrection
Doubleplusundead
Daley Gator
The Camp of the Saints
Wake Up America
Darth Chipmunk
Zilla of the Resistance
Lady Liberty 1885
Goldfish and Clowns
Small Dead Animals
Hillbuzz
Yid with Lid
Evil Blogger Lady
Israel Matzav
Lisa Graas
Bob Owens
Melissa Clouthier
Blackfive
Ace
Day by Day
Noisy Room
Kim Priestap (two links)
Radio Patriot
Gay Patriot
Bruce Kesler at Maggie's Farm
This enthusiastic participation, from bloggers (and cartoonists) whom you like and respect is a reminder that this is important.  By creating an impossible broad target for Kimberlin and his ilk, we use speech to neutralize entirely his efforts to destroy speech.  It's the wonderful opposite of a boycott.

Civilization: the West and the Rest on PBS

Civilization: the West and the Rest on PBS; I Cloned My Pet on TLC; Mrs. Eastwood & Company on E!: Television Reviews by Nancy deWolf Smith - WSJ.com

Yet these sights and the scents and sensations they evoke underpin Mr. Ferguson's overarching thesis that six characteristics reflect and/or explain the ascendancy of the West. These are the six "killer apps," as he jokingly calls them, that the West applied and thrived on: competition, science, property (rights), modern medicine, consumerism and the (Protestant) work ethic.
Each app is examined through its own prism. To illustrate the benefits of competition, for instance, Mr. Ferguson looks to Ming-era China, which was a vast, sophisticated and advanced society at a time when Europe was still in darkness. Chinese treasure ships—10 times the size of the tiny Santa Maria Columbus would set sail with—roamed the faraway seas, plucking exotic animals off the coast of Africa. But Chinese emperors were not interested in trade, and ultimately authoritarian China turned its back on the world and looked inward.
Meanwhile, in Europe, tiny fiefdoms and competing kingdoms set forth to search for spices and other riches, reaching out into the world and competing for the best trade markets. In short: autonomy, the freedom to explore and trade, and decentralized power in Europe vs. their opposites in China. Among other benefits, trade brought potatoes and sugar, and thus better nutrition and longer life, to Europeans, while the Chinese locked themselves in "with a rising population, falling incomes, declining nutrition, height and productivity." See where this is going?
Throughout, Mr. Ferguson illustrates his killer apps through questions: Why did post-colonial North America prosper while post-colonial South America was condemned to "two centuries of underdevelopment"? Hint: Gen. George Washington had more respect for property rights than Gen. Simon Bolivar. Why did the Ottomans and the Islamic world's advanced sciences stagnate for centuries? Hint: While Europe was unleashing its best minds from church control to probe the universe, Muslim rulers were burning down observatories and banning books or even printing, in a return to the Quranic purity of calligraphy.
Colonialism and slavery fit into the story, as do questions such as: Did blue jeans defeat communism? And what's happened to the Protestant work ethic, with its crucial emphasis on saving and the accumulation of capital?
Mr. Ferguson's generally approving view of Western values is bound to enrage some viewers, as will his lament that a real threat to the West comes from the fact that "we've lost faith in the things that propelled us and propelled the world." If the six killer apps survive, he's betting, it may be in the East, where other people are just now learning to place their faith in the same things.

Ninth Circuit holds for John Yoo in lawsuit by Jose Padilla

Ninth Circuit holds for John Yoo in lawsuit by Jose Padilla

via The Volokh Conspiracy by John Elwood on 5/2/12

(John Elwood)
A unanimous panel of the Ninth Circuit (Fisher, Smith, Pallmeyer (dj, NDIll, by designation)) held today that former OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo is entitled to qualified immunity in the lawsuit brought by former detainee Jose Padilla.  If you're just tuning in, the first two paragraphs set forth the nature of the lawsuit and the court's reasoning in some detail:

In this lawsuit, plaintiffs Padilla and his mother, Estela Lebron, seek to hold defendant John Yoo, who was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 2001 to 2003, liable for damages they allege they suffered from these unlawful actions. Under recent Supreme Court law, however, we are compelled to conclude that, regardless of the legality of Padilla's detention and the wisdom of Yoo's judgments, at the time he acted the law was not "sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he [wa]s doing violate[d]" the plaintiffs' rights. Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2083 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore hold that Yoo must be granted qualified immunity, and accordingly reverse the decision of the district
court.
As we explain below, we reach this conclusion for two reasons. First, although during Yoo's tenure at OLC the constitutional rights of convicted prisoners and persons subject to ordinary criminal process were, in many respects, clearly established, it was not "beyond debate" at that time that Padilla — who was not a convicted prisoner or criminal defendant, but a suspected terrorist designated an enemy combatant and confined to military detention by order of the President — was entitled to the same constitutional protections as an ordinary convicted prisoner or accused criminal. Id. Second, although it has been clearly established for decades that torture of an American citizen violates the Constitution, and we assume without deciding that Padilla's alleged treatment rose to the level of torture, that such treatment was torture was not clearly established in 2001-03.

George Will on the People’s Rights Amendment

George Will on the People’s Rights Amendment

via The Volokh Conspiracy by Ilya Somin on 5/5/12

(Ilya Somin)

George Will recently published a good Washington Post column on the ill-conceived People's Rights Amendment, which Eugene Volokh and I blogged about here and here. Will points out several serious flaws in the proposal, and builds on some of the points we made:

Controversies can be wonderfully clarified when people follow the logic of illogical premises to perverse conclusions….

Joined by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 26 other Democrats and one Republican, [Rep. James McGovern] proposes a constitutional amendment to radically contract First Amendment protections. His purpose is to vastly expand government's power — i.e., the power of incumbent legislators — to write laws regulating, rationing or even proscribing speech in elections that determine the composition of the legislature and the rest of the government. McGovern's proposal vindicates those who say that most campaign-finance "reforms" are incompatible with the First Amendment…

His "People's Rights Amendment" declares that the Constitution protects only the rights of "natural persons," not such persons organized in corporations…

McGovern stresses that his amendment decrees that "all corporate entities — for-profit and nonprofit alike" — have no constitutional rights. So Congress — and state legislatures and local governments — could regulate to the point of proscription political speech, or any other speech, by the Sierra Club, the National Rifle Association, NARAL Pro-Choice America or any of the other tens of thousands of nonprofit corporate advocacy groups, including political parties and campaign committees.

Newspapers, magazines, broadcasting entities, online journalism operations — and most religious institutions — are corporate entities. McGovern's amendment would strip them of all constitutional rights. By doing so, the amendment would empower the government to do much more than proscribe speech. Ilya Somin of George Mason University Law School, writing for the Volokh Conspiracy blog, notes that government, unleashed by McGovern's amendment, could regulate religious practices at most houses of worship, conduct whatever searches it wants, reasonable or not, of corporate entities, and seize corporate-owned property for whatever it deems public uses — without paying compensation. Yes, McGovern's scythe would mow down the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, as well as the First.

One can argue for the constitutionality of campaign finance regulations on several grounds. But doing so on the basis that people organized into corporate entities have no constitutional rights does indeed lead us down the dangerous path dramatically illustrated by the Peoples' Rights Amendment.

Generic Iconoclasm vs. Some Sensible Things You Were Taught in School

Ruth Stout, who once wrote a book on the virtues of mulching and composting in her garden, once joked, "when I go to plant seeds, I read the instructions on the back of the packet and then carefully violate every one of them."

Here are nine rules to carefully violate.

Generic Iconoclasm vs. Some Sensible Things You Were Taught in School

via The Volokh Conspiracy by Eugene Volokh on 5/8/12

(Eugene Volokh)
Forbes runs this item:

Nine Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

Be aware of the insidious and unspoken lessons you learned as a child. To thrive in the world outside the classroom, you're going to have to unlearn them.

Dangerous things you were taught in school:

1. The people in charge have all the answers. That's why they are so wealthy and happy and healthy and powerful — ask any teacher.

2. Learning ends when you leave the classroom. Your fort building, trail forging, frog catching, friend making, game playing, and drawing won't earn you any extra credit. Just watch TV.

3. The best and brightest follow the rules. You will be rewarded for your subordination, just not as much as your superiors, who, of course, have their own rules.

4. What the books say is always true. Now go read your creationism chapter. There will be a test.

5. There is a very clear, single path to success. It's called college. Everyone can join the top 1% if they do well enough in school and ignore the basic math problem inherent in that idea.

6. Behaving yourself is as important as getting good marks. Whistle-blowing, questioning the status quo, and thinking your own thoughts are no-nos. Be quiet and get back on the assembly line.

7. Standardized tests measure your value. By value, I'm talking about future earning potential, not anything else that might have other kinds of value.

8. Days off are always more fun than sitting in the classroom. You are trained from a young age to base your life around dribbles of allocated vacation. Be grateful for them.

9. The purpose of your education is your future career. And so you will be taught to be a good worker. You have to teach yourself how to be something more.

I've always been quite skeptical of this sort of generic iconoclasm, for three related reasons: (1) It debunks categorical assertions that the debunkees actually rarely make in that categorical a way, and that in case are obviously wrong if made so categorically. (2) This debunking is rarely useful, because just as "always" assertions are rarely right where practical matters are involved, "not always" assertions are rarely useful. (3) The things being debunked are actually often pretty good rules of thumb for daily life, which are right more often than not; friendly amendments pointing out the exceptions can be helpful (especially if they are specific rather than generic), but categorical attempts at debunking miss the general wisdom in the rules.

For instance, behaving yourself is often more important than getting good marks. Sometimes even knowing when to question the status quo and when to follow it is important, as is knowing when to at least temporarily follow conventional wisdom (especially in an environment where error can cause a lot of damage) instead of coming up with your own approaches. But beyond that, "behaving yourself" in the sense of learning how to operate productively within an organization of two or more people, in a way that maximizes results while minimizing needless friction with your colleagues, superiors, and subordinates, and needless pushback from people who see you as misbehaving is a tremendously important life skill in a vast range of occupations. Even geniuses need it, and ordinary people who will have to work closely with others and will rarely have the "he's rude and a pain in the neck, but he's brilliant" excuse need it even more.

As to the purpose of education, schools rarely teach that the only purpose of your education is your future career (especially since many literature and history teachers realize that such an argument will go only so far with their students). But throughout your life you'll want access to goods and services, and unless you try to force people to give them to you, you'll need to offer something in return; in our society, many of the things you offer require specialized knowledge, which a good education will help give you. And while college is certainly not a very clear, single path to success, and it won't get you to "the top 1%," for many people it's a pretty important part of the path to careers that are both more financially and intellectually rewarding.

Likewise, the best and brightest follow the rules the great majority of the time, and we take it for granted because it's "just following the rules." They follow rules about how to do good science, how to write well, how to craft effective arguments, how to operate within organizations, how to deal with other people's understandings of what is their property or institutional bailiwick, and so on. Of course, they realize that to succeed in really big and innovative ways they need to do more than follow the rules. "Always follow the rules, and nothing more" would be lousy advice. But "learn the rules well, because they are the repository of important wisdom accumulated through the efforts of many smart people, and then think creatively about how to go beyond the rules or even break some rules" is good advice.

What's true of the rules is also true of the books and of the messages passed along by people in authority. What the books say isn't always true, but they have a lot of truth in them, and 99% of what we need to know we learn from the books (especially if we learn how to find the right books). Similarly, the people in charge often have some pretty important answers — again, answers that are so important and foundational that we take them for granted (once we learned them from people in charge).

That's true of specific knowledge about particular academic subject matters; teachers are hardly perfect, but they know some important information that most students need to learn to succeed. It's also true of "answers" in the sense of character traits that are conducive to success: Answers to questions such as, "Should I work hard?," "Should I invest for the future?," "Should I work well with others?," and so on; and these answers do tend to make people more "wealthy and happy and healthy and powerful," though of course they are not perfectly correlated with success.

Finally, while learning doesn't end when you leave the classroom, standardized tests don't measure your entire value, and days off aren't always more fun than sitting in the classroom, few schools seek to try to teach that, and my sense is that few students actually learn this. Rather, classroom learning — if done right — is an important part of your learning, being able to demonstrate your abilities even in the imperfect way that tests capture is important in a society where employers and universities have to sort through thousands of applications, and classroom learning even at a good institution can involve kinds of work that aren't as fun as what you can do on your own but are still important.

So if the Forbes column is merely saying "remember that the practical rules for life that you're taught in school are true only most of the time, and always think about whether some occasion is an exception to the rule," then it's correct but banal to the point of uselessness. And if it's trying to say that those rules really are things that you have to outright "unlearn," to the point of actually rejecting them much of the time, then it seems to me to be generally wrong.

Jeffrey Toobin on Citizens United

Jeffrey Toobin on Citizens United

via The Volokh Conspiracy by Jonathan H. Adler on 5/14/12

(Jonathan H. Adler)
The latest New Yorker has an extensive excerpt of Jeffrey Toobin's forthcoming book, The Oath: The Obama White House vs. the Supreme Court, focusing on the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The story, "Money Unlimited: How Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United decision," is everything you'd expect from a Toobin piece. It's engaging and informative, with exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting of how the decision came to be. This stuff is catnip for court watchers. Yet the article also contains plenty of subtle (and not-so-subtle) spin in service of Toobin's broader narrative of an out-of-control conservative court. As a consequence, Toobin paints a somewhat misleading picture of the case and the Court.

The heart of Toobin's article tells the story of how Citizens United metastasized from a narrow case about the application of federal campaign finance law to an obscure conservative documentary to a significant decision vindicating the First Amendment rights of corporations. As Toobin tells the tale, after the case was first argued Chief Justice Roberts drafted a narrow opinion that would have held for Citizens United on statutory grounds, but leaving the statutory regime intact. The vote would still have been 5-4, but it would have been a far less significant case. Justice Kennedy was not happy with this result, however, and authored a concurrence calling for a broader holding that would rest on First Amendment grounds. Kennedy's concurrence apparently swayed enough of the court's conservatives that Roberts initially acquiesced. Such a broad ruling would be improper, the court's liberals complained, as the broader First Amendment questions had not been briefed and were not properly before the Court. Yet as there was no interest in a narrower holding, the Court ordered a reargument with supplemental briefing that would place the First Amendment question front and center.

Toobin dwells on Justice Stevens' complaint that the Court's broad holding in Citizens United was unnecesary, as the Court could have held for the petitioners on narrower, statutory grounds. Yet as Toobin's own reporting confirms, no one other than Chief Justice Roberts had any interest in resolving the case on such grounds. Even when the case was first argued, not a single liberal justice was prepared to side with Citizens United, in no small part because the statutory argument was so weak.
Toobin criticizes the Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart for a concession at the first oral argument that may have sealed the government's fate.

Since McCain-Feingold forbade the broadcast of "electronic communications" shortly before elections, this was a case about movies and television commercials. What else might the law regulate? "Do you think the Constitution required Congress to draw the line where it did, limiting this to broadcast and cable and so forth?" Alito said. Could the law limit a corporation from "providing the same thing in a book? Would the Constitution permit the restriction of all those as well?"

Yes, Stewart said: "Those could have been applied to additional media as well."

The Justices leaned forward. It was one thing for the government to regulate television commercials. That had been done for years. But a book? Could the government regulate the content of a book?

"That's pretty incredible," Alito responded. "You think that if a book was published, a campaign biography that was the functional equivalent of express advocacy, that could be banned?"

"I'm not saying it could be banned," Stewart replied, trying to recover. "I'm saying that Congress could prohibit the use of corporate treasury funds and could require a corporation to publish it using its—" But clearly Stewart was saying that Citizens United, or any company or nonprofit like it, could not publish a partisan book during a Presidential campaign. . . .

Stewart was wrong. Congress could not ban a book. McCain-Feingold was based on the pervasive influence of television advertising on electoral politics, the idea that commercials are somehow unavoidable in contemporary American life. The influence of books operates in a completely different way. Individuals have to make an affirmative choice to acquire and read a book. Congress would have no reason, and no justification, to ban a book under the First Amendment.

Yet here it is Toobin who is wrong, not Stewart. The statutory provision at issue was limited to broadcast, cable and satellite communications, and the film at issue was to be shown as a cable on-demand program, but the government never sought to defend the law on the basis that it was limited to electronic media. After all, the point of the was to limit the role of money in campaigns, not limit television advertising. The position the government was defending was that Congress could limit corporate expenditures related to campaigns, not that it could regulate TV. Under this theory, a corporate-funded book with impermissible campaign-related content would receive no more First Amendment protection than a corporate-funded video or film, just as Stewart said. If this is an incredible proposition, that says more about the position the government sought to advance than it does Stewart's oral argument. Campaign finance activist Fred Wertheimer made the same concession when pressed by the NYT. It's true that Solicitor General Elena Kagan would back away from this position when it was her turn to argue the case at the second oral argument, but not without first acknowledging that the statute's language could apply to "full-length books" and that there would, in the government's view, be no problem with banning corporate-funded pamphlets.
Like many of the decision's critics, Toobin suggests Citizens United is best seen as the product of the "aggressive conservative judicial activism" of Chief Justice Roberts and the court's conservative majority.

Citizens United is a distinctive product of the Roberts Court. The decision followed a lengthy and bitter behind-the-scenes struggle among the Justices that produced both secret unpublished opinions and a rare reargument of a case. The case, too, reflects the aggressive conservative judicial activism of the Roberts Court. It was once liberals who were associated with using the courts to overturn the work of the democratically elected branches of government, but the current Court has matched contempt for Congress with a disdain for many of the Court's own precedents. When the Court announced its final ruling on Citizens United, on January 21, 2010, the vote was five to four and the majority opinion was written by Anthony Kennedy. Above all, though, the result represented a triumph for Chief Justice Roberts. Even without writing the opinion, Roberts, more than anyone, shaped what the Court did. As American politics assumes its new form in the post-Citizens United era, the credit or the blame goes mostly to him.

As Toobin tells the tale, Citizens United is emblematic of the current Court's assault on precedent and the prerogatives of the political branches. It's a nice story, but it's not true. "Judicial activism" is a notoriously malleable charge, but if "judicial activism" is shorthand for striking down federal statutes and overturning judicial precedents, the Roberts Court is the least "activist" court of the post-war period. As a New York Times analysis showed, the Roberts Court strikes down statutes and overturns Court precedents at a slower rate than any of is post-war predecessors, and it's not even close. "Activism" is also a peculiar charge to make about this case, as the dissenting justices were just as reluctant to embrace a narrow statutory holding and were just as willing to overturn precedent as those in the majority. They just sought to move the law in the opposite direction. If Citizens United is supposed to be evidence of unprecedented "activism," it's not clear what "activism" means.

The most interesting parts of Toobin's article are those that disclose how Citizens United was handled inside the Court. This is great stuff, and testament to Toobin's skill as a reporter, but I still have some misgivings. We don't know the identities of Toobin's sources, and some of his claims are difficult to check. His story may reflect how some justices or clerks saw the case, but there may well be another side, and we won't know until such time as the relevant court documents are released. I also cannot help but wonder whether some of Toobin's sources, such as former Supreme Court clerks, may have violated their own ethical obligations in disclosing portions of the Court's internal deliberations. Even if Toobin's sources were sitting or former justices, there is something unseemly about the selective disclosure of what went on inside the Court on such a recent case.

In any event, the article is still worth reading — as I am sure Toobin's book will be as well. Some portions will just go down better with a healthy dose of salt.

UPDATE: Tom Goldstein has a similar reaction to Toobin's narrative about Chief Justice Roberts:

The theme of the piece is that Chief Justice Roberts orchestrated the case's metamorphosis from a narrow ruling about statutory construction to a much broader constitutional decision with sweeping implications for campaign finance.

I should disclose that I am naturally inclined towards that reading of the history. I think that the Chief Justice is quite conservative and a brilliant tactician, including in undoing significant pieces of the legacy of the Court's O'Connor era. I also disagree with the Citizens United decision.

But despite that, while the article is a fascinating and full accounting of the case and the background of the Court's rapid movement to the right, the facts reported by Toobin don't seem to support his conclusions about the Chief Justice.

Let Government Certify and Churches Sanctify – UPDATE

Let Government Certify and Churches Sanctify – UPDATE

via The Anchoress on 5/14/12

Last week before I left for this "working-vacation" I repeated an idea I've brought for years: ". . . the churches should reconsider their roles in authenticating marriage. Governments issue birth certificates; churches issue baptismal certificates. Governments issue death certificates; churches pray the funerals. Governments issue divorces; Churches annul. Both work within their separate and [...]

A Censored Race War?

A Censored Race War?

via The American Spectator and The Spectacle Blog by Thomas Sowell on 5/14/12

When two white newspaper reporters for the Virginian-Pilot were driving through Norfolk, and were set upon and beaten by a mob of young blacks -- beaten so badly that they had to take a week off from work -- that might seem to have been news that should have been reported, at least by their own newspaper. But it wasn't.
"The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News Channel was the first major television program to report this incident. Yet this story is not just a Norfolk story, either in what happened or in how the media and the authorities have tried to sweep it under the rug.
Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles and other places across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try to sweep these episodes under the rug as well.
In Milwaukee, for example, an attack on whites at a public park a few years ago left many of the victims battered to the ground and bloody. But, when the police arrived on the scene, it became clear that the authorities wanted to keep this quiet.
One 22-year-old woman, who had been robbed of her cell phone and debit card, and had blood streaming down her face said: "About 20 of us stayed to give statements and make sure everyone was accounted for. The police wouldn't listen to us, they wouldn't take our names or statements. They told us to leave. It was completely infuriating."
The police chief seemed determined to head off any suggestion that this was a racially motivated attack by saying that crime is colorblind. Other officials elsewhere have said similar things.
A wave of such attacks in Chicago were reported, but not the race of the attackers or victims. Media outlets that do not report the race of people committing crimes nevertheless report racial disparities in imprisonment and write heated editorials blaming the criminal justice system.
What the authorities and the media seem determined to suppress is that the hoodlum elements in many ghettoes launch coordinated attacks on whites in public places. If there is anything worse than a one-sided race war, it is a two-sided race war, especially when one of the races outnumbers the other several times over.
It may be understandable that some people want to head off such a catastrophe, either by not reporting the attacks in this race war, or not identifying the race of those attacking, or by insisting that the attacks were not racially motivated -- even when the attackers themselves voice anti-white invective as they laugh at their bleeding victims.
Trying to keep the lid on is understandable. But a lot of pressure can build up under that lid. If and when that pressure leads to an explosion of white backlash, things could be a lot worse than if the truth had come out earlier, and steps taken by both black and white leaders to deal with the hoodlums and with those who inflame the hoodlums.
These latter would include not only race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson but also lesser known people in the media, in educational institutions and elsewhere who hype grievances and make all the problems of blacks the fault of whites. Some of these people may think that they are doing a favor to blacks. But it is no favor to anyone who lags behind to turn their energies from the task of improving and advancing themselves to the task of lashing out at others.
These others extend beyond whites. Asian American school children in New York and Philadelphia have for years been beaten up by their black classmates. But people in the mainstream media who go ballistic if some kid says something unkind on the Internet about a homosexual classmate nevertheless hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil when Asian American youngsters are beaten up by their black classmates.
Those who automatically say that the social pathology of the ghetto is due to poverty, discrimination and the like cannot explain why such pathology was far less prevalent in the 1950s, when poverty and discrimination were worse. But there were not nearly as many grievance mongers and race hustlers then.

The trail that led to bin Laden

The trail that led to bin Laden

via PrairiePundit by Merv on 4/30/12

Jose Rodriquez:

As we mark the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death, President Obama deserves credit for making the right choice on taking out Public Enemy No. 1. 

But his administration never would have had the opportunity to do the right thing had it not been for some extraordinary work during the George W. Bush administration. Much of that work has been denigrated by Obama as unproductive and contrary to American principles.
He is wrong on both counts. 

Shortly after bin Laden met his maker last spring, courtesy of U.S. Special Forces and intelligence, the administration proudly announced that when Obama took office, getting bin Laden was made a top priority. Many of us who served in senior counterterrorism positions in the Bush administration were left muttering: "Gee, why didn't we think of that?" 

The truth is that getting bin Laden was the top counterterrorism objective for U.S. intelligence since well before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. This administration built on work pain­stakingly pursued for many years before Obama was elected — and without this work, Obama administration officials never would have been in a position to authorize the strike on Abbottabad, Pakistan, that resulted in bin Laden's overdue death. 

...

A couple of years later, after I became head of the National Clandestine Service, the CIA was able to discover the true name of the courier. Armed with that information, the agency worked relentlessly to locate that man. Finding him eventually led to tracking down and killing bin Laden. 

With some trying to turn bin Laden's death into a campaign talking point for Obama's reelection, it is useful to remember that the trail to bin Laden started in a CIA black site — all of which Obama ordered closed, forever, on the second full day of his administration — and stemmed from information obtained from hardened terrorists who agreed to tell us some (but not all) of what they knew after undergoing harsh but legal interrogation methods. Obama banned those methods on Jan. 22, 2009.

... 

The piece is worth reading in full as he provides the trail that eventually led to bin Laden.  It was a trail that Obama never would have permitted.  It makes his bragging about the take down all the more improbable.

Rodriquez's story is almost as devastating to Obama as the Swift Boat revelations were about Kerry in 2004.
Rodriquez also discussed briefing Nancy Pelosi about the enhanced interrogation.

Info from enhanced interrogation led to bin Laden

Info from enhanced interrogation led to bin Laden

via PrairiePundit by Merv on 4/30/12

Marc Thiessen:

It's no coincidence that former CIA counterterrorism chief Jose Rodriguez chose the one year anniversary of the operation that killed Osama bin Laden to finally break his silence. In his new memoir, Hard Measures, published today, Rodriguez reveals never before told details about how the questioning of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other CIA detainees made the bin Laden operation possible.

Rodriguez reveals that it was KSM's efforts to cover for bin Laden's courier (who eventually led the CIA to bin Laden) that put the agency on his trail. He writes:

The detainees were always trying to game the system. At one point we discovered that KSM was trying to signal his fellow detainees (using a method I cannot describe). In one message he instructed another detainee to "tell them nothing about the courier." Short of giving us a name, you couldn't ask for a better tipoff.

This altered the agency to focus on uncovering bin Laden's courier network. And when another senior al Qaeda leader was taken into custody, he revealed still more information about the courier:

An al-Qa'ida operative was captured in 2004. He was quickly turned over to the CIA. He had computer discs with him that showed that he was relaying information between al-Qa'ida and Abu Musab Zarqawi… Initially, he played the role of a tough mujahideen and refused to cooperate. We then received permission to use some (but not all) of the EIT procedures on him. Before long he became compliant and started to provide some excellent information…. He told us that bin Ladin conducted business by using a trusted courier with whom he was in contact only sporadically. He said that the Sheikh (as bin Ladin was referred to by his subordinates) stayed completely away from telephones, radios, or the internet in an effort to frustrate American attempts to find him. And frustrated we were.

We pressed him on who this courier was and he said all he knew was a pseudonym: "Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti." This was a critical bit of information about the identity of the man who would eventually lead us to bin Ladin.

Armed with this information, CIA debriefers confronted KSM with what they had learned:

Agency officers went to KSM and asked him, "What can you tell us about Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti?" KSM's eyes grew wide and he backed up into his cell. He said no words but spoke volumes with his actions.

Then in May 2005, they captured another senior terrorist named Abu Faraj al-Libi....

... 

Democrats are still in denial about the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation in getting information that led to bin Laden.   It appears they have been misinformed or they are only hearing what they want to hear.  Since Obama was elected there have probably been few opportunities to interrogate al Qaeda detainees.  He mainly kills those we find.