EVERYTHING IS FOR THE CAUSE

Right-wing bloggers are having a group event today: they're all blogging about a guy named Brett Kimberlin. Years ago, Kimberlin was convicted of involvement in a series of bombings; he spent many years in prison. While he was locked up, he claimed to have once sold pot to Dan Quayle, who was then running for vice president; he charged that prison authorities isolated him illegally after the story became public. That was the last time I ever heard his name, but I guess he's been peripheral to my world since -- I gather he was involved with the news site Raw Story and in investigating voting irregularities as a colleague of Brad Blog's Brad Friedman. (Here's a 2007 Time story about the guy.)

The right-wingers who are blogging about him now are blogging about him because, if I understand their story correctly, he's a nasty piece of work who (among other things) has driven righty blogger Robert Stacy McCain into hiding and who's engaged in several forms of harassment against Patrick Frey, aka Patterico; the tactics, Patterico says, include "swatting": you spoof a phone number, call as the person you're targeting, say you just killed someone at your house, then the SWAT team shows up and maybe arrests the target ... or opens fire. Patterico says it happened to him (and he was taken into custody) last year.

Oh, and (wheels within wheels) Andrew Breitbart is involved, because he talked about this in an interview he gave not long before he died, as Patterico notes.

What's the truth here? I have no idea. But several thoughts come to mind.

If this guy is as nasty as the righties say, then I, as a lefty, have no use for him, even if he's doing work I approve of. Call the cops if you think you've got a case against him. Lock him up -- I don't care.

Oh, but maybe you can't get the authorities to take the case seriously. Well then, gee, it's too bad you righties don't have a huge news organization on your side, one that could bring the story to light and pressure the authorities to act. If you had a huge news organization on the right, things might be different. But you don't have such a news organization, do you?

If the story the righties are telling is true, there's a guy on the loose who should be locked up. But their blogswarm today doesn't seem to be focused on getting him locked up -- it seems to be focused (as is practically everything right-wingers say and do) on damaging liberalism. On the right, that's Priority #1 -- and #2 and #3 and #4 and #5. The posts and tweets I've looked at are full of references to George Soros and the Tides Foundation and Barbra Streisand (because, you see, giving money to organizations that include a guy you don't know is a criminal is a disgusting, shameful, immoral act, which makes you an accessory to crimes you didn't know had taken place, and haven't been conclusively shown to be the grant recipient's doing).

And, gosh, it's an election year, isn't it -- a few tenuous, strained links to Obama will certainly be discussed on righty blogs in the days to come, no?

I'm hoping a real news organization tells me the truth about this. I'm hoping this guy is put away if he's a seriously bad person committing seriously criminal acts. I almost think I'm more interested in seeing the responsible party face justice than some of the righties are. A lot of them (hello, Michelle Malkin) seem much more concerned about winning one for their side.

Oh, and then there's this guy:

Read all of the incredible, sick-making story -- which includes some perfectly typical and disgusting bile spewed by some of the violence-supporting left-wing animals who think things like this are just peachy -- and gird your loins. Because it's going to come down to shooting with these vermin eventually, if we're to retain any rights at all. Patterico wouldn't like me saying that, I’m sure; I don’t much like having to say it myself. But it's a mere acknowledgment of current reality: we are in a cold war with neo-Marxists who are trying to steal our country, have already done enormous and probably permanent damage to it, and will stop at nothing --absolutely nothing -- to see to it that our voices are silenced. That war must inevitably go hot, unless we're willing to surrender to them.

"[I]t's going to come down to shooting ... The war must inevitably go hot...." Are you expressing your fears, dude -- or your hopes?