The Left's Brett Kimberlin Truthers

Okay, the breaking story late today is that Erick Erickson's home was SWATted.

See Patterico, "BREAKING: Bogus Call Sends Police to Home of Kimberlin Critic Erick Erickson."

And lots more from Memeorandum:

* Aaron Worthing, "BREAKING: Another Critic of Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin Has Been Swatted!"

* Bob Owens, "Soros-funded left-wing terrorists target second conservative blogger with potentially deadly SWATting attack"

* Jawa Report, "SWATing a CNN Contributor, Who's Next Beotches??"

* Robert Stacy McCain, "ERICK ERICKSON GETS SWATTED."

Folks are tweeting CNN and other major media outlets in an effort to get some major media coverage on this: "After Brett Kimberlin blogburst, RedState blogger/CNN contributor Erick Erickson and family victims of SWATting; will CNN cover the story?"

Meanwhile, the progressive left is circling the wagons. Markos Moulitsas tried to blow off Everybody Blog Brett Kimberlin Day, and he got called out on it: "Markos Moulitsas gets schooled on ‘nobody’ political terrorist Brett Kimberlin."

And as is generally the case, few progressives have blogged this story, and those who have blogged it are denying Kimberlin's campaign of criminal harassment --- they're in fact blaming the victims. Barbara at Mahablog dismissed the threats from Kimberlin and dissed the conservative response as a "lynch mob." But you get real hardcore Kimberlin trutherism at No More More Mister Nice Blog, "I WANT THE KIMBERLIN TRUTH TO PUT ON ITS BOOTS":

You know the saying ascribed to Mark Twain: "A lie goes halfway around the world before the truth puts on its boots." That's pretty much what happens when the right pushes and distorts a story, while the mainstream press says nothing. That's what happened, for instance, with the "Ground Zero mosque." The right-wing media and blogosphere pushed the story for months before the rest of the media took notice of the right's distortions....

That's what must be prevented in the case of Brett Kimberlin. In addition to convicting him in the media, the right is already trying to tie him to the Obama administration, and, by inference, to every liberal and Democrat in America. That's only going to continue.

Let wingnuts be the mainstream press's assignment editors? I say yes, but just in order to tell the truth. At worst, we learn that Kimberlin really was a nasty guy; the fact appears to be that liberals and Democrats who may have allied with him simply didn't know that. (Yeah, he's an ex-con, but so is Don King, who once killed a guy, which didn't stop the GOP from expressing delight as his endorsement of George W. Bush in 2004.) Or we may find out that behavior is being ascribed to Kimberlin and his friends that's someone else's doing, or that's being exaggerated and distorted, just to score political points. Either way, the right is prevented from owning the story for the next several months and presenting it in a way that exclusively helps the right. If these hissyfits are ignored, they don't go away.

Right.

All one has to do is read Aaron Worthing 28,000 word report and you'd be a long way toward "the truth." But progressives don't want the truth. They want to destroy conservatives. So by denying Kimberin's evil and by attempting to turn it all around so it's really the right who's harassing Kimberlin, the left ends up enabling and empowering the left's criminal intimidation network. But read more of the comments from No More Mister Nice Blog. These people have got it bad. Here's this one, for example, from Jymn:

I just wish there was some equivalence between media coverage of the left and the right. Judging by Memeorandum in the aftermath of Breitbart's death, the right has gone around the bend. With Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch on CNN with no lefty blogger counterpoint, the right is monopolizing the media. Sure, let the right shoot itself in the foot. But it doesn't work that way. Righties advance the more they screw up. Not so for the left. With this latest kerfuffle, probably the wildest and most obscure I've ever encountered in the blogospher, how will we ever know the truth? The media is no longer diligent enough to wade through the bull. I have a feeling McCain is only telling a purple prose version of the events. He may not be the victim here but if the right keeps trumpeting his victim status, the lazy media is sure to do the same, despite the underlying facts.

And here's this from my old hate-blogging stalker Walter James Casper III:

Exactly right, Steve... I want the truth of the thing to come out, whatever it is... The ones involved/telling the story are politically biased, and--because they're involved--not objective or trustworthy on that front, either.

It just bothers me that a deputy district attorney for LA county (Patterico), a lawyer (Worthing), and a former news reporter (McCain) can't get much help or traction from law enforcement, the court system, or the media. (Both Frey and Worthing have specifically said the law isn't following their leads or taking their plights seriously.) Meanwhile, the rightwing blogs are hanging on their every utterances as though they're Gospel. If professional law enforcement is skeptical of their stories, I fail to see why I should believe them, either.

When I start to see movement from unbiased legal and media sources, I'll take their stories more seriously.

And that is from a guy who is the publisher of a criminal harassment blog. He only stopped his harassment after I went to the police: "Intent to Annoy and the Fascist Hate-Blogging Campaign of Walter James Casper III."

I'll have more on the Kimberlin trutherism later, and of course more on all of the attacks. This is personal: "Carl Salonen Libelous Workplace Allegations of Child Pornography and Sexual Harassment at Long Beach City College."

Added: Again, putting aside the truthers for a moment, where there have been a few folks on the left who've blogged this story, it's frankly been either among those who've also been targeted by the Kimberlin network or simply a few sympathetic progressives. Amazingly, TBogg, the guy who've I've called out as a racist anti-Christian bigot, actually writes something decent, but only so much:

Whoever “swatted” Patterico is an asshole and deserves to be in prison. I’ve had my own issues with Patterico, as well as Aaron Worthing, over the years, but nobody deserves the shitstorm they’ve been through. Having said that, if rightwing bloggers put as much time and coordinated effort into ‘vetting’ Barack Obama that they have in rehashing the same odd Kimberlin stories, we’d probably know if Obama was truly the murderous socialist Kenyan muslim Breitbart-killing Tonton Macoute terrorist that they keep telling us he is. Also, too: Robert Stacy McCain’s story reeks of grift. McCain has spent the last few months moaning about how he’s not making any money and how he’s going to quit blogging and nobody likes him – everybody hates him, he’s gonna eat some worms and now: mysteriously vague threats … GIMME MONEY! I call bullshit.

Well, no, TBogg, you pea-brained progressive creep. Had he not gone into hiding, Stacy would have been SWATted faster than you can say Carl DeLong. If you're going to have a good word to say, say it and be done.

So, as folks can see, I'm skeptical that this is just a "free speech issue" and not a Soros-backed criminal harassment network issue. Patterico argues that this isn't partisan, and that people should be judged by their actions not their ideology. And I know that Patterico's serious (I'm listening to him on Blog Talk Radio as this update goes live). But whatever left-wing sympathy we see on this will be thin as thawing ice on a lake and as shortlived as a TNT fuse. I don't trust these people. Mike at Cold Fury nailed it best, and I won't change my mind on this leftist or that leftist until I see some sustained advocacy on behalf of those who've been targeted. See: "This Means War."