Seven Reasons to Return to Confession | The Gregorian Blog | The Gregorian Institute at Benedictine College

Seven Reasons to Return to Confession | The Gregorian Blog | The Gregorian Institute at Benedictine College

Seven Reasons to Return to Confession

Posted June 23, 2012 by Tom Hoopes

Confession is available before all Benedictine College Masses, even Baccalaureate.

Fortnight for Freedom, Day 3.
During the Fortnight for Freedom, the Gregorian Institute at Benedictine College is offering resources for promoting Catholic identity in public life in the simplest, most high-impact ways possible.
Today's suggestion: Promote confession.
But don’t take our word for it.
“The renewal of the Church in America depends on the renewal of the practice of penance,” Pope Benedict told us at Nationals Stadium in Washington.
Pope John Paul II spent his last years on earth pleading with Catholics to return to confession, including in an urgent motu proprio document about confession and in his encyclical on the Eucharist.
He called the crisis in the Church the crisis of confession and wrote to priests: “I feel a pressing need to urge you, as I did last year, to rediscover for yourselves and help others to rediscover the beauty of the sacrament of reconciliation.”
Why all of this angst over confession? Because when we skip confession, we lose the sense of sin. The loss of the sense of sin is at the root of so many evils in our time, from child abuse to financial dishonesty, from abortion to atheism.
So, how to promote confession? Here are some talking points. Seven reasons to return to confession, both natural and supernatural.

1. Sin aggravates you.

A therapist tells the story about a patient who had been in a terrible cycle of depression and self-disgust ever since high school. Nothing seemed to help. One day, the therapist met the patient in front of a Catholic church. They ducked inside when it began raining, and witnessed people going to confession.
“Should I go too?” asked the patient, who had received the sacrament as a child. “No!” said the counselor. The patient went anyway, and emerged from the confessional with her first smile in years, and kept improving in the weeks to come. The therapist studied more about confession, eventually became Catholic and now counsels regular confession for all her Catholic patients.
Sin leads to depression because it isn’t just an arbitrary violation of rules: It’s a violation of the purpose built into our being by God. Confession lifts the guilt and anxiety caused by sin and heals you.

2. Sin makes you aggravating.

In the movie 3:10 to Yuma, the villain Ben Wade says, “I don’t mess around with doing anything good, Dan. Do one good deed for somebody – I imagine it’s habit forming.” He is right. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” As the Catechism puts it: “Sin creates a proclivity to sin.” People don’t just lie; they become liars. We don’t just steal; we become thieves. Making a clean break from sin redefines you, allows you to start new habits of virtue.
“God is determined to deliver his children from slavery to lead them to freedom,” said Pope Benedict XVI. “And the worst and most profound slavery is that of sin.”

3. We need to say it.

If you break a favorite item belonging to a friend, you would never be satisfied just feeling regret. You would feel compelled to explain what you did, express your sorrow, and do whatever is necessary set things right.
It is the same when we break something in our relationship with God. We need to say we’re sorry, and try to fix it.
Pope Benedict XVI points out that we should feel the need to confess even if we aren’t guilty of serious sin. “We clean our homes, our rooms, at least once a week, even if the dirt is always the same; in order to live in cleanliness, in order to start again,” he said.  “Something similar can be said about the soul.”

4. Confessing helps you know yourself.

We get ourselves all wrong. Our self-opinion is like a series of funhouse mirrors. Sometimes we see a strong and wonderful awe-inspiring version of ourselves. Sometimes we see a grotesque and twisted hateful version of ourselves.
Confession forces us to look at our lives objectively, separate the real sins from the bad feelings and see ourselves as we really are.
As Pope Benedict XVI put it: “Confession helps us to make our consciences more alert, more open and hence, it also helps us to mature spiritually and as human persons.”

5. Confession helps children.

Children need to go to confession, too. Some writers have stressed the negative aspects of childhood confession — being lined up in their Catholic schools and “forced to think of things to feel guilty about.”
It needn’t be like that.
Catholic Digest editor Danielle Bean once explained about how her brothers and sisters would tear up their confession lists after confession and drop them down the gutter by the church. “What a liberation!” she wrote “Returning my sins to the dark underworld from whence they had come felt wholly appropriate. ‘Hit my sister six times’ and ‘talked back to my mother four times’ were no longer my burden to bear.”
Confession can give children a place to unburden themselves without fear, and a place to get kindly adult advice when they are worried about speaking to their parents. A good examination of conscience (like this one) can guide children toward appropriate things to confess. Many families make confession an outing, followed up with ice cream.

6. Confessing mortal sin is required.

As the Catechism puts it, mortal sin, unconfessed “causes exclusion from Christ’s Kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices forever, with no turning back.”
Over and over again in the 21st century, the Church has reminded us that Catholics guilty of commiting a mortal sin can’t go to communion without confession.
“One commits a mortal sin when there are simultaneously present: grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent,” says the Catechism.
The U.S. bishops reminded Catholics about common sins that constitute grave matter in the 2006 document “Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper.” Those sins include: missing Mass on a Sunday or holy day of obligation, abortion and euthanasia, any extramarital sexual activity, theft, pornography, slander, hatred and envy.

7. Confession is a personal encounter with Christ.

In confession, it’s Christ who heals and forgives us, through the ministry of the priest. We have a personal encounter with Christ in the confessional. Just like the shepherds and Magi at the crèche, we find awe and humility. And just like the saints at the crucifixion, we find gratitude, repentance and peace.
There is no greater accomplishment in life than helping another person return to confession.
We should be willing to talk about confession like we talk about every other significant event in our lives. The offhand comment, “I won’t be able to make it until later, because I need to get to confession,” can be more convicting than a theological discourse. And since confession is a significant event in our lives, it’s an appropriate answer to the question “What are you doing this weekend?” Many of us also have funny or interesting confession stories — tell them.
Help make confession normal again. Let as many people as possible discover the beauty of this freeing sacrament.

Reverend Know-it-all: We are starting over....

Reverend Know-it-all: We are starting over....

We are starting over....

(The Rev. Know-it-all is away at

Mt. Flatten Monastery attending  a seminar on the creative pastoral uses of the thumbscrew and lash. As filler, we have a letter from a local pastor.)

Friends,

You may have noticed that recently, at Mass, I asked the young people who attend our religious education program to stand up. Of the 250, give or take, who attend the program, I counted about 50 or 60 at all the Masses.  Our teachers have done wonderful work. They have made great sacrifices for the sake of the religious education of our children. They have not failed. The 50-year-old system that they inherited has failed. We are using a model that was created before cell phones, soccer practice, twitter, facebook and video games. The model we are using is older than the Beatles. It’s as old as I am.

We inherited a system from the good old days of flourishing Catholic schools another failure which was lovingly remembered in the book, “The Last Catholic in America,” a charming reminiscence about Catholicism during the 1950's in which young Eddy Ryan loses his faith.  Religious education was called C.C.D. or the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.  In this usage it refers to a form of classroom style religious education for children in public schools. It was, at least in my youth, the threadbare cousin of Catholic schools.  

Catholic schools, by and large, have become failures themselves. There are some splendid Catholic schools, but in my experience of 40 years in ministry, increasingly, especially in large urban areas, Catholic schools have become inexpensive private schools for middle class people who have little or no interest in the Catholic faith, maintained at great expense by Catholic parishes. Catholic schools are, for the most part, over. 

We may have a few parish schools still plugging along, but are they Catholic? It seems that all we have left to us is the threadbare cousin. All our resources and energies go to maintaining the private school in the building next to the church. While the world is starving for Christ, we are giving them bingo and bratwurst, raffles and dinner dances, all to keep the school going.  

“But,” I can hear you say, “this is our major form of evangelism!” Aren’t you paying attention? The few kids from our schools who go to church don’t go because the school has converted them. They go because they have parents dedicated enough to bring them every Sunday, even in summer. Even in soccer season. Those kids may end up Catholic, not because they went to our schools and religious education programs, but because their parents were the first and best of teachers. In a recent conversation with a local pastor who runs a school of 250, give or take, I asked how many of his students and their families attend Mass during the summer months. He said, “about thirty of them.”   

In order to commit a mortal sin, a sin that severs one’s relationship to God, one must have sufficient knowledge that what they are doing is mortally sinful. Our kids come to Catholic schools and religious education where, presumably, they learn that it is a mortal sin to skip Sunday Mass without a serious reason, such as illness or inability to travel. That means that by allowing children to come to religious education or to enroll in Catholic schools when their parents don’t come to Mass, we are enabling them to commit a mortal sin by giving them the sufficient knowledge to damn their eternal souls.That’s a plan.

We have tied our religious education to the public school system of kindergarten and eight grades. The sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation have become graduation rituals, rites of passage, instead of the beginnings of a life of faith and commitment. We have turned sacrament into sacrilege.  When you “get your sacraments” you’re “outta” there.  (“Out of there” for those who don’t speak Chicagoan.) The Sacraments are an ending instead of a beginning. I can’t do this anymore. I believe it is morally wrong. The last time I brought this problem up, angry parents called the bishop. I remember one agitated parent who railed at me for questioning his Catholicism. He said that he was perfectly good Catholic. He went to Mass every single Easter and every single Christmas without fail.

When I realized that Eastern Rite Catholics from the Middle East don’t have Communion and Confirmation classes, a light went on in my head. They receive first Communion and Confirmation when they are Baptized, even if they are infants. They have religious education for the rest of their lives and, consequently, they have a spiritual life. They are prepared for the Sacrament of Penance, but not for Communion and Confirmation. The result is that they have a vibrant spiritual like that they have maintained in the face of 1,300 years of unremitting persecution. In this country, we can’t manage a religious life because we are up against team sports.

I intend to drop the classroom model and go to a discipleship model that is called Youthchurch. It will involve Bibles, catechisms and water balloons.  And maybe doughnuts. I will know the program is a success when I find that the kids are mad at their parents for missing Mass on Sunday.

I  no longer intend to prepare children for First Communion and Confirmation. There will no longer be First Communion and Confirmation classes. How and when will the children receive Communion and Confirmation? They will receive when they are ready.  When are they ready? They are ready when they want the Sacrament. How do we know they want the Sacrament? When they understand it, can tell the pastor what it is and why they want it. If they are not in ongoing religious education and they are not coming to Mass on regular basis, they don’t want the Sacrament.

I am tired to distraction of having to chase young people down the aisles in church to retrieve the Blessed Sacrament because they have no clue what it is. A year or so back, I was offering a funeral Mass and a teenaged girl came up for Communion, took the host, looked at it, turned it over and began to walk away holding it in her palm. I followed her and asked, “Have you made your First Communion?” She said simply, “I’m Jewish.” I smiled and said, “Perhaps I should take that from you.” Quite a few of the mourners were furious with me for my discourtesy.

At another funeral not long ago I saw a passel of tattooed and pierced adolescents coming down the aisle at a funeral. It was a large funeral so a number of priests were helping with Communion. I had finished my line so I stood about ten paces from the celebrant, a visiting priest. The first of the young Goths received the host, looked at it curiously and as she passed me I asked, are you Catholic? She said, “no.” I said “Perhaps I should take that.” So there began a curious ritual, of clueless youths. One priest would say “Body of Christ and the second priest would say “I’ll just take that.”

I’ve had it. My efforts will be directed to preparing people for the Sacrament of Conversion (Maybe you call it Penance or Reconciliation. Whatever.) Then maybe the little dears will understand that Communion is more than an edible poker chip. Registration will take place over the summer. I will be doing it personally. If you are registered in the parish and using envelopes, that will be the first step to getting your child in Youthchurch. How else can I tell if you are coming to Mass? As I’ve said before I don’t care that money’s in the envelope, I care that you are in the pew.

Fr. Simon

PS. How much will it cost? Books will cost something, but there will be no tuition. If you are coming to Mass every Sunday, I presume you are throwing in the basket already. I don’t want your money. I want your souls. On the other hand, I have nothing against your money. The west wall is still falling down.

‘Scrubbed’ Writings Show Kimberlin Associate Neal Rauhauser’s Obsessions

‘Scrubbed’ Writings Show Kimberlin Associate Neal Rauhauser’s Obsessions

Posted on | June 17, 2012 | 2 Comments and 0 Reactions

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Earlier this year, Neal Rauhauser “scrubbed” from the Internet several of his online writings in an apparent attempt to conceal evidence that he has been cyberstalking and harassing his enemies, including the late Andrew Breitbart, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and the group of Tea Party activists who exposed Rauhauser’s role in the 2010 “TwitterGate” scandal.
Cached versions of Rauhauser’s deleted posts were preserved by some of the conservatives he targeted, and show Rauhauser’s fetish for secrecy and his obsession with his various enemies. For example, on March 14, Rauhauser published a post on his blog (nealrauhauser.wordpress.com) entitled “Playing Detective,” in which he described his attempt to find the real identity of a Tea Party activist who uses the Twitter handle @ZapEm. She produced on online video documenting evidence that Rauhauser organized the “beandogs” who harassed conservative Twitter users in 2010.
“Someone with some paid services I don’t have gave me the name of a couple in New Jersey,” Rauhauser wrote, describing his attempts to locate @ZapEm (see complete post below). “I wrote a nice note to the Morristown [i.e., New Jersey] Tea Party leadership, hoping that they may have had their fill of her antics. . . . Then I called the chief of police in Morristown and we spent a few minutes on the phone.”
In follow-up posts the next day, Rauhauser wrote that ZapEm is “mentally ill” from schizophrenia and has a “behavior disorder,” even as he described his own clearly obsessive search for the woman’s real identity. He described being contacted by a New Jersey Democrat with information potentially identifying the targeted woman, announced plans to hire a private detective to find her in New Jersey, and wrote that he had ”started reaching out to Muslim attorneys in the area.”
Rauhauser, who previously worked as a consultant for Democratic politicians, has in the past year joined forces with Brett Kimberlin’s tax-exempt 501(c) activist group Velvet Revolution, and also has ties to the “Occupy” movement and the “Anonymous” computer hacking conspiracy. Kimberlin made headlines in the past month for his harassment of bloggers who have written about his criminal past as Indiana’s notorious “Speedway Bomber.” Last month, blogger Aaron Walker was arrested after a Maryland hearing about Kimberlin’s complaint against Walker’s writings.
Several of the posts deleted from Rauhauser’s blog (but preserved in cache form) relate to his penchant for maintaining secrecy in his online activities. In a March post entitled, “Hiding in Plain Sight,” Rauhauser described how to “truly, deeply hide” ownership of Web sites “from a server you control without revealing its location to others.” In other March postings, Rauhauser claimed to have been targeted by a “a violent, Islamophobic nativist hate group” and wrote about “various stuff I’ve done to confuse those intent on finding and harming me.”
One undated article by Rauhauser (uploaded at Scribd.com and later deleted) is entitled “Geolocation Lulz” and describes methods by which Rauhauser masks his IP address and location while posting comments on Web sites to “goad” enemies. Another article by Rauhauser dealt with “persona management,” i.e., protecting secret online aliases, and he also wrote about offering three classes to teach his Internet strategies: “Security & Anonymity,” “Grassroots Intel Analyst,” and “Counter Intel/Counter Troll.”
Recently published e-mails show Rauhauser soliciting a California attorney, Jay Leiderman, to assist New Jersey conservative activist Mike Stack in filing a nuisance lawsuit against Los Angeles County deputy district attorney Patrick Frey. Both Stack and Frey were victims of so-called “SWATting,” a dangerous hoax in which calls to 911 emergency numbers are used to dispatch police to the target’s home with the false accusation that the target has committed a violent crime.
At his Patterico site, Frey published an account of his SWATting, and has mentioned that one anonymous Twitter account (“LulzShack”) exhibited inside knowledge of that 2011 incident. Stack was SWATted after he helped expose Rep. Anthony Weiner’s cybersex scandal. Patterico wrote on May 25:

As Andrew Breitbart noted, this happened to two people within the course of a single week: a man in New Jersey and myself. Both of us had had contact with Andrew Breitbart. Both of us were writing about the same story. And both of us received email threats days before we were swatted. The threat to me said, in part: “Please think about your family. This story is not worth it. I can assure you that.” . . .
Writing at Daily Kos, Rauhauser suggests I should be harassed online.
Three days after I was swatted, Rauhauser wrote a post titled “Patterico’s Penalization” that made bizarre accusations about me, and accused me of working with a “cyberstalker” named Seth Allen — a blogger who had criticized Brett Kimberlin so tenaciously that Kimberlin (frivolously) sued Allen for defamation.

In multiple postings at Daily Kos under his “Stranded Wind” alias, Rauhauser wrote obsessively about his theories that the so-called WeinerGate scandal was a hoax, which Rauhauser implied had been orchestrated by Frey.
Another obsessive interest of Rauhauser’s was O’Keefe, whose undercover video “sting” of the community organizing group ACORN launched Breitbart’s “Big Government” site in 2009. In posts that Rauhauser scrubbed from his blog, he describes his communications with Nadia Naffe, who admits having stolen O’Keefe’s e-mails, and who made headlines earlier this year by falsely accusing O’Keefe of sexual assault. Earlier this week, in an e-mail sent to blogger Paul Lemmen, Rauhauser claimed that he was working with the New Hampshire attorney general’s office in an effort to prosecute O’Keefe for a video “sting” operation about voter fraud in that state. Rauhauser said he had “hand carried a letter from [a New Hampshire associate attorney general] into an injunction hearing in New Jersey” involving Naffe and O’Keefe.
A September 2011 e-mail from Rauhauser to leaders of the “Occupy Boston” protests shows that Rauhauser was representing himself as an agent of Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution group, and that Rauhauser was acquainted with “Anonymous” hacker Gregg Housh. Last year, Housh’s colleague Barrett Brown announced that they had signed a book deal (reportedly for a “six figure” advance payment) to write about the activities of ”Anonymous.” Brown had become a public spokesman for the computer hacking group, and was reportedly raided by the FBI earlier this year when charges were filed against the so-called “LulzSec” cell of Anonymous.
In a comment posted at a progressive blog in October 2011, Rauhauser described being contacted by a “very big dog from the Anonymous pen” who agreed to assist Velvet Revolution in an apparent plan to attack enemies of Rauhauser and Kimberlin.
Rauhauser’s tendency to boast — he frequently writes about his contacts with law enforcement and congressional staffers — and his demonstrable habits of deception make it difficult to take any of his claims at face value. In the sampling of Rauhauser’s writings that I have appended below, he makes a number of accusations of criminal wrongdoing against various individuals, attributing to these persons malicious intent. Readers are cautioned that many of Rauhauser’s claims about his chosen “enemies” are probably false, and may constitute libel. In republishing them here, I disavow any intent to endorse the claims made by Rauhauser and furthermore note that Rauhauser is a public figure who, by attempting to hide his potentially libelous writings by deleting them from his site, has waived whatever copyright claims might otherwise have prevented their republication under “fair use” doctrine.

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

* * * * * * *
** ARTICLES BY NEAL RAUHAUSER **

Playing Detective

March 14, 2012
I have a bit of quite time the next few weeks as some other stuff gets sorted out, so I am free to set aside my poor Google intelligence collection skills and actually do some genuine detective work.
First, for background, we’re talking about An Inconvenient Kook, a woman I’ve tentatively identified as Michelle Lessick aka ZAPEM. All I had to start was:

• The Twitter username @ZAPEM (now @Repository1) and a now defunct WordPress blog
• Records of various streams of tweets and writings, which are a fairly distinct personality showing delusions of persecution
• An email from Patrick Read aka @SwiftRead naming her as Michelle
• A tip that her last name was Reilly, perhaps Nagy-Riley, which I believe to be incorrect
• A tip that her name might be Lessick
• Assertions that she was a police dispatcher and her husband a police officer
• Many indications she lived in northern New Jersey

I did quite a lot of digging with Google and finally did locate the connection to the name Lessick, which can be seen in the link containing her name. I chased various permutations of this name and the Jascawow alias using a variety of search tools and came up empty.
Someone with some paid services I don’t have gave me the name of a couple in New Jersey with the last name of Lessick, Republicans in their mid fifties. For various subtle reasons I was fairly sure the wife was not the woman I was seeking, but I thought that perhaps Michelle was a daughter in her late twenties to early thirties who had developed schizophrenia, or another relative in the area who is on disability and not visible to typical search methods. I spent a few minutes on the phone with her last night and I’m sure that she is not the one, nor does she seem to be covering for someone she knows.
I wrote a nice note to the Morristown Tea Party leadership, hoping that they may have had their fill of her antics. My source for much of the information I do have is someone on the right who feels her conduct is weird, dangerous, and embarrassing to the rest of them. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find someone local who holds similar views of her.
I went through the Morristown Democrats I could find online, sending email and making calls. I signed up for Topix and posted a request there looking for an activist in the area who can help me make connections. Then I called the chief of police in Morristown and we spent a few minutes on the phone. They don’t have their own dispatchers and he gave me the number to call at the county dispatch center.
Due to Donald Payne’s death I’ve felt it was inappropriate to bother the folks on Capitol Hill, but I will probably go down and make a few inquiries next week.I’ve got fifteen more days to do such things until Aaron Walker’s assault trial. Maybe I will get a break on this, maybe I am going to have to grind through a civil suit, we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.
–

Geolocation Lulz

(Undated)
When kooks follow you around mouthing off about “getting your IP” it’s game on. Check your IP every time you sit down in a coffee shop. Get a lulzy one, like you’re in Vienna, Virginia, but the address resolves to Staten Island? That’s a perfect time to post a comment on some dipshit’s WordPress. Goad them later, but give it a few weeks.
Happen to be visiting the U.S. Capitol? And the person who is going to “get your IP” suffers from delusions of persecution, believing the government is after her? There’s no better time than to visit the House cafeteria in the Longworth building, and post a comment to aforementioned dipshit’s WordPress, knowing your delusional kook will be brought in to investigate.
Keep that host name in mind, some weeks later set up a new Cisco router at home, and capture the mysterious looking ip nat translation table when two of your machines are running torrent. Replace your home IP with housegate12.house.gov, and post the pastebin link to Twitter with some cryptic comments. Hours of fun ensue as kooks go through the torrent peers, looking for ‘clues’.
Kooks once determined I lived in Bethesda, Maryland. Google “Bethesda IP address Comcast”, and in the first page you find a lovely map that leads to a house just north of the NIH complex. Take the IP, get the ‘show ip address’ and ‘show arp’ from your shiny new Cisco home router, edit in the IP from the map in place of your own, then fiddle the MAC address table so any pro will know it’s a game. Put this up on yfrog, then go away for twelve hours. Be sure to get a trollish friend to point it out, laughing at your rookie mistake, so that kooks will know it’s an important ‘clue’.
And then harden the perception that this is an actual address by using Foursquare to check in to a location at the NIH complex itself.
Tweet that you’ve finished receiving the backup torrent from Encyclopedia Dramatica (ie you’re a 100% peer) and that you’ve served up 101G to other EDiots. Promptly drop torrent 30 seconds later, lulz for hours as kooks waste the afternoon trying to dox the completed peers.
CODA
A competent adult, reading this, would say “LOL, internetz”. A troll would say “Hey, I gotta try some of this myself.” Here is how a delusional kook might interpret it. ••••Mention of Virginia address confirms the subject is stalking a Virginia resident –and that must be ME! I must seek a protection order at once. Posting from the Longworth building cafeteria is a lie, he works for a Congressman; we need a call/write in campaign to find out which office. There is a MAP. The map shows a HOUSE. That is where he lives, or it’s his girlfriend, or maybe it’s a safehouse for George Soros when he is in D.C. Mention of Encyclopedia Dramatica. This man is either Garrett, or Zaiger, or maybe he’s Joseph Evers. Look, there’s a cell phone number for him …
So that’s that. Maybe two or three hours of effort total, mostly the run to the Medical Center red line stop when I was in the area anyway, and kooks have been chasing their tails for weeks and weeks.
So, kooks … you guys want me to leak additional IP addresses for you to investigate?
–

A Woman’s Place…

March 24, 2012
Lately I have been chatting a bit online with @NadiaNaffe, the latest in a string of woman @JamesOKeefeIIIhas attempted to victimize by drugging them and then taking advantage of them. There are civil and criminal things afoot here, so I won’t say much more, but this is a trend for the American right … and it’s not working in their favor.
Nadia is the third case where I’ve seen a woman who was working with some right wing oppo thing end up facing sexual harassment/sexual assault. Each time the operation has been blown to bits by the inability of a male leader to respectfully handle the women around him.
As for the other two, one was brassy, aggressive, and after an initial period of shock she has heaped punishment on the ones who offended her, and that included giving me all sorts of things they really didn’t want the world to know. A similar event happened over a year ago, I happened to get into a conversation with the victim of that one, and now a packet of information goes to anyone new the ringleader recruits. He seems puzzled as to all the trouble he is having …
This failure to recruit and retain women, which is far different from having men running female sock puppets, is a deadly peril to the right. They’re already behind the eight ball demographically and at a top level the puzzling anti-contraception debacle is comical, yet painful to watch. I can’t tell what they were thinking –attack contraception, accept an end to abortion as a compromise? Instead a generation of women who enjoy active sex lives are feeling like they’ve had their privates groped by some dirty old man.
I’ve spent the last couple of years researching, teaching, and building capacity –opposition stuff, policy stuff, and if I couldn’t get along with women I wouldn’t have 10% of what I do now. Some examples of a woman’s place include …
I get several complex bits of intel daily –summaries of what is happening in various areas that interest me. Some are lone gun operations, others are teams, but the glue that holds them together are women who have picked a specific issue to stand guard over day in/day out.
I sometimes make new things that need testing –there are a quartet of women between thirty and fifty in my chat client who I can give something partially finished and they’ll grind on it to see if it’s any good. These three classes I’m working on, Security & Anonymity, Grassroots Intel Analyst, and Counter Intel/Counter Troll? My progress would be limited and one dimensional if I weren’t sharing the work with my relentless reviewers.
I get texts pretty much every day, invariably starting with “You need to look at” followed by a link. There are a couple of women who took off with my Analyst’s Shoebox method of handling Google Alerts over a year ago and not much gets by them. Friends, enemies, the issues of the moment, they all have alerts and I generally hear about stuff without having to spend a lot of time digging on my own.
If I want to know what’s happening with the Occupiers in New York, Washington D.C, Denver, Chicago, Oakland, or any of the other hot spots my sources are almost invariably women. This group is a mixed bag –most of my contacts have passed the age of thirty, but there are a few in their mid twenties out on the road who are intent on growing their influence networks, and they’re treasure.
You might start getting the idea that I’ve got some weird problem working with men, but that’s not the case. There are half a dozen toolsmiths in my close circle, men from their early twenties to early sixties, and the more aggressive personalities online, with two notable exceptions, are all male. This just seems to be a natural break point in duties –women will favor relationships, and words, and regular schedules, while men will favor tasks, math, and projects.
So that’s that. The right is old, white, male dominated, racist, misogynist, and they’re chewing up their record keepers, their peace keepers, sometimes with disastrous results.
—

In Which James O’Keefe Obstructs Justice

March 22, 2012
I recently wrote Deleting (Almost) All Your Email, where I talked about my scanty inbox, with just 68 messages as of this afternoon, and how reading the HBGary emails as I wrote this reportchanged my views. I just don’t keep email any more –I get up to 500 messages and it’s time to clean house. I do memorialize important discussions by printing to PDF, but I never want to face what Aaron Barr of HBGary did.
And I will never face what James O’Keefe is going to, because I couldn’t be as foolish, sloppy, and criminal as he is even as an act. I’ll explain …
James probably made his final error by getting into conflict with @NadiaNaffe. This is the third time he’s had some weird sex/refusal/attempt to video tape someone in the context of his ‘journalism’ and this young lady has a unique advantage over the other two, in that O’Keefe made one disastrous error.
Nadia was involved in a sting operation aimed at journalist Charles Seife. The roots of the failed “To Catch A Journalist” effort were simple –Seife knew something was up with O’Keefe’s Project Veritasand he was asking to see the IRS documentation. He isn’t the only one and that isn’t the only problem charity he is involved in –others have questioned the nature of the Muslim Education Action Center, a sock puppet O’Keefe rigged up to smear National Public Radio.
While Naffe was in the field O’Keefe gave her his iPhone and he remained nearby in a car, using her Android phone and laptop to conduct other business. He failed to delete his accounts when they switched phones.
So understand what happened –O’Keefe walked away leaving Naffe with his email going back to 2004. Shehas had this information since October of 2011 and he’s been jacking with her the whole time. She has already released details of Izzy Santa’s settlement with O’Keefe and Project Veritas.
So far the matters are civil in nature, revealing a troubled young man who is either unable to respect, or completely unaware of the boundaries a woman his age would have. But what is not being said here is even more interesting to me.
O’Keefe was caught attempting to wire tap Senator Mary Landrieu’s phones in the company of the son of one of the two U.S. Attorneys for Louisiana, which got him federal probation. His taping of ACORN workers in Maryland was a clear violation of state wire tap laws, and he recently found similar trouble in New Hampshire.
Despite the questions about IRS filing status for two non-profits and multiple wire tap events some mysterious force keeps the New Jersey federal probation office responsible for O’Keefe from having him picked up for probation violations and referring him for further prosecution.
The contents of Ms. Naffe’s phone are likely the tool needed to break loose that log jam and put an end to O’Keefe reckless endangerment of any young woman who makes the mistake of associating with him, as well as the hazard his smear operation represents to our democracy.
O’Keefe is scrambling to put a lid on this –suing Naffe for the return of these emails. If there is evidence of crimes committed in those messages, which seems certain given what is already known about O’Keefe’s activities, this is obstruction of justice.
The solution to this problem is quite simple –Naffe can provide the content to those who have already subpoenaed her, then turn the content into the FBIsomewhere outside of New Jersey. The combination of other O’Keefe victims, who have resources and no entanglement, coupled with the FBI receiving the email outside the reach of whatever is happening in New Jersey, will be an unstoppable combination.

Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, and Their Transparent Empire of Lies UPDATE: ‘Anonymous’ Connection

Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, and Their Transparent Empire of Lies UPDATE: ‘Anonymous’ Connection

Posted on | June 10, 2012 | 26 Comments and 155 Reactions

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Seventy members of the House of Representatives are reportedly prepared to unite in support of Senator Saxby Chambliss’s call for a Justice Department investigation of the “SWATtings” against Mike Stack, Patrick Frey and Erick Erickson.
There is also reportedly interest among Republicans in Congress about the “lawfare” aspect of the Kimberlin case, along the lines of what Ace of Spades talked about Friday: Legislation to prevent a convicted felon from using claims of “harassment” to intimidate people who are guilty of nothing but telling the truth about his criminal past.
Beginning with his lawsuit against Seth Allen in October 2010, Kimberlin and his allies have used this strategy in a number of variations. In some cases, as with Allen and Aaron Walker, legal action seemed chiefly intended to get behind the online aliases of those who were publicizing Kimberlin’s heinous history.
Allen used the pseudonyms “Socrates” and “Prespostericity,” while Walker was known as “Aaron Worthing” in the blogosphere. Once the actual human beings behind those aliases were discovered — I believe the colloquial term for this is “patched” — then Kimberlin and his surrogates could mount personal attacks against these online critics. This could happen two ways: Either by using negative personal information about the critics in an effort to discredit them, or else by contacting the critics’ employer (or, in the case of Walker, their spouse’s employer) to claim that the critic was engaged in wrongful activity by blogging about Kimberlin’s criminality.
The success of Kimberlin in employing this tactic shows one reason, by the way, why using online aliases creates a vulnerability for anyone engaged in what we might call “combat blogging.” There is no such thing as a pseudonym that is totally secure. You may think that your online alias protects your private life, but if you ever get into heavy-duty blogwars — giving an antagonist a motive for wanting to know who you really are – your privacy becomes a weakness.
As soon as I began digging into the Kimberlin story on May 17, I became aware that what Ken at Popehat has called “Team Kimberlin” includes a number of persons operating behind Twitter pseudonyms who were involved in publicizing negative information about Kimberlin’s critics. And I also learned that Team Kimberlin had been trying to “patch” Ace of Spades.
Perhaps readers now see why I have spent the past three weeks in scramble-the-jets mode. “But wait a minute,” you say, “why Ace?”
The answer involves WeinerGate, Kimberlin’s 501(c) Velvet Revolution, the late Andrew Breitbart and a guy named Neal Rauhauser.
Readers who have been following the series of posts I call “The Kimberlin Files” have become familiar with the name Neal Rauhauser. You know about the lunatic conspiracy theory Rauhauser published under the title, “Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?” You know that Rauhauser has described Kimberlin as his “client,” and that Rauhauser accompanied Kimberlin to the May 29 hearing in Maryland at which Aaron Walker was arrested.
Focusing on the Kimberlin-Rauhauser connection is, I think, the key to unlocking a mystery that has puzzled me and others for a while: What are they trying to hide?
The frenzied intensity of attacks we’ve seen from Team Kimberlin in the past three weeks strikes many observers as suggestive of what criminologists call “consciousness of guilt.”
A source familiar with the investigation of “Team Kimberlin” told me that recent exposures caused them to “freak out,” and that certain streams of communication between their team members suddenly went into “radio silence” mode. Meanwhile, certain of their pseudonymous online presences have begun frantically attacking those who are helping shine the light on Kimberlin, even to the point of sending veiled threats and “disinfo” messages to anyone who seems to be connected to the light-shiners.
While it is interesting to speculate on the actual identities behind the various online personas employed by Team Kimberlin, their general mode of operation very much resembles what Neal Rauhauser was doing in the 2010 “TwitterGate” scandal. As I’ve said to several people familiar with the case, we seem to be looking at “Beandogs 2.0.”
Today, I needed to clear my head and relax, so I went driving around and, among other things, visited a fireworks store to do some Fourth of July shopping. But I also made some phone calls, and learned of some interesting evidence showing a direct connection between Neal Rauhauser and the international criminal hacker conspiracy known as “Anonymous.”
Before I show you that, however, let me point out a basic fact: Brett Kimberlin is a liar. He lies to reporters. He lies under oath in court. His apparent compulsive lying is one of the great constants of Kimberlin’s life, going back to when he was convicted of perjury as a teenager. Patterico calls attention to how blatantly Kimberlin lies:

[Kimberlin said] that he does not maintain any online presence and said he and his family have been victims of threats themselves and accused the bloggers of constructing a “false narrative” about him.
“I don’t blog, I don’t comment, I don’t tweet on any blogs at all. This is a right-wing attack on me and my organizations and it’s a smear job. It’s a swift boat action against us,” Kimberlin said.
– Arlette Saenz, ABC News, June 6

“[I]t’s part of my job to, to work on the Internet because it’s basically a social networking job and so I get Google alerts all the time mentioning my my organizations . . .”
– Brett Kimberlin, in Montgomery County court hearing vs. Aaron Walker, May 29

These two statements seem incompatible. If Kimberlin is “on the Internet” doing “a social networking job,” how is it that he never uses Twitter or writes on blogs? With whom does he network on the Internet, and how does he do it without using the most common tools for online social networking?
Ah, but there is that evidence I mentioned earlier, involving Neal Rauhauser and the “Anonymous” hacking conspiracy.
UPDATE: E-mail communications in September 2011, in regard to “Occupy Boston” protests, involving Neal Rauhauser (claiming to speak on behalf of Kimberlin’s non-profit Velvet Revolution) and someone named Gregg Housh:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Alex Pearlman
Date: Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: FYI Clarence Thomas message goes to Occupiers
To: Gregg Housh
Cc: neal rauhauser , Marisa Egerstrom <
megerst…@gmail.com>

We also have the general site, occupyboston.com. I’m part of the
Media/Message team and can get this to them ASAP. Thanks so much!

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Gregg Housh wrote:

> Also, Boston has this:
>
> https://sites.google.com/site/occupyrevolution/home
>
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 3:13 PM, neal rauhauser wrote:
>
>>
>>   Gregg,
>>
>>   Thanks for the intro – I just put out a ‘clarification’ to the NYGA’s
>> Declaration of Occupation. It’s a bit more literate than what they did and I
>> think I’ve got the overall tone and content about right. Is this something
>> we can get people to discuss? I didn’t have the patience to get to speak in
>> one GA, can’t imagine how to do outreach to a whole bunch all at once w/o
>> begging assistance.
>>
>> http://www.scribd.com/doc/66968871/NYCGA-Declaration
>>
>>   Keep in mind I work with the guy who triggered the investigation into
>> Clarence Thomas over the Citizens United payoff and there is a lot of
>> similar stuff like that sitting around here. Those groups get in the mood to
>> clean house, we’ve got the treasure map for them.
>>
>>                  Neal
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Gregg Housh wrote:
>>
>>> Ive been in on the Boston planning.  The people you want to talk to for
>>> it to start to get any sort of cohesion will probably be these two:  “Marisa
>>> Egerstrom” , alexnpearl…@gmail.com
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 7:25 AM, neal rauhauser wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>   We’re getting in position to drive part of the narrative for the
>>>> Occupiers. Here is how it’s being done.
>>>>
>>>>    Overnight I created a fairly complete list of the OccupyWhatever
>>>> Twitter accounts.
>>>>
>>>> http://twitter.com/#!/list/WeOccupyAmerica/occupations
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    There is now a paper.li so we can see what they are talking about:
>>>>
>>>> http://paper.li/WeOccupyAmerica/1317378132
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    And we have our Press Agent running on @WeOccupyAmerica. This account
>>>> had 2,500 hand picked followers, mostly Progressives, no bots, no junk, no
>>>> wingnuts. It’s picked up 300 followers in the last day and since I’m using
>>>> it in this fashion now I can’t be aggressive about policing who follows.
>>>>
>>>>    This is what we’re doing message wise:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   1. Continuous low speed trickle of Eight Rules, nonviolent engagement
>>>> advice from Cynthia Boaz
>>>>
>>>> http://weoccupyamerica.blogspot.com/2011/09/eight-rules.html
>>>>
>>>>   2. We can use the list of accounts to send them individual public @
>>>> messages, so far we have said:
>>>>
>>>>      a. please help us find the rest of you
>>>>      b. please look at Andrew Krieg’s article on 20 House members
>>>> pushing investigation of Clarence Thomas (started 9/30 early AM, will run
>>>> all day)
>>>>
>>>>   3. Next steps with this will include some of the following
>>>>
>>>>      a. other Velvet Revolution activities – American Crossroads seems
>>>> most likely to draw their eye
>>>>      b. If we can get Seema Kalia’s work on Wall Street corruption
>>>> positioned right that will be HIGHLY inflammatory
>>>>      c. Keep an eye on progress against Thomas & labor uptake, maybe we
>>>> get a shot at Scalia for this NLRB/Boeing stuff he & his son do
>>>>      d. taking suggestions from the folks in the bcc: on what else needs
>>>> attention, as well as from @Occupier accounts
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    I’ve personally visited the Wall Street occupation, to establish some
>>>> grassroots cred specific to this movement, to renew contact with old
>>>> friends, and to meet new ones. I’ve got my fingers into the D.C. planning
>>>> and I’m going to make a run to Baltimore to help get that one moving, too. I
>>>> may well go back to New York for a bit if it’s warranted and I’m going to
>>>> check my Amtrak miles to see if I can swing a trip to Boston.
>>>>
>>>>    There are already back channels developing but it’s so chaotic I
>>>> can’t discern which ones are important. I would greatly appreciate those of
>>>> you who have an occupation near you skulking a bit, and bringing me half a
>>>> dozen contacts for each. If you’re actually getting involved up close and
>>>> personal, well, let’s *talk*.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     The visible emails are Jen Preston of New York Times, Mark Ames of
>>>> ExiledOnline, and Adrian Chen from Gawker – three of the four journalists I
>>>> know who don’t suck. The rest of you down in bcc: are free to hit reply if
>>>> you have something you want to give one of them, and I’ll validate you as a
>>>> source. If you’re feeling sneaky you can pass me stuff and I’ll hand it off
>>>> to them.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    So … reform or bust, what say you?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> –
>>>> mailto:nrauhau…@gmail.com//
>>>> GV: 202-642-1717
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> –
>> mailto:nrauhau…@gmail.com//
>> GV: 202-642-1717

While the readers begin to dissect the information in that e-mail thread, I’ll clue you in: Gregg Housh is well-known as an operative of “Anonymous,” and has been involved in a business partnership with someone who was raided by the FBI this year.
UPDATE II: To make explicit what this means: First, in November 2011, it was announced that Gregg Housh had agreed to co-author a book about “Anonymous” with the group’s public spokesman, Barrett Brown, for a reported six-figure advance.
Second,  Housh has been described as a “seventh-grade dropout, devout atheist, and proud computer troll” who once served “three months . . . in federal prison for copyright infringement via software piracy.” Third, in March of this year, the feds busted the “Anonymous” offshoot known as “LulzSec” and, apparently in connection with those arrests, the FBI raided Barrett Brown in Texas.
Now, read that e-mail thread I’ve posted very closely, and tell me what you see about the connection between Rauhauser and Housh. I’ll be back to explain more, in case you don’t immediately spot the key bit of information.
UPDATE III: Did you spot it? “Gregg, Thanks for the intro.”
That is to say, when Rauhauser was looking for an introduction to the leaders of “Occupy Boston,” he asked Gregg Housh — with whom he clearly had a prior acquaintance — to make the introduction. Housh has a federal felony record and had a co-authorship deal with Brown, the “Anonymous” spokesman raided by the FBI in March of this year. And at some point prior to September 2011, Rauhauser and Housh were already good enough buddies that Neal could ask his buddy Gregg for a favor, namely this intro to the leadership of “Occupy Boston.”
Rauhauser proposed to transact official business of Kimberlin’s 501(c)3 Velvet Revolution with the “Occupy” movement via this connection obtained via his contacts with “Anonymous” operative Gregg Housh. And why would a paid agent of a tax-exempt non-profit organization have this kind of connection? Why was Rauhauser interested in “Anonymous,” and how did that interest overlap with the activism of Velvet Revolution?
Let reporters start asking those kinds of questions.
Let members of Congress start asking. Let the FBI start asking. And the next time Neal Rauhauser shows up at one of Brett Kimberlin’s court proceedings, how about somebody start asking Kimberlin about Neal, and then start asking Rauhauser about Brett. Who knew what, and when did they know it?
How about a little hint?
In a June 2, 2011, post at Daily Kos (where he used the pseudonym “Stranded Wind”), Rauhauser offered this bizarre claim:

Congressman Anthony Weiner was stalked, set up, smeared, and this was coordinated to protect Clarence Thomas from scrutiny.

What did Rauhauser link? A petition by Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution demanding impeachment and prosecution of Justice Thomas. Read more background on Raushauser here.
Is there more? Oh, yeah — lots and lots more. But I think readers will agree that this is enough to push the story forward one more day, and you can chew on this until Monday afternoon, when I plan to peel this onion just a bit more.

-– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:

• May 17: Is Democrat Operative Neal Rauhauser an ‘Associate’ of Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin? (And Why It Matters)
• May 17: Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin Received $70,000 From Tides Foundation, $10,000 From Streisand, $20,000 from John Kerry’s Wife
• May 18: Who Warned Us About Brett Kimberlin?
• May 19: Domestic Terrorist Now Using ‘Lawfare’? Convicted Felon Kimberlin’s 501(c)3 Raised $1.8 Million in Six Years UPDATE: ‘Convicted of Perjury’
• May 20: Deadline Loometh, and the Raven Is Croaking Brett Kimberlin’s Name
• May 20: ‘Other Computer Savvy Activists’
• May 21: Never Doubt That God Answers Prayer
• May 22: Brett Kimberlin Saga Takes a Bizarre Turn, Forcing Me to Leave Maryland
• May 23: ‘He Has No F–king Soul’
• May 24: Lying Felon Can’t Stop Lying
• May 25: KimberlinFiles.org
• May 26: Kimberlin v. Walker Hearing Scheduled: 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in Rockville, Maryland
• May 27: Brett Kimberlin’s Heiress Aunt Helping Fund His Tax-Exempt Harassment
• May 27: ERICK ERICKSON GETS SWATTED
• May 28: Somebody Tell Nina Totenberg Her Buddy Brett Kimberlin Is Making News Again
• May 29: Matthew Vadum Talks Brett Kimberlin
• May 29: REPORT: Aaron Walker Arrested After Maryland Hearing on Kimberlin Case UPDATE: Walker Now Released
• May 31: Aaron Walker Court Hearing Confirms Kimberlin-Rauhauser Collaboration
• June 1: Radicals Justify Their Evil by Invoking Their Presumed Moral Superiority
• June 2: When Neal Rauhauser Complained About ‘Menacing’ and ‘Cyberstalking’
• June 3: The Profoundly Dishonest Brett Kimberlin
• June 3: Raw Story Disavows Ties to Kimberlin
• June 3: Inside Neal Rauhauser’s Twisted Mind
• June 4: ‘A Faint Whiff of Vigilante Hysteria’: Weinergate’s Kimberlin Connection
• June 5: Ali Akbar Says, ‘World War Three’
• June 5: Fear and Loathing on Capitol Hill: The GOP Caucus Is Decadent and Depraved
• June 6: Walker Files Appeal in Kimberlin Case; Ali Akbar Says: ‘We’re Not Stopping.’
• June 6: Sen. Saxby Chambliss Requests DOJ Investigate SWATting
• June 7: CNN Gets Scooped on Its Own Story UPDATE: ACLJ Joins the Fight!
• June 8: NATIONAL DAY OF BLOGGER SILENCE UPDATE: Remember Seth Allen
• June 8: @AceOfSpadesHQ BREAKS SILENCE: #BrettKimberlin’s Escalating Threat

CNN Gets Scooped on Its Own Storybr / UPDATE: ACLJ Joins the Fight!

CNN Gets Scooped on Its Own Storybr / UPDATE: ACLJ Joins the Fight!

CNN Gets Scooped on Its Own Story
UPDATE: ACLJ Joins the Fight!

Posted on | June 7, 2012 | 2 Comments and 0 Reactions

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Very busy today, awaiting developments on The Kimberlin Files. However, Da Tech Guy cleverly points out that CNN allowed Arlette Saenz of ABC to beat them on reporting this story, even though the reported SWATting of CNN on-air personality Erick Erickson was a central element of the story.
For that matter, CNN contributor Dana Loesch is well-informed about the Kimberlin story, and could put CNN’s reporters in direct contact with many others who are involved. But maybe the executives at CNN would rather continue being No. 3 in cable news ratings, and let their competitors scoop them on such an important story, because they are more interested in playing politics than reporting the actual news.
Jeff Goldstein mocks Brett Kimberlin’s self-proclaimed victimhood.
Obviously, having spoken to Saenz about my own role in the story, I owe The American Spectator a follow-up on my May 29 article, “Terror By Any Other Name.” So . . .busy day.
UPDATE: Almost forgot — but Bob Belvedere has reminded us — that Eric Holder testified today before the House Judiciary Committee. Did committee members ask the Attorney General any questions about Senator Chambliss’s inquiry?
UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin breaks the news that the American Center for Law and Justice will defend Ali Akbar:

“Free speech is under attack,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “Conservative writers are now facing threats against themselves, their families, and their livelihoods merely because they’ve aggressively investigated the history and funding of radical liberals. The ACLJ has a long history of successfully defending free speech, and we look forward to defeating this latest attempt to threaten and intimidate conservatives into silence.”

Busy, busy, busy . . .

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

Walker Files Appeal in Kimberlin Case;br / Ali Akbar Says: ‘We’re Not Stopping.’

Walker Files Appeal in Kimberlin Case;br / Ali Akbar Says: ‘We’re Not Stopping.’

Did Brett Kimberlin Stalk BlogCon?

Posted on | June 6, 2012 | 1 Comment and 0 Reactions

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
New developments today in the story of convicted terrorist bomber-turned-progressive activist Brett Kimberlin: Sources report that conservative New Media activists believe that Kimberlin — whose activities are funded by the tax-exempt 501(c) non-profits Velvet Revolution and the Justice Through Music Project — showed up in April at BlogCon, a conference sponsored by FreedomWorks and the Franklin Center.
The incident was uncovered by @JDonels, who reported on his Tumblr blog that a person using the Twitter alias “Robert Slydell” appears to have been involved in the incident:

Did a left-wing activist infiltrate BlogCon Charlotte? Try to intimidate bloggers on Twitter? Did this person know someone who may have hacked Twitter accounts, and have his real name accidentally exposed in the process? And did this person know of efforts to put conservatives in TwitterGulag?

A photo of Kimberlin was circulated among online activists and, sources say, it was confirmed that Kimberlin showed up at the hotel in Charlotte, N.C., where BlogCon was held. Sources say Kimberlin was seen collecting information about the conference proceedings and was eventually escorted from the premises by hotel security.
Kimberlin has been accused of engaging in a campaign of harassment and intimidation against conservative bloggers, including Patrick “Patterico” Frey, Aaron Walker and National Bloggers Club president Ali Akbar. The case has drawn widespread attention, and major news organizations are taking increased interest in the story. Bestselling author Michelle Malkin wrote today:

[Award-winning conservative blogger] Ace of Spades has called for a National Day of Blogger Silence this Friday to focus Capitol Hill’s attention to this vital free speech fight.

EXPECT UPDATES . . .

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Walker Files Appeal in Kimberlin Case;
Ali Akbar Says: ‘We’re Not Stopping.’

Posted on | June 6, 2012 | 12 Comments and 0 Reactions

Press release from the National Bloggers Club:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 6, 2012
Contact: Ali Akbar
ali@blogbash.org (888) 308-3606

NATIONAL BLOGGERS CLUB ANNOUNCES THAT JAILED
BLOGGER AARON WALKER HAS APPEALED AGAINST
CONVICTED DOMESTIC TERRORIST BRETT KIMBERLIN

WASHINGTON, DC — The National Bloggers Club, Inc. is announcing that it will continue to raise funds to provide financial relief to member Aaron Walker. An appeal to the peace order granted by Judge C.J. Vaughey was filed Monday.
Last week the Maryland judge issued a 6-month peace order and jailed attorney Aaron Walker, preventing him from mentioning Brett Kimberlin in public. A Blogger and Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney wrote of this order that, “this is a clear-cut case of a First Amendment violation — about as clear-cut as you’ll ever hear.” Since then, Walker has been working with a new legal team and the National Bloggers Club to legally restore his free speech rights.
“We’ve got over a dozen lawyers coordinating on this now, volunteering their time. Aaron’s first amendment rights are being violated when he is barred from even being able to publicly mention the case or Kimberlin’s violent past,” said Bloggers Club president Ali A. Akbar.
Akbar continued, “Yesterday they came after the Bloggers Club and my family — my family. We’re not stopping. We’ve got to raise $5,000 more dollars to continue to stand with Aaron Walker and I’m positive supporters will continue to step up.”
The National Bloggers Club is working to promote KimberlinFiles.org where supporters continue to give financial and written support to this cause.
In keeping with the ruling of the court, Walker’s response was simply, “thank you”.

- * – * – * -

Lots of important background from Michelle “The Boss” Malkin:

When I asked Ali Akbar of the National Bloggers Club for help with a website/infrastructure to support the blogger targets of convicted bomber/online terrorist Brett Kimberlin two weeks ago, he didn’t hesitate or waver. He stepped up to the plate because he believes in free speech and new media. I knew and respected him from his past work on grass-roots conservative campaigns and online projects. I was honored to join the NBC board of directors when he asked me late last year. There is no vast, deeply-funded conspiracy behind how it all came together — as some deranged progressive operatives (who habitually indulge in such rancid psychological projection) are claiming. I simply asked for help with organizing/fundraising tasks that were way beyond my paygrade. Ali volunteered to help and hasn’t stopped. The blogosphere owes him bottomless thanks.
Despite threats made to Ali’s family by Kimberlin associates and new legal threats waged by one Kevin Zeese, he and the NBC are not backing down. They are standing with the Kimberlin targets who continue to fight these ongoing menaces. Joining the battle: many, many excellent First Amendment lawyers (including Eugene Volokh, who on Tuesday noted his pro bono involvement at his blog.) . . .

Please read the whole thing. Ali’s role in this emergency has been crucial and The Boss has been on fire for the past two weeks.
There is much, much more to this story, and major national news organizations are taking notice of one of the most fascinating political dramas of this wild and weird year.

SUPPORT THE NATIONAL BLOGGERS CLUB

THE KIMBERLIN FILES:

• May 17: Is Democrat Operative Neal Rauhauser an ‘Associate’ of Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin? (And Why It Matters)
• May 17: Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin Received $70,000 From Tides Foundation, $10,000 From Streisand, $20,000 from John Kerry’s Wife
• May 18: Who Warned Us About Brett Kimberlin?
• May 19: Domestic Terrorist Now Using ‘Lawfare’? Convicted Felon Kimberlin’s 501(c)3 Raised $1.8 Million in Six Years UPDATE: ‘Convicted of Perjury’
• May 20: Deadline Loometh, and the Raven Is Croaking Brett Kimberlin’s Name
• May 20: ‘Other Computer Savvy Activists’
• May 21: Never Doubt That God Answers Prayer
• May 22: Brett Kimberlin Saga Takes a Bizarre Turn, Forcing Me to Leave Maryland
• May 23: ‘He Has No F–king Soul’
• May 24: Lying Felon Can’t Stop Lying
• May 25: KimberlinFiles.org
• May 26: Kimberlin v. Walker Hearing Scheduled: 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in Rockville, Maryland
• May 27: Brett Kimberlin’s Heiress Aunt Helping Fund His Tax-Exempt Harassment
• May 27: ERICK ERICKSON GETS SWATTED
• May 28: Somebody Tell Nina Totenberg Her Buddy Brett Kimberlin Is Making News Again
• May 29: Matthew Vadum Talks Brett Kimberlin
• May 29: REPORT: Aaron Walker Arrested After Maryland Hearing on Kimberlin Case UPDATE: Walker Now Released
• May 31: Aaron Walker Court Hearing Confirms Kimberlin-Rauhauser Collaboration
• June 1: Radicals Justify Their Evil by Invoking Their Presumed Moral Superiority
• June 2: When Neal Rauhauser Complained About ‘Menacing’ and ‘Cyberstalking’
• June 3: The Profoundly Dishonest Brett Kimberlin
• June 3: Raw Story Disavows Ties to Kimberlin
• June 3: Inside Neal Rauhauser’s Twisted Mind
• June 4: ‘A Faint Whiff of Vigilante Hysteria’: Weinergate’s Kimberlin Connection
• June 5: Ali Akbar Says, ‘World War Three’
• June 5: Fear and Loathing on Capitol Hill: The GOP Caucus Is Decadent and Depraved

Fear and Loathing on Capitol Hill: The GOP Caucus Is Decadent and Depraved

Fear and Loathing on Capitol Hill: The GOP Caucus Is Decadent and Depraved

Posted on | June 5, 2012 | 6 Comments and 0 Reactions

“They are our representatives; we would like some representation.”
– Ace of Spades, June 4, 2012

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
“Where are those spineless Republican bastards in Congress when we need ‘em, huh?” I shouted, trying to explain to a couple of young Beltway professionals the concept behind National Day of Blogger Silence. “They expect us to carry their message and fight their fights, and here we’ve got bloggers getting SWATted and bloggers going to jail and not a single Republican on Capitol Hill has said a f–king word! Not so much as a g–d– two-minute floor speech or a two-sentence press release statement!”
A couple of passersby on the sidewalk glanced over at the patio of the Pennsylvania Street bar where I was, uh, exercising my First Amendment rights — not to say ranting like a madman — earlier this afternoon. Having come to Capitol Hill for a meeting, I’d bumped into these two D.C. professionals who are young friends of mine, though not quite protegés, although one of them was someone whom I once advised to stay away from the Culture 11 debacle. She didn’t listen, and now doesn’t even mention on her LinkedIn profile her involvement in that infamous New Media catastrophe. But I digress . . .
Avoiding the temptation to tell my side of the Brett Kimberlin situation in straight-out gonzo mode has been easier than I thought. Obviously, the sheer craziness of this bizarre three-week saga — forced into a fugitive existence because I was covering the story of a notorious terrorist-turned-pseud0-progressive activist — lent itself to a Thompsonesque telling. Your average Republican doesn’t understand the gonzo method, however, and the story is serious enough that it deserves to be told in the measured tones and straightforward narrative style of Neutral Objective Journalism, even while my life turned into a freakish carnival of high-intensity weirdness.
Then on Monday the demented swine behind “Breitbart Unmasked” decided it would be a clever idea to go after Ali Akbar, and Ace of Spades announced his Day of Silence plan, which a lot of people don’t seem to understand.  So I decided to come to Washington, D.C., today, wearing a Serious Business Suit for a meeting where I had about two minutes to try to explain to Serious People what this is all about and why it matters.
Kind of a stressful experience and, in retrospect, it probably wasn’t a wise decision to grab a tall cup of strong coffee during the meeting, seeing as how it was my fourth or fifth cup of the day. I did OK in the actual meeting — anyone familiar with the convoluted Kimberlin/Rauhauser story can appreciate the difficulty of boiling it down to a two-minute impromptu pressentation — but afterward, I was a bit torqued up, so when one of the young professionals expressed mystification at the Day of Silence idea, I went off like a skyrocket.
“Maybe you don’t understand it, but I understand exactly what Ace is saying,” I said, puffing a Marlboro outside a Capitol Hill tavern. “It’s not that we’re not going to blog at all on Friday, but that we’re all going to put up one big post about this Kimberlin situation and nothing else.
“No election news, no policy stuff, no snarky jokes at the expense of the usual MSNBC douchebags — just one post about the way these left-wing monsters are attempting to silence us, and that’s it for the whole f–king day. Because, see, there’s some guys in Congress who owe us, big time, and Ace damned well knows it.
“You may not remember the ‘Crazed Ewok’ stuff Ace was posting about GOP challengers during the 2010 mid-terms, but I do. We’ve been carrying their water all this time, raising money for campaigns and pushing their message, and now when we need some help, those cowardly motherf–kers act like they never even heard of us? They’re going to sit up there in their offices and let us be gobbled up by these monsters and not say Word One about it?  Oh, hell no.”
It was at that point that one of the young professionals said that maybe Darrell Issa could do something.
“What?!” I roared. “You don’t think Issa’s people know all about this crap? Oh, yeah, like maybe we can get a briefing on the Hill or a meeting with some staffers next week or whatever. F–k that! We need action. We need action now — not next week or next month — now! Today! Immediately!”
The young D.C. professionals were clearly disturbed by the vehemence of my discourse, which was loud enough to be overheard by passersby on the sidewalk next to the patio.
“Hey, I’m sorry I got a little worked up there,” I said, putting out my cigarette and quieting my voice. “Probably shouldn’t have had that cup of coffee. You see how serious this is.”
Yes, of course they could. And so I said good-bye to my friends and got in my car and drove over here to an Undisclosed Location on K Street, where big-shot lobbyist types in $1,500 suits are lighting up Cohibas and laying down enormous bets on Scott Walker’s margin of victory tonight in Wisconsin.
If Walker wins by less than 5 points, these guys will be short a few grand tomorrow morning, but as long as Walker wins — and my Cohiba-smoking lobbyist pals are 100% certain he will — they’ll be happy even if he doesn’t “cover the spread.”
“Just imagine,” one of them said to me, “the look on Ed Schultz’s face — that fat blowhard is going to be the biggest idiot on TV!”
My big-shot K Street pals have offered to buy the drinks at their private Scott Walker Victory Party here in D.C. tonight, and my wife says she understands I need a break from all this stress, so it looks like I’ll be forced to accept their invitation. Surely my readers won’t begrudge the fugitive this one night of leisurely amusement, laughing it up at Ed Schultz’s embarrassed explanations of why Scott Walker stomped the crap out of that doofus Democrat from Milwaukee and his corrupt union buddies.
Living well is the best revenge, they say.

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown