Brett Kimberlin and the Future of Blogbursts
Regular PJ Media readers are all too familiar with Brett Kimberlin, the convicted felon and domestic terrorist turned left-wing sweetheart (not to mention chronic liar, shakedown artist, and serial SLAPP suit litigant).
If you aren’t, the video above is a brief primer on who he is, and why you should care.
The Blaze performed yeoman’s work, creating a digestible summary about this guy’s “career” that I’ll whittle down even further:
- Brett Kimberlin is the convicted “Speedway Bomber” who terrorized Indiana in 1978. One of those injured by Kimberlin’s bombs later committed suicide.
- He served 17 years of a 50 year sentence, passing the time becoming a jailhouse lawyer.
- Upon release, Kimberlin started the non-profit Justice Through Music. It’s been funded by George Soros’ Tides Foundation since 2005.
- Kimberlin’s other organization, Velvet Revolution, supports the Occupy movement.
- He has filed over 100 lawsuits against individuals, left and right, who’ve written about him, or simply annoyed him; he “once sued a pornographer for selling him pornography that was not provocative enough.”
- He attempts to get opponents fired and has, in one instance, succeeded.
- Kimberlin or an associate allegedly filed a hoax police report that sent the SWAT team to the home of Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney Patrick Frey (a.k.a. blogger “Patterico”).
- Literally while I was typing this list, Erick Erickson of RedState was also being SWAT-ed — the victim of another spoofed “911″ call.
- Most recently, his threats forced reporter R.S. McCain to relocate his family.
Now, there IS a whole book out about Brett Kimberlin, but it came out back in 1996. Other than that, the mainstream media hasn’t reported much on this bizarre saga.
(Liberal cartoonist Garry Trudeau was keen on raising Kimberlin’s profile when doing so made former Vice President Dan Quayle look like a pothead. These days? Not so much.)
It’s been left to alternative media to bring this story to light. After all, Kimberlin is targeting other bloggers. We have a duty to help defend our own, when they’re being harassed simply for asking questions and reporting the facts.
To that end, Lee Stranahan declared Friday May 25 “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day.”
Normally, such blogbursts are designed to overwhelm Google, Twitter, and other major online venues. The topic becomes impossible for mainstream reporters to ignore. Then the public demands answers, and — one hopes — the authorities finally take action.
Michelle Malkin has tirelessly curated a list of everyone who participated in Friday’s blogburst. The number is impressive, especially considering how convoluted, infuriating, and depressing the Brett Kimberlin saga is.
Ultimately, “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day” was what hippies called a “teach-in.” Now no one in the rightosphere is ignorant of the facts. We’re all on the same page, and that builds a sound foundation for future action.
But did the message break beyond the bounds of the right-wing blogosphere?
The MSM is SLOW. Don’t worry about it. You have selected the wrong criterion for judging the effectiveness of the blogburst.
The story is out, and the latest person to be “SWATTed” — had already contacted his local police in advance, so that the harm was ultimately mitigated.
Brett Kimberlin has been de-fanged, he just doesn’t know it, yet.
I agree to the extent that he has been outed al la Jeramiah Wright. The msm still has more time for man bites dog stories though. The timing may have been off by PR professional standards, but BK is known now. Maybe he is not as well known as KSM or UBL, but I think that you are right about the loss of fangs. He needs a third initial to complete the takedown. Evil has to have 3.
“The MSM is SLOW.”
Nonsense, they are complicit and willingly so.
True, dat. But they aren’t the only players any more.
Three planes hit their targets on 9/11, but the fourth did not, and the actions that took it down before it could make it to Washington had nothing to do with our national defense system.
Individuals in the United States are not helpless victims.
Some might say the MSM are “acting with all deliberate speed”.
I don’t see anythign that will keep him from doingto others what he did to Aaron. And how are they supporting themselves?
Well, it’s all very well to criticize, but it might have helped a little to raise the issue of the long weekend before the blog-burst? Just a suggestion.
His ties to Soros need to be echoed over and over again. Kimberlin = Soros; Soros = Kimberlin.
Soros is the hand on the steering wheel and he needs to become a household word synonymous with the evil he represents. A bright light should also shine on every individual and organization taking his money.
Soros and Kimberin are both certifiably insane. They need help.
But that my be the point. Crazy people with time on their hands practicing lawfare is nothign new. The problem is the enablers, who appear to include the DA (States Attorney’s office?).
Brava my dear, brava! Excellent analysis and suggestions. I made a suggestion late last night myself on my blog An Ex-Con’s View: http://wp.me/p27DAO-oG Why not work towards revoking #BrettKimberlin’s parole?
Where does Brett Kimberlin live?
A basic question I’ve asked too. I’m not placed to do much about Kimbie, but someone ought to remind him (& others) of his biological weakness, which all humans share–assuming he’s the culprit & not someone else appropriating his name & tactics.
As Master Sun advised, our first target is the enemy’s plan. “Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder & smash him.”
Revocation of parole, what a very good idea.
Seems to me the MSM have a terrific reason to ignore it: if bloggers kill and take out each other, then there’s less competition for the dinosaur media to continue plodding along as they have since Ben Franklin’s day. They’re probably watching the whole thing with total glee and silently urging on both Kimberlin *and* conservative blog bursts.
I also keep wondering why everyone just accepted that Breitbart had a heart attack and died of natural causes, especially now that there’s demonstrable proof that an actual dead conservative writer is what some of these people are aiming for.
Bingo. Frustrates the h*** out of me. And the coroner was poinsoned two days after the autopsy came out? Can that be true?
> What F***ING MORON picked the Friday before a long weekend???
I thought that was when the MSM regularly releases all the really important stories?
I should point out we did talk about it on WCRN yesterday in every hour of the 5-9 a.m. morning show on a 50,000 watt station out of Worcester Mass.
but the better question is why is the left circling the wagons on this one? Why is the Brett Kimberlin Ron Brynaert combination so valuable that the left clings to them and the MSM to shield them.
THAT’s the question.
“Normal people hate conflict and will usually capitulate to bullies to make them go away.”
Normal people also have day jobs, and can’t count on Sugar Daddy Soros to pay their bills.
>>Why is the Brett Kimberlin Ron Brynaert combination so valuable
>>that the left clings to them and the MSM to shield them.
Because lawfare, cyber-stalking and intimidation is all they — the Left — has left.
Taking out Brett Kimberlin, Ron Brynaert, et al will seriously reduce the Left’s available political power.
Since political power is their religion, don’t expect them to help in any way to act against their identity.
This nails it. They cannot win the argument. All they can do is try to shut it down.
As near as I can tell, if there is a story here that can/should be picked up by the national media, it’s that major 501(c)(3) non-profit charities are (allegedly) subsidizing harassment of individuals with particular political viewpoints. If the charities are knowingly doing this, then their tax-exempt status should be in jeopardy. That’s the (potential) national story.
Everything else resembles a typical story about a crank with a conviction for serious violence who is harassing his neighbors. Those kinds of stories happen all the time, all over the place. Usually, such stories don’t even make the *local* news until a tragedy occurs.
I want to emphasize that I am very sympathetic to the bloggers who are being harassed. A crank can make another person’s life a living hell. It’s just that there are a lot of cranks, and unless the case can be made clearly and concisely that Kimberlin is something different, it just doesn’t reach the level of national news.
In practice, there are only three things that might be productive:
(1) focus on finding legal remedies to be used against Kimberlin
(2) focus on finding hard evidence that Tides et al knowingly funded Kimberlin to suppress political speech
(3) focus on definitively identifying the source of the SWATing incidents
Anything else is likely to be a waste of resources. Unless Kimberlin harasses a well-known national figure or a tragedy occurs, this is simply not going to make it into mainstream news reporting.
Great to see Kathy Shaidle here and mention of Kate McMillan of Canada’s premiere blog, small dead animals: The Roadkill Diaries (sda).
I agree with Kate: we can’t afford to make silly mistakes. Jesus, in the Good Book: “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents . . .” We need to remember who our enemy is and close all the gaps in our defences that it’s our responsibility to close. We can’t afford to be sloppy. As we see, in the case of Brett Kimberlin (I learned about him at sda), and increasingly so, as the vicious and deranged left becomes desperate, what we do or don’t do could literally be a matter of life and death.
“Tolerant” (more like stupid) Western societies have now spent so many decades refusing to discipline our children (or being disallowed by the nanny state), that the feral “adult toddlers” they’ve turned out to be are turning around to bite us. There’s a critical mass of Brett Kimberlins out there—note the steep increase in the number of mobbings and riots in the USA, England, and Canada. We reap what we sow: sow’s ears don’t turn into silk purses. As long as we allow our young to behave like toddlers all their lives, we’re going to be paying a horrendous price.
Make that, “spoiled toddlers”.
Mine have never acted that way, because I have not permitted it.
But “spoiled toddlers” pretty much describes most of the left, even those with gray heads.
Bill Clinton comes to mind.
You’ve got it, Mark v.
A column in a Canadian paper once asked, “Who are the most dangerous people on the planet?” The answer: toddlers because of their lack of judgement and self-control. It was posited that the only thing that protects us from their irrationality, intolerance, and temper tantrums is their very small size and lack of access to really dangerous weapons.
Well, guess what? Our present day “adult toddlers” are big and have access to all kinds of tools for fight back. And the “authorities” stand down and let them. It’s despicable—and VERY dangerous.
This campaign would have been far, far more successful if it had not taken place on a Friday before a long weekend. The story, which was catching on, completely died on the vine. Mid-news cycle for next time.
Unfortunately, nothing will happen until the MSM picks up on this and acknowledge their complicity in building Kimberlin up this will be for naught.
In his review of Singer’s book for the New York Times, Ben Yagoda wrote:
Book contract and advance money in hand, with time and emotion invested in Mr. Kimberlin, Mr. Singer soon found himself confronting not one but several black holes. There was simply no way to verify the allegation about Mr. Quayle; the eyewitnesses Mr. Kimberlin said might confirm the transactions were dead or unfindable or unforthcoming, and no one else was coming forward. The bombings, and a previous murder with which Mr. Kimberlin’s name was linked, would become (as Mr. Singer writes of Mr. Kimberlin’s ambiguous relations with the members of the murder victim’s family) ”an opaque knot of intrigue and dread, a little black hole unto itself.” In matters large and small, Mr. Singer’s investigations showed Mr. Kimberlin to be a mythologizer, a dissembler and, in several instances, an out-and-out liar. Only his muzzling by prison officials still held up as a hard and newsworthy fact — but it had been fully reported in the original article.
But was he muzzled? He pursued a case against the Feds, but if it ever went to trial it’s unclear. It was never reported as far as I can tell.
It wasn’t just Trudeau giving him credibility it was the Washington Post and New York Times that devoted numerous news stories suggesting that Kimberlin was a political prisoner. They are accomplices to his campaign of intimidation and need to come clean.
re: Choosing Friday as “Blog Brett Kimberlin Day”, I wondered the same thing. Conservatives have been decrying the Friday “document dumps” from DOJ for years. Why on earth did they go with it for this? Today would have been far better…a slow news day after the Memorial Day weekend and a week for the story to gather momentum.
Dumb choice.
Actually, the blogburst was cited in the judge’s order that just resulted in Aaron Worthing being arrested in Maryland: “COUNTLESS BLOGS EITHER THREATENING DEATH” (nothing followed this). So we got THAT accomplished.
Kathy, please recommend better times for blog bursts and specify other tactics.
That’s the order that was issued today. There’s nothing there ordering his arrest. Unless there’s more to this story that isn’t being reported. Did he say something to Kimb after the order was issued?
No contact orders are no laughing matter. A lawyer should know better, if that’s what happened.
Why would the MSM pick up on anything from the right? It doesn’t involve their careful little world. If anything is said, it will be the usual ridicule and lies.
I have to correct you. Neither Fox News nor FoxNews.com have picked this up; the link you posted is from 2010, when Kimberlin was exposed as working with leftists, but before his latest campaign of terror. This is not a real surprise, as Fox News now employs multiple Soros-funded commentators. But still disappointing.
I find it encouraging that the Kimberlin WIKI page is back in operation, after having been spiked by a leftist WIKI editor for no grounds (the page was truthful and well sourced) other than it made Kimberlin look bad. So there must still be some people at WIKI that have at least some honesty left.
Aaron Walker, a Virginia attorney that defended the blogger from Patterico, has been arrested in Montgomery county, Maryland while appearing on a complaint HE filed against Kimberlin. Kimberlin said he felt threatened by the Walker who was blogging about him. Walker has been arrested for crimes HE MIGHT COMMIT IN THE FUTURE.
Correction: He’s been arrested for POSSIBLE FUTURE CRIMES.
The presiding judge is Judge C.J. Vaughey.
Aaron Walker (one of Kimberlin’s victims) was tangled up in court today. He was arrested. Kimberlin is a master of the legal system. Yes, it is an upside down world. The bully boys will tangle you up in court. WTH is going on? It is still breaking news.
What will happen when some leftist loon finally kills someone? Do they understand what they are getting into by demonizing and dehumanizing us? That just makes it easier for some sick prog to finally do what they seem to all want to do to all of us.
I don’t think they quite realize that they will be on the losing side and that losing will have consequences this time. They have come this far without consequence, that will end one day.
They are already killing people all over the country. They either blame it on the lone loon or on conservatives, themselves.
Glaring factual error: Kimberlin has NOT “been funded by George Soros’ Tides Foundation since 2005.”
1) The Tides Foundation was established by Drummond Pike, not George Soros. Soros has a foundation called Open Society Institute, which has given some money to Tides Foundation, but that only amounted to 1 percent of Tides’ revenue over the past five years.
2) All of Open Society’s grants to Tides have been publicly designated for non-Kimberlin organizations and projects.
3) Tides has only given Kimberlin’s organization two grants: one in 2006 and one in 2008. Nothing in 2005, 2007, 2009, or 2010.
Anyone can look up these facts himself in the relevant IRS 990 reports on guidestar.org. There is no honest way to construe the public record as showing Soros has been funding Kimberlin.