Allergic to Bull

Wringing Good Out of the Evil of Whitney Houston’s Death

2012-02-11T23:22:00.003-05:00

Update: Prompted by a comment by JD's over at Patterico's, I have to say this is probably the best way to remember her.

What a fabulous voice, and a horrible waste. And as noted in the Washington Post, you can buy a copy of this as a single and the proceeds will go to 9-11 related charities, it seems.

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So this night we learn that Whitney Houston has died. There is no official cause of death but...

We all know what it was. In some way or another, more than likely drugs killed her. I mean feel free to wait for verification, but we all know it. We saw it coming a mile away.

I admit I chuckled a little in watching the outrageous clips on The Soup, but part of me felt profoundly sad watching her downfall. I am not saying I am a superfan or anything I am not, but she had a gorgeous voice and for years she seemed like a nice, normal, very “together” kind of woman. She seemed like the kind of person who could be a positive role model to girls everywhere. And now she is a cautionary tale.

I admit listening years ago to the Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., had a profound effect upon my thinking. On phrase that stuck with me in particular was this one: “God still has a way of wringing good out of evil.” He said that standing by the grave of three little girls who were murdered by Klan terrorists while attending Sunday school, but it is a phrase that has a broader application.

If Whitney Houston died of drugs, that is an evil. I won’t call her evil. I generally try to be a love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin-kind-of-guy. Well, I try. But her death is an evil and a horrible waste. And if there is any good that can be wrung from it, it is as a warning. Drugs took her down. It took this beautiful, talented, classy woman down. And if that convinces one person to quit, or never to start in the first place, then there can be some redemption in this otherwise horrible, pointless end to her life.

And I hope Ms. Houston can find peace in the next life.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

Once Again, the Obamacare Mandate is a Violation of Freedom of Speech

2012-02-10T12:00:00.004-05:00

Update: Obama just announced his "compromise" which is pretty much what was predicted and as usual pretends everyone is playing politics, except him who rises above everything. Right.

So all week there has been this uproar about the recent ruling that religious employers—like churches or church-based hospitals—would be required to provide “contraception,” a popular euphemism for a set of rules that include coverage for the abortion pill. Last Sunday I was at a Catholic church and just about the entire homily (or “Sermon” to us Protestants) was reading off a letter in protest of this policy. And today we get word of a weak “accommodation” where the religious based employers will not have to provide it in their insurance policies, but the insurance companies would still have to provide it to the policy-holders.

So how does that work? Ordinarily insurance works by taking a large number of policy holders’ money and putting it into a pool and then distributing the benefits to policy holders. Instead of that, it won’t be officially offered as part of these employers’ plans, but it will be part of the package of benefits they offer, paid for presumably by the common pool. Which, gosh sounds like exactly the same thing but with the usual governmental layer of red-tape, regulation and bull____.

Of course that is only the rumor of the offer, and possibly even a trial balloon, so maybe that won’t be the final proposal.

But the funny thing is that I addressed this very issue a few months back and pointed out that this is positively a reason why the Obamacare mandate (to employers or individuals) is unconstitutional. You see very often the argument against the mandate focuses on the idea that the Federal Government doesn’t have the power to force you to buy a good or service. And they are certainly right. But you can say more than just that the Constitution doesn’t affirmative grant the power. You can say that the Constitution affirmatively prohibits the Federal Government from enacting such a mandate. There is also a positive right not to buy a good or service from a private company, in the First Amendment.

There is, after all, a right to boycott. As I wrote over a year ago when discussing the Liberty University case (a less-famous Obamacare challenge by Liberty University and scattered individuals):

[I]s there an expressive element to refusing to engage in a transaction, ever?

Of course there is, and it is one of the oldest forms of expression known: the boycott.

Liberty University and the scattered individuals who sued in this case have a constitutional right to refuse to associate with any entity that engages in abortion, to boycott it (and this is true of any issue, not just abortion). Even if none of their money touches an abortion doctor’s hand, they are allowed to say, “as long as you allow this, I will not contribute my money to your company. I will not associate with you.”

In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., the Supreme Court said that “[t]he right of the States to regulate economic activity could not justify a complete prohibition against a nonviolent, politically motivated boycott designed to force governmental and economic change and to effectuate rights guaranteed by the Constitution itself.” The same would assuredly apply to the Federal Government. And yet this decision has effectively said that where interstate commerce is involved (and according to the court [in Liberty University] it is always involved in everything, apparently), Congress can effectively outlaw the boycott.

I mean consider a simple example. Rosa Parks one day decides she is not giving up her seat to a white man even though a law purports to require her to, and as a result, she is arrested. In response Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others lead a boycott of the bus system. But, according to the court in Liberty University, Congress could pass a law requiring every person to use a city bus for transportation where it is available, and thus outlaw the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

And this applies to any issue you are concerned about. Maybe you don’t want to deal with any country that invests in Israel. Or you are upset at a company because it has divested from Israel. Or whatever your issue is. The point is that people boycott companies for lots of different reasons if you are forced into an economic relationship with a company against your will, it is a violation of your right to boycott.

And really, in general, the government should not make a person choose between reasonable, deeply held convictions and obeying the law.

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Friday Frivolity: The Really George? Really? Edition...

2012-02-10T09:52:00.002-05:00

So today George Lucas is celebrating the re-release of the beloved Star Wars franchise, in 3D, starting with...

Wait, this can’t be right... Really? The Phantom Menace? He thinks that is the movie to start off with? Not, say, Star Wars, which now we are all required to call Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope?

Um, okay. And if that is not enough to annoy the crap out of the fanboys, well, he now is trying to deny history. I mean this may be a generational thing, but remember when you were watching the original Star Wars and Greedo had the gun pointed at Han Solo and Solo keeps him distracted until he could pull out his gun and shoots the guy right then and there.

Well, sorry, you were wrong. Greedo always shot first. So says Lucas (via Hot Air):

THR: People can get fanatical about the movies — how does that make you feel? The puppet vs. CGI Yoda ruckus, and the who-shot-first, Han Solo or Greedo furor come to mind.

Lucas: Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

It’s the same thing with Yoda. We tried to do Yoda in CGI in Episode I, but we just couldn’t get it done in time. We couldn’t get the technology to work, so we had to use the puppet, but the puppet really wasn’t as good as the CGI. So when we did the reissue, we had to put the CGI back in, which was what it was meant to be.

If you look at Blade Runner, it’s been cut sixteen ways from Sunday and there are all kinds of different versions of it. Star Wars, there’s basically one version — it just keeps getting improved a little bit as we move forward. … All art is technology and it improves every year. Whether it’s on the stage or in music or in painting, there are technological answers that happen, and because movies are so technological, the advances become more obvious.

Now, look I don’t get all worked up about the changes in the 1997 version. It’s annoying, but I guess I can happily ignore the whole thing, but this is just insulting to our intelligence. Yes, Han did shoot first, and we were not confused on this point, George. Watch for yourself:

You changed it in the re-release, George. Just admit that. You didn’t like how things would look to kids, so you changed it. Don’t insult our intelligence by saying it was this way all along. Because it is the B.S. involved that annoys me this morning, not the change itself.

But I think the deeper problem here is simply this. Lucas just has no idea how important this stuff is to the series fans. I guess it is hard for the creator to understand that sort of thing, but there it is. And for many fans, revising Star Wars is like revising the Bible or something. Adding to it, is like adding to the Bible. It can be done, but it takes a lot more finesse than Lucas has shown lately.

Myself, while I do think the Greedo shot first sequence is inferior to the original, I don’t get bent out of shape about it. And yes, there is simply no way the prequels could have lived up to the expectations built up after 20+ years of loving the hell out of the originals so I am a little more forgiving. They are still vastly inferior movies, but there are some ways in which the prequels do actually improve things with the originals.

Let me give you a concrete example. Many people complain that in Return of the Jedi, Luke had become much less likeable. Well, now when you watch the prequels, you realize that Lucas was trying to make him a little unlikeable. The point was that Luke was getting arrogant. The whole Jabbba’s palace sequence was Luke being arrogant about his power, because he really was falling into the dark side. And another thing that comes out in the Prequels is how subtle the Emperor’s plans were in the prequels v. how clumsy they were in the original, suggesting that the Emperor had become arrogant himself. The prequels made that clear to me.

But at the same time, I think IGN is offering a very feeble defense of the Phantom Menace, here.

I think the biggest problem with the prequels is this. They did too much telling and not enough showing. That is something they drill into fiction writers: show, don’t tell. So you are told that Obi-wan Kenobi and Anakin are good friends in Attack of the Clones, but you really can’t tell because they spend most of the movie bickering. It isn’t until Revenge that you get a scene where they actually show some warmth and friendship. And they keep telling you that the Senate is corrupt and the republic is dysfunctional, but you never actually see it. And it certainly doesn’t help that the droid troops are some of the least-inspiring enemies ever. The Storm Troopers could never shoot straight, but at least they looked and sounded reasonably dangerous.

Meanwhile, Allah at Hot Air shows, I think, waaaaaay too much faith in Spielberg:

The difference between Lucas and Spielberg is how Lucas re-edited the Greedo scene and how Spielbergdidn’t re-edit the scene of Indiana Jones shooting the swordsman in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Spielberg fully understands why the latter is so cool. He wouldn’t change it if you chained him to the editing machine, I’d bet.

Well, except there is the gun => walkie talkie thing in the re-release of E.T. I think what Spielberg understood in 1982 and briefly forgot in 2002, was that a good fairy tale needs a little darkness. But in Allah’s defense, Spielberg is penitent:

For myself, I tried [changing a film] once and lived to regret it. Not because of fan outrage, but because I was disappointed in myself. I got overly sensitive to [some of the reaction] to E.T., and I thought if technology evolved, [I might go in and change some things]…it was OK for a while, but I realized what I had done was I had robbed people who loved E.T. of their memories of E.T. [...] If I put just one cut of E.T. on Blu-ray and it was the 1982, would anyone object to that? [The crowd yells "NO!" in unison.] OK, so be it.

See here. He said similar things, here.

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PETA Should be Sanctioned For Its Suit Claiming that Orcas are Covered by the Thirteenth Amendment

2012-02-09T12:22:00.002-05:00

Strap yourselves in because this is a long one, as I get into some philosophical and moral issues, before I get to the bottom line.

So via Hot Air we find out that a Federal Judge has ruled remarkably that an entire class is excluded from the Thirteenth Amendment. Who is this group that has been shockingly excluded from protection from being enslaved and/or subjected to involuntary servitude?

Orcas.

You know, these things:

(Those whistles and clicks translate to “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me home.”)

Yes, that is right, PETA filed suit claiming that Orcas were protected by the Thirteenth Amendment and therefore Sea World had unlawfully enslaved them and otherwise treated them horribly. You can read the complaint here. I have been trying to locate the motion to dismiss and any opposition to that motion that PETA filed, because that would contain more meaty discussion of the central legal issue—whether the Thirteenth Amendment applies to non-humans at all. But so far I have had no luck finding that, so consider this a bleg.

Look, I am not unsympathetic to the idea that at some point a being becomes sentient enough that the law should provide some protections to them.

[The next paragraph contains a minor *SPOILER* about my novel Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History (which you can purchase here). Bluntly, it reveals something most people would figure out by the end of the second chapter. But if you would prefer to be surprised, skip the next paragraph.]

For instance, the main character in my novel is an alien, and at one point an FBI agent points out to him that our criminal laws did not protect him from harm, saying “the laws on murder cover only humans. You shoot a dog or a chimp, it isn’t murder. At worst, it is cruelty to animals. Now maybe you would be lucky and the courts would interpret the laws to include a non-human like you, but wouldn’t you rather get a guarantee on that subject?”

[Spoilers end.]

Indeed in Roe v. Wade, the non-personhood of fetuses was key to that decision, too:

The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument.

But, the Supreme Court found, the fetus is not a person, and thus not entitled to constitutional protection. Now if you believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, and that a fetus should be considered a person for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, I would ask you on what you base that assessment. For me, the most logical thing is what I call the sentience standard—that when the fetus reaches the stage where the brain comes typically “online” it should be treated as a person. And notice I am talking about the point in time when most humans become “sentient”—I am not open to arguments that a person who is retarded or something like that is not “sentient” and therefore not a person. And I base it on a term that you have heard many times: quick. You have heard this in your church on a regular basis, when you are told that God will judge the “quick and the dead.” And very often people do not know that in this context, “quick” is not a reference to speed, but to life. Roe v. Wade, however, explains the term:

It is undisputed that at common law, abortion performed before “quickening”— the first recognizable movement of the fetus in utero, appearing usually from the 16th to the 18th week of pregnancy—was not an indictable offense. The absence of a common-law crime for pre-quickening abortion appears to have developed from a confluence of earlier philosophical, theological, and civil and canon law concepts of when life begins.

So all of those times when heard people say God will judge the quick and the dead, that refers to anyone alive, including fetuses who have shown signs of movement.

I think it is inherently dubious to read a right to an abortion into the Fourteenth Amendment in the first place, but if one is going to read it in, then this common law notion of when life begins, or at least a modern analogue such as the sentience standard I suggested above, should have controlled.

And in my personal morality and my policy preferences, I think that is about right, too. If E.T. landed tomorrow in my back yard and said, “I come in peace” and in all respects was acting peaceful, but my neighbor shoots it dead in cold blood that should be considered murder. And likewise, if a woman is about to give birth to her child, and a man shoots her in the belly and killing her fetus, that should be murder, too. And here is where I might part ways with a lot of you philosophically, but I equally believe that if Chimpanzees can make tools and form language, if they are as intelligent as a three year old human (as it is often formulated), then isn’t experimenting on them like experimenting on a three year old human? Yes, that means I am morally opposed to some of the most useful data you can obtain in animal testing, but that is what morality sometimes is about—doing what is right, even if doing what is wrong is useful.

Of course I don’t see any need to change the law to include E.T. just yet. We can wait until the day comes when one of them does land here. But on the other hand, I do think that killing a fetus at the stage when sentience occurs should be murder,* and I think animals who achieve a certain quantum of intelligence should be protected as well. But I would never dream of arguing that the Constitution requires us to treat sentient aliens and animals as people, under any of the amendments.

And the Hon. Jeffrey Miller reaches this correct conclusion vis-à-vis the Thirteenth Amendment in his opinion, which you can read here. And there is nothing wrong with it, but I think there is one picture that could sum up the colossal silliness of PETA’s argument:

As the Supreme Court said in Ex Parte Bain:

It is never to be forgotten that, in the construction of the language of the Constitution here relied on, as indeed in all other instances where construction becomes necessary, we are to place ourselves as nearly as possible in the condition of the men who framed that instrument.

What is considered unusual and quaint today, the use of horses as a method of transportation as well as for labor (such as pulling a plow), was commonplace in the day of the founding. And let’s face it, if we said that the Thirteenth Amendment applied to animals, one would be hard pressed to explain why horses were not “enslaved” by humans. I mean one way to think of slavery is as the attempt to transform a free man or woman into a beast of burden. And it was common in the parlance of the day to say that slaves were being treated “like animals”—and indeed, even worse than animals in many respects. And yet no one thought on the day after the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified that the use of horses for transportation and labor was banned. Indeed, if the founders wanted to apply that language to non-humans at all, you would think that they would carve out an exception for horses and other similar beasts of burden because the use of such animals was so vital to the functioning of human society. It would be more significant than banning the use of gasoline in our society today.

But of course PETA gave much of their game away when they wrote this in their complaint (which is linked, here):

Moreover, our Constitutional jurisprudence is the story of the courts interpreting, applying, and expanding Constitutional protections to new groups and circumstances.

What they were asking for, therefore, was an extreme act of judicial activism, which would either declare unconstitutional a practice that was extremely commonplace at the time of the founding—the use of horses and other animals as beasts of burden—or they were going to ask the judge to carve out a whole new doctrine that somehow draws a line that says that horses are not protected by the Thirteenth Amendment but orcas are, which would have no basis in the text of the amendment. Indeed, it would be dangerous to read any such distinction into the text. A blanket prohibition, applied solely to humans, makes more sense.

But bluntly, I believe that this filing was in violation of FederalRule of Civil Procedure Rule 11. It requires that all pleadings be signed and in signing them, it is certified that, among other things, that

the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law;

Now, because of rampant judicial activism you can make a lot of “nonfrivolous” arguments for changing the law that would have been laughed out of court a hundred years ago. I mean just the other day the Ninth Circuit said that after the California Supreme Court said that people had the right to marry persons of the same sex, that the people of California had no right to change the law back to what it was before that fit of activism. You know, because the evangelical Christians who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment were open-minded about gay relationships. *rolls eyes* Likewise, if you said in 1869 that the new Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed a right to abortion they would have thought you were nuts. So you can make a lot of arguments today that would have seemed frivolous back when judicial activism was less brazen.

But this plainly crosses a line. I don’t believe a single competent lawyer would have predicted any chance of this succeeding. To be blunt, like most of what PETA does, this was most likely their attempt to generate publicity. And Rule 11 provides for sanctions for the violation of this rule, and I think that they should be given in this case. At the very least, PETA should have to pay Sea World’s costs and legal fees in defending this ridiculous thing.

I mean if you want to get into how radically far off the map this is, consider this line passage from Sierra Club v. Morton (1972). The issue was about standing. You have to have standing in order to sue, and you have to be actually injured by the conduct at issue, or else you don’t have standing. And the issue there was when does one have standing to challenge a plan to destroy the natural beauty of a place? In that case, the court held more or less that at the very least you had to actually use the land in question, writing:

The alleged injury will be felt directly only by those who use Mineral King and Sequoia National Park, and for whom the aesthetic and recreational values of the area will be lessened by the highway and ski resort. The Sierra Club failed to allege that it or its members would be affected in any of their activities or pastimes by the Disney development. Nowhere in the pleadings or affidavits did the Club state that its members use Mineral King for any purpose, much less that they use it in any way that would be significantly affected by the proposed actions of the respondents.

But that is not the part I want you to pay attention to. I want you to pay attention to this passage from Justice Douglas’s dissent, where he wrote:

The critical question of “standing” would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern for protecting nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation... This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.

Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole—a creature of ecclesiastical law—is an acceptable adversary and large fortunes ride on its cases. The ordinary corporation is a “person” for purposes of the adjudicatory processes, whether it represents proprietary, spiritual, aesthetic, or charitable causes.

So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes—fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it. Those people who have a meaningful relation to that body of water—whether it be a fisherman, a canoeist, a zoologist, or a logger—must be able to speak for the values which the river represents and which are threatened with destruction.

This is famously one of the silliest passages from one of our silliest Supreme Court justices. I mean what exactly is the interest of a “beach” and who would be able to speak for it anyway?

Oh wait, maybe this guy:

(Btw, that “Native American” Iron Eyes Cody in that ad, is actually an American of Italian descent who was born as Espera de Corti. So there.)

Joking aside, it was an unworkable policy. But notice here that Douglas wasn’t say that the law presently did this or that they should rule that way—only that the law should say this. So even in his mind, only humans had standing to sue in federal court. And his ideas about giving rocks standing by changing the rules of procedure have been thoroughly ignored (except in mockery) ever since.

So PETA’s argument was frankly beyond any reasonable interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment or even for judicial activism, because even judicial activists have limits. And as such should be this conduct sanctioned. Again, at the very least, they should have to pay Sea World's costs and legal fees, rather than the public who will have to pay for this with higher ticket prices (which is assuredly another goal of PETA, to make running a place like Sea World less profitable).

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* And note that saying that killing a fetus at this stage should be considered murder doesn’t mean that all abortions would become illegal. Not all killing—indeed no all uses of force—is illegal.

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Btw, notice that Sierra Club v. Morton could have been decided in a much simpler way in the eyes of those who deride Citizens United. The Supreme Court could have said that since Sierra Club was a corporation it had no rights, and be done with it. After all, it says in the opinion, Sierra Club is a corporation.

And that also means that under the rule struck down in Citizens United, the Sierra Club could be prevented from advocating for against a person’s election. Indeed, that was one of the specific examples of “core political speech” that McCain-Feingold banned mentioned in the opinion:

The law before us is an outright ban, backed by criminal sanctions. Section 441b makes it a felony for all corporations—including nonprofit advocacy corporations—either to expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates or to broadcast electioneering communications within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. Thus, the following acts would all be felonies under § 441b: The Sierra Club runs an ad, within the crucial phase of 60 days before the general election, that exhorts the public to disapprove of a Congressman who favors logging in national forests; the National Rifle Association publishes a book urging the public to vote for the challenger because the incumbent U.S. Senator supports a handgun ban; and the American Civil Liberties Union creates a Web site telling the public to vote for a Presidential candidate in light of that candidate's defense of free speech. These prohibitions are classic examples of censorship.

So if you just thought that the Supreme Court ruled wrongly against Sierra Club in Mortion but also ruled wrongly in Citizens United, one might consider reevaluating your position.

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In Which Brett Kimberlin, Convicted Terrorist and Perjurer, Tries to Get Me Killed (In My Opinion)

2012-02-04T20:01:00.000-05:00

(This is my latest entry in the Kimberlin saga. To catch up on the whole thing, use this link.)

First, I am sorry to everyone for the very light blogging. Mind you, I have been writing up a storm, on my off-time, but most of it is not for public consumption. Maybe someday the whole story will come out, but as I said before, sometimes it is malpractice to share what I know with the whole world.

But the subject of today’s entry is not one of those times. Now some people might argue that Brett Kimberlin is reformed. They might say, yes, Brett did horrible things in the past. He is, after all, a convicted terrorist known as the speedway bomber Kimberlin v. White, 7 F.3d 527 (6^th Cir. 1993), he was held liable for the death of Carl DeLong, Kimberlin v. DeLong, 637 N.E.2d 121 (Ind., 1994), and Kimberlin is also a convicted perjurer, Kimberlin v. White, 798 F.Supp. 472 (1992), but he has been released from prison and now he has learned his lesson and he would never try to harm another person again. Or so the argument goes.

Well, it looks like the reformation didn’t exactly take. You see on January 5, in my opinion, he literally tried to get me killed.

On that day, he filed a motion to withdraw as moot his various subpoenas designed to determine my identity. The basis of this was that he learned my real name and therefore it was no longer necessary to subpoena Google or Comcast to get that information. And all he had to do, then, was to say that he obtained the information by other means—he didn’t even need to write down my name. But instead, he also included the following information in the motion itself:

My real name.
My home address.
My birth date.
Where and when I attended high school.
When I dropped out.
When I got my GED.
Where and when I attended undergraduate school.
Information from a suit filed under seal.
Where and when I attended law school.
My current position, my current employer and their address.

In other words, a “stalkerish” level of information. In my opinion, his goal in doing that was so that his co-conspirators, including Neal Rauhauser and Ron Brynaert, could then put that information on the web with the “fig leaf” that they were just reporting on the contents of public documents. And the court agreed with me on this point put it all under seal, because the court recognized that there was no valid purpose in putting all that information into the document. So now it is no longer a public record. Sorry guys, you have no fig leaf! You’ll have to face liability under Va. Code §18.2-46.5 on your own!

And if there is any doubt as to Kimberlin’s intent, well, then you need to know about something else Kimberlin did on or about January 5, 2011. He wrote a letter and email to the FBI, and two local police departments. He told them that he was sooooo worried that I would get hurt and therefore they should act to protect me and anyone living and working near me. I am going to give the text of the letter with obvious redactions and with “John Doe” substituted for my real name:

[FBI Address]

January 5, 2012

[Local Police Addresses]

Re: Police Protection of [John Doe], DOB [redacted]

Dear Law Enforcement Agencies:

I am writing to ask your agencies to provide protection to [John Doe], who has expressed concern for his and his wife's physical safety from Muslim extremists. Mr. [Doe] is an attorney licensed by the [redacted] bar, who lives at [my home address]. He is now working as corporate counsel at a health care provider by the name of [redacted], located at [redacted].

The reason Mr. [Doe]'s life may be in danger is that he has been identified in a civil case in Maryland, Kimberlin v. Allen, 339254-V, Montgomery County Circuit Court, as the creator of a blog called www.EveryoneDrawMohammed.blogspot.com.

Notice the use of the passive voice, so that it doesn’t highlight the fact that he is the one who identified me, and therefore created the danger in the first place.

Mr. [Doe] created and has published that blog for more than a year using the pseudonym "Aaron Worthing." He urged people to draw and submit pictures to him of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed in various derogatory ways...

Actually I didn’t ask them to be derogatory. I specifically told them they could be as inoffensive as they prefer, because to some radicals any depiction was sufficient, and I figured I would let everyone else’s conscience be their guide.

...in order show support for Danish cartoonists who had a fatwa issued against them for drawing cartoons ridiculing Mohammed. Muslims who were offended by the depictions then made several violent attacks against the Danish cartoonists and publisher.

Mr. [Doe] has published hundreds of depictions on Mohammed on his EveryoneDrawMohammed [sic] blog, and he has indicated that he fears that he and wife will be subjected to harm now that he has been identified as the creator of the blog. His blog has been banned in Muslim countries,...

Let me break in there for a moment. I have only heard of the blog being banned in Pakistan.

...and the State Department has stated that his blog is harming the interests of the United States because it inflames anti-American sentiments.

Let me break in again. To my knowledge they have never singled out my blog.

Therefore, there exists the very real probability that Mr. [Doe] could be subjected to serious harm or death now that his identity has been exposed. Moreover, because he lives in a townhouse with many adjacent neighbors, and works in a large building with hundreds of other people, any attack against him could result in collateral harm to others. In light of these concerns, I strongly urge your agencies to develop a plan to protect not only Mr. [Doe] and his wife from any such harm both at work and in their home, but also to protect those who live and work near them.

Sincerely,

Brett Kimberlin

[Kimberlin’s phone number omitted, because I am a classier guy than Brett.]

So let’s review, shall we? Brett Kimberlin intentionally outs me in court papers, including putting my home and work addresses. And bear in mind, at that point in time he was the only person revealing my name to the world. The court later holds that he has no legitimate reason to have put all of that information into his motion to withdraw—all he had to do was say he got my information from another source and that was it.

So if the court had not, in its wisdom, placed that motion under seal, then the obvious and foreseeable result of his action is that if any Islamofascist terrorist wanted to kill me, they would only have to use Google maps to find me. There is no rational dispute on that point, because Kimberlin pretty much said this to law enforcement himself. Let me quote the letter again: “Therefore, there exists the very real probability that Mr. [Doe] could be subjected to serious harm or death now that his identity has been exposed.”

Of course Kimberlin has attempted to portray writing this letter as him being an upstanding citizen, who just wanted to alert authorities to the danger I faced. In my opinion, that is bull. If he was truly concerned for my safety, then he wouldn’t have included all that personal information in his Motion to Withdraw in the first place. He wouldn’t have even mentioned my name.

And he wouldn’t have done it twice. Yes, that is right, on or about January 17, he filed a motion to unseal that motion to withdraw, but this time he put my real name in the caption itself. It was originally entitled “Plaintiff’s Motion to Unseal Pleadings Related to [my real name] aka Aaron Worthing” so that it would appear right in the Maryland Court databases. And after I filed an emergency motion the court sealed the document, and changed the name of the motion in the database to “Plaintiff’s Motion to Unseal Pleadings Related to John Doe.”

I mean doesn’t that give his intent away? This is just my opinion based on the facts I just gave you, but let’s pretend he included my identifying information innocently the first time. I don’t think he was innocent, but let’s play pretend, shall we? But since the court ruled that it was improper to have put that information in the pleading and sealed it the first time, in my opinion there can be no question he was doing this intentionally the second time.

And there was certainly no question he was doing this on purpose... when he did it a third time. Yes, on or about January 27, 2012, he filed a response to my emergency motion mentioned in the last paragraph. And this new filing was filled to the brim with lies—objectively verifiable lies. He lied about the what the court ruled, and even lied about my novel. And once again Kimberlin disclosed my name in the public record, by including his copy of the same letter to law enforcement I just quoted to you, but without redacting my name, address and work address, or voluntarily placing it under seal. But another emergency motion made sure it was placed under seal and thus it is no longer a public record.

So as the title indicates, it is only my opinion that he is deliberately trying to get me killed. He assures me that this is not his intent, but in my opinion his actions make his intentions clear. He has admitted that he knows his conduct creates “very real probability that Mr. [Doe] could be subjected to serious harm or death now that his identity has been exposed.” And he is not doing this by accident, so he is intentionally engaged in conduct that will create a serious risk of harm or death, both to myself and any innocents that surround me. And he has done this three times, now. And in my opinion, he has absolutely no justification for this conduct.

In my opinion, this is revenge against me, for the slight representation I offered to Seth Allen, and for exposing Kimberlin’s thuggish behavior to the world, as well as for exposing credible allegations that he committed perjury. So in my opinion, this convicted terrorist attempted to recruit other terrorists to do his dirty work for him.

And as for his letter to authorities, I think his intent is revealed in this portion:

Moreover, because he lives in a townhouse with many adjacent neighbors, and works in a large building with hundreds of other people, any attack against him could result in collateral harm to others. In light of these concerns, I strongly urge your agencies to develop a plan to protect not only Mr. [Doe] and his wife from any such harm both at work and in their home, but also to protect those who live and work near them.

In my opinion, his purpose in writing this letter was to ensure the maximum disruption of my life, by sending the police to both locations.

So if you help this man and his co-conspirators, then that is what you are aiding. If you donate to his various non-profits, maybe they do lots of other good work, but you are also helping support this piece of human filth who probably should never have been set free in the first place.

Oh, and by the way, if you do more than aid, if you cross the line into becoming a co-conspirator—or have already crossed that line—then you are just as liable for any civil or criminal consequences as Kimberlin. Any time you enter into a conspiracy, each participant is equally guilty of all the crimes (or civil wrongs) committed by each member. And while I can’t give you legal advice, I can say you definitely want to talk to a lawyer to find out how you can limit your liability for his behavior, before he gets you into more trouble.

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Proof That Hollywood’s Anti-War Propaganda Has Claimed Lives

2012-01-23T11:21:00.000-05:00

This isn’t a call for censorship, but for responsibility. You see about a year ago, an Islamofascist idiot killed two of our airmen, and two Americans helped to apprehend their killer and there have been developments in the case:

Germany's government presented the nation's highest civilian award Monday to two Americans who helped apprehend an Islamic extremist after he attacked a U.S. Air Force bus last year and killed two airmen.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich awarded the Federal Cross of Merit to U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Trevor Brewer and civilian airport employee Lamar Conner, both of whom chased the suspect until police could apprehend him, saying their deeds "were an example for all of us."

Arid Uka, a 21-year-old Kosovo Albanian, is currently on trial for the March 2 slayings and has admitted to the charges. He faces up to life in prison, and a verdict and sentence are expected Thursday.

And what motivated the attacks? Well, let’s hear from the Islamofascist himself:

Uka gave a teary confession as his Frankfurt state court trial opened in August, saying that the night before the attack he had seen a video on Facebook that purported to show American soldiers raping a teenage Muslim girl. It turned out to be a scene from the 2007 Brian De Palma anti-war film "Redacted," taken out of context.

Uka told the court the video prompted him to do anything possible to prevent American soldiers from going to Afghanistan.

Now who knows? Maybe something else would set him off, but for a Hollywood that has produced endless streams of anti-war propaganda, but hardly anything in praise of even the Afghan war—you know, the one everyone claimed to support—it is a predictable result that all this anti-war propaganda would have a body count. The founders didn’t protect freedom of speech because they wanted us to have no restraints, but because the founders believed that the only restraints should be self-imposed. So we are not excused from our moral responsibilities.

And I will add this, too. I am sure there is hardly a liberal alive who would advocate censoring this movie and I would agree, but here’s the thing. It’s also corporate speech—so according to the liberal view, the Supreme Court should have ruled that corporations have no expressive rights and thus we could have censored that movie freely, right? Just like Hillary: The Movie, right?

Or do you think maybe the Supreme Court was right to say that the First Amendment applies to even corporate speech?

Hat tip: Daily Caller.

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Breaking: Gabby Giffords to Resign

2012-01-22T14:56:00.000-05:00

It’s sad, and infuriating, but it was also the right thing to do, given her situation:

Giffords to step down from Congress

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will step down from Congress this week to focus on her recovery, her staff announced Sunday.

"I have more work to do on my recovery, so to do what is best for Arizona, I will step down this week," Giffords said in a video message.

Giffords, a third-generation Arizonan who served five years in the state Legislature before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2006, will not seek re-election this fall.

Giffords vowed to return public service.

"I will return and we will work together for Arizona and this great country," she said.

(Source.) Any political assassination—or in this case, an attempt at assassination that rendered its victim significantly disabled for some time to come—is a slap in the face of democracy. As I wrote over at Patterico’s a while back:

I don’t know or particularly care what she stood for on each of the issues. She could have been for everything I am against and against everything I am for. Because to me the issue is higher than normal politics. It’s the fact that she was chosen to represent her district and as such they are entitled to the representative they have chosen. And one man has vetoed that decision, an act that is unacceptable in a Republic.

But on the other hand, despite the fact that the situation fundamentally stank, I did think about nine months ago that it was time for her to step down, or for Congress to declare her seat vacant, writing:

although it is unacceptable for one criminal to deny the people of Arizona their voice in Congress, it is the reality we live with. Now there is a state law on the subject of dubious constitutionality, but it is obviously the case that the House of Representatives can declare her seat vacant, requiring the Governor to call an election. So let me suggest this as a procedure. Declare the seat vacant, hold the special election and then … let Gabby run for the seat if she wants. If the people of Arizona prefer to keep her on until she is able to serve again, then we in the rest of the country can hardly complain. But they should give their opinion on the subject.

It appears now there will be a special election in a bit to determine who gets to serve out the remainder of her term, short though it is. And at least we can be spared of this:

Representative Gabrielle Giffords is still in the hospital, but some of her most ardent backers are so enamored of the idea of her running for the Senate that they describe the inevitable campaign commercials: the deep-voiced narrator recounting what happened to her, the images of her wounded, then recovering and speaking into the camera alongside her astronaut husband to call on Arizonans to unite.

The whole thing made me throw up a little in my mouth. As I wrote at the time:

Seriously, what could be a better example of victim-status politics than that? They aren’t arguing that she should be reelected because she is the best and the brightest, or because she supports the policies you believe in. Nor are they arguing that she should be reelected in spite of being the victim of a crime. They are saying to elect her because she was the victim of a crime. Does that make any sense to you?

So at least we will be spared of that.

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It’s Admirable to Call Women B*tches? A Fisking of Althouse

2012-01-19T12:16:00.000-05:00

I generally like Ann Althouse, but I think she went really wrong with this one.

So yesterday there was a rumor that Jay-Z had decided to stop using the word “b*tch” in his music, prompted by the birth of his daughter. This was based on a poem he allegedly wrote which said:

Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich

I didn’t think hard about using the word bitch

I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it

Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it

Which kind-of sort-of indicates that he was swearing it off, and that led to an editorial in the Guardian which led to commentary by Althouse. And then a while later, Rolling Stone reports that the whole thing as false (leading Althouse to update the story). Of course one might suspect that Jay-Z was floating a trial balloon and when his fans reacted negatively, he decided to pretend he never said it, but really I am not interested in whether this story is true or not. I am interested in Althouse’s reaction to it, before the Rolling Stone article came along dispelling the rumor. So leaving out the update where she mentions the Rolling Stone article, she writes:

Now that he has a baby girl, Jay-Z will eschew the word "bitch."

Is that enough?

Is it even admirable? If you do something only when you've acquired a self-interest, it seems to me it would be more admirable to continue doing what you were doing before.

Now, I am not personally opposed to all uses of the word “b*tch.” If someone really deserves it, I call them either a b*tch or a b*stard, depending on gender. But Guardian commenter Tricia Rose has a pretty valid point when she says:

It is quite true that hip-hop has played a starring role in making sexist ideas sexy, visible and funky. Through the power of black music, style, swagger and lyrical creativity, Jay-Z and many other highly successful rappers (e.g, Snoop Dog, 50 Cent and Lil' Wayne) have expanded the visibility and value of aggressively sexist lyrics. And, frankly, if you want to find openly celebrated sexism against black women, there is no richer contemporary source than commercial, mainstream hip-hop.

This hasn't happened because commercially powerful artists have randomly or dutifully dropped a sexist word here or there to punctuate an infectious beat. Whole identities in countless songs rely on excessively sexist behaviour and name-calling to define the protagonist's power and importance.

So let’s pretend that he really did decide to do this (even though he denied it later). We still have Althouse stepping in and suggesting that he was doing this out of “self-interest.”

Well, now is that exactly right? I mean he doesn’t personally benefit from this conduct—instead his daughter does. So that is a dubious definition of self-interest. I think there are lots of parents who consider themselves selfless when they give up something for their children. But that is a forgivable error—it suggests that in Althouse’s mind she identifies so much with the good of her children that she considers their interests to be her “self-interest.” But she is technically wrong.

The deeper error is that she discounted the possibility of a real change in heart. It is hardly a new story to have a man witness the miracle of childbirth and for him to become a deeper person at that moment. Some lessons in life, you can only learn by experience.

(Which apparently Jay-Z now is claiming he didn’t learn. Again that returns me to the trial balloon theory—maybe he didn’t want to be that image anymore and was looking for a graceful way to leave it behind.)

And all of this is an example of how Ann Althouse is in many respects a leftist, although a moderate one. It is fashionable chiefly on the left these days to pretend that the worst sin that a person could commit is to be a hypocrite. So she thinks it is more admirable to be a consistent pig than to hypocritically stop being one out of the “self-interest” of having a daughter. It’s a product of moral relativism which I dissected in an old post at Patterico’s. As I wrote there:

Imagine if you asked Dr. [Martin Luther] King whose soul was more likely to be condemned by God. Thomas Jefferson, a slave holder who hypocritically gave this nation a universal charter of freedom? Or the slave holder who consistently maintained that slavery was right? Thomas Jefferson couldn’t find the moral strength to stop owning slaves, but at least he made sure everyone understood that what he was doing was evil and it should not be followed. Obviously the best option is for a person to be a consistent advocate of freedom..., but if that isn’t one of your choices, isn’t Jefferson’s hypocrisy preferable?

Likewise, I don’t think that Jay-Z should necessarily stop saying the word b*tch altogether, but if he could just stop being such a pig, and maybe even teach the impressionable young men who listen to him to show more respect for women, that’s a good thing, even if it is hypocritical.

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Site Announcements

2012-01-14T12:07:00.005-05:00

Bad news everyone. A group of people have learned of my true identity and they are getting ready to reveal it to the world. Of course to do so might run afoul of Va. Code § 18.2-46.5(C). That law states in relevant part that:

Any person who solicits, invites, recruits, encourages, or otherwise causes or attempts to cause another to participate in an act or acts of terrorism, as defined in § 18.2-46.4, is guilty of a Class 4 felony.

And a Class 4 felony allows for up to ten years in prison per offense. And of course it is an additional crime to conspire to commit a crime in Virginia, also punishable with up to ten years in prison.

Still, some of you may have noticed that a certain blog has disappeared. I won’t name it here. The reality is that it is not merely a matter of my safety but also that of my coworkers and out of respect for their wishes and rational fears I have removed that blog as well as any reference to participating in that blog at this site. So, without any sense of resentment, I have removed it, for now.

The legal drama is still unfolding and I expect that it will continue to unfold. Expect updates.

Buy My Novel, Today! (Updated!)

2012-01-13T10:01:00.002-05:00

Update: Thanks to Dana at First Street Journal, Patterico and Beldar for their kind links, not to mention lots of people on twitter. Of particular interest was Michelle Malkin’s mention on twitter, since, um... she’s kind of a character in the novel. So that is cool.

And a few people have asked or pondered how much of this goes to me and how much goes to Amazon. The answer is that I get just a hair under 70% of every dollar they get.

Update (II): Also thanks to Paulitifact for the linkage.

We now resume the original post as is.

---------------------------------

So it turns out that in my spare time I have written a novel. Go figure. It is published on Amazon as a self-published Kindle book. Here’s its cover image which I created myself:

Its full title is “Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History.” You can purchase it, here, or you might consider going over to some of your favorite sites and using the Amazon search box on the sidebar of blogs such as Patterico’s, Althouse or Instapundit and the respective sites’ owners will get a little money back for themselves. Right now it is coming up as the second item if you just search for “Aaron Worthing.”

I actually did the principal writing of it in 2006 and 2007, and since then I have been polishing it. And of course I think some “stage fright” kept me from releasing it. But I had begun to pitch the book to different publishers and I felt that the time to finally release it was now. This is in part because as time went on, certain parts of the novel started to get incredibly ironic. You will have a hard time believing that I wrote this before certain events in my life—except for the fact that it would have been physically impossible to have written it after those events.

What’s it about? Well, a few years back I was gripped with an idea. What if, on September 11, 2001, there was a superhero there, who had the ability to intervene and really make things better. Now very quickly I realized that it shouldn’t be a fairy tale where suddenly September 11 is not a disaster at all, but I had a vision of a gritty, realistic depiction of how a superhero would really look in our world, and how our world would respond to him.

So on one hand, you see the hero behave in a way that is much more realistic than you are used to. As I said to Dustin the other day, a real superhero would never get a cat out of a tree. He’d have much bigger fish to fry. For instance, here is a little dialogue from the novel. The speaker is FBI Agent Rini Miller who has been assigned as the hero’s liaison:

“I mean, okay, so you are a real life superhero, but who are the real life supervillians? Osama bin Laden, Yasir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jung Il, and all the other murderous dictators and terrorists all over the world. Not some idiot in a silly costume.” She paused for effect, then added dryly, “well, I mean besides Gadhafi.”

Which is funny, because since I first wrote those words, literally every single one of those villains have died. And at the same time, the hero’s tactics are much more realistic. This is a book for adults, frankly, about a childhood fantasy becoming real.

And on the other hand you also see a realistic depiction of how the world would respond to him. We’re talking about the law, politics, international affairs, the media and society as a whole. But at the same time, I don’t let the plot get so bogged down on those details that we can’t have many action scenes.

One of the other things you will notice very quickly is that the fictional cast is mixed heavily with a large number of real and famous persons. For instance given what I told you about the plot so far, it shouldn’t surprise you that my character would interact with the mayor of New York City and rather than make up some kind of fictional mayor, the person he talks to is Giuliani himself. And when people turn on the news, it is Fox News, CNN, ABC News, etc. rather than any made-up stand in, like “Weasel News” or something lame like that. I do that to lend the story verisimilitude. Because if he meets with the President in 2001, and it’s President David Palmer instead of President Bush, it takes you out of the story for that moment. That being said, the depiction of all of those real-world persons, and entities (like CNN) is fictionalized and represents my opinions about them. You should not make the mistake of thinking this novel is anything but fiction.

You might also ask how much my moderately conservative world view affects it. In some sense it is unavoidable. If a liberal writes a story in which a character meets George W. Bush, you can expect things to go one way. Even if the liberal had no intention of “bashing” Bush, they hold certain beliefs about the man that they consider to be realistic that reflects their liberal world view and you would expect those beliefs to bleed into the story. And at the same time a moderately conservative guy like me would depict the same man very differently. I will also add that sometimes I made choices in my depictions in a deliberate attempt to make things more interesting. What I did not set out to do is to write some kind of propaganda.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Filipino Americans and people aware of Filipino culture will enjoy the fact that this hero is part of a large and loving Filipino American family. There are actual plot points that turn on their language and culture.

I suspect I have said more than I needed to. So please buy it and hopefully you will enjoy it

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By the way, let me take a moment to thank my editor, whom you all know as Dustin. He did a great job of finding my typos and just helped on style in general. All remaining errors are my fault.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.

To Google Legal Investigations Support

2012-01-09T18:01:00.001-05:00

Update: You can read the text of the pleading I have filed, here.

I know you guys have been subpoenaed about this blog, so this message is for you. (And for everyone else, this is going to be stuck at the top for a bit, so new posts will appear below it.)

I sent you an email to the same effect, but I wanted to tell you that a motion to quash will be filed by the “John Doe” at issue. Please, do not comply with the request for information until there is an opportunity for me to fight it.

The Plaintiff, Mr. Brett C. Kimberlin, is a convicted terrorist (bomber, specifically) (Kimberlin v. White, 7 F.3d 527 (1993)) and perjurer (Kimberlin v. White, 798 F.Supp. 472 (1992)) and I believe that if you reveal my information to him, he will place my life in danger.

If you have any questions feel free to email me, and we can arrange to talk.

I thank you for your time and consideration.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.

Friday Frivolity, the 16-Bit Galactica Edition!

2012-01-06T20:14:00.000-05:00

And for this week’s Friday Frivolity, we have the new Battlesstar Galactica, retold as a 16 Bit RPG:

Enjoy. Via Joystiq.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.

Tantalizing News in the Kimberlin Saga

2012-01-06T19:54:00.002-05:00

I haven’t seen the documents and I am unlikely to see it before Monday, but apparently filed two documents with the court today, according to the Maryland Judiciary Case Search website.

The first is listed as follows:

PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO WITHDRAW AS MOOT PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO COMPEL AND SUBPOENAS TO COMCAST AND GOOGLE SEEKING IDENTITY OF AARON WORTHING, FILED. (LP)

And the second is listed as this:

PLAINTIFF'S RESPONSE TO AARON WORTHING'S MOTION TO QUASH, FILED. (LP)

No, I am not precisely sure what this will mean until I see it. There is cause for optimism, but also reason to worry that he is up to something more nefarious, but we’ll see. And I am unlikely to see these motions before Monday.

Anyway, due to issues at the house, it will be light blogging otherwise. But I think I will try to give you at least a Friday frivolity.

And if you want to catch up on this saga, use this link to collect all of the posts on the subject.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.

Brett Kimberlin, Convicted Terrorist and Perjurer, Accuses Me of Unethical Conduct

2012-01-06T01:54:00.005-05:00

Update: Thanks to DonkeyTale for the link, as well as numerous twitterers.

Update (II): And thanks to Blazing Cat Fur for the linky goodness as well.

So this is the latest installment in the Kimberlin saga. As regular readers know, a few weeks back Ron Brynaert and then Brett Kimberlin engaged in a campaign to determine my true identity. In Kimberlin’s case, this convicted terrorist (bomber, specifically) (Kimberlin v. White, 7 F.3d 527 (6th Cir. 1993)) and perjurer (Kimberlin v. White, 798 F.Supp. 472 (W.D. Tenn. 1992)) subpoenaed Google and Comcast in order to obtain my identity and address. The latter subpoena was issued without providing notice to me as required by Maryland civil procedure. I filed a response in that case last Thursday, which you can read here (and there are links there to catch up on this whole saga). My filing has been described by DonkeyTale as “one of the most epic pantsings I have ever seen performed anywhere” so it might be worth a read.

And regular readers would also know that because of the rules of court which frankly does not yet take account for this situation, I had to find a Maryland attorney to represent me and Ken at Popehat helped me to obtain one.

So last Friday, Brett Kimberlin sent my lawyer an email. And I am going to quote it to you in full,* and fisk the entire thing. Now, naturally I do not plan to reveal to the world if he has also entered into any settlement negotiations with me, because those are special. We want to encourage that kind of discussion without fear that the other side could use it against them. Indeed the rules of evidence limits my ability to use such discussions in court. And while nothing legally prevents me from publicizing any attempts to settle, it seems like good policy.

But this email isn’t about attempting to settle things, as you will soon see. In my opinion, this email was an attempt to deprive me of my counsel, and as such this latest act of thuggery (in my opinion) by this crew is fair game.

So pull up a bowl of popcorn and let the fisking begin, and please note that all spelling errors were in the original, with the caveat you will see at the end in the footnote:

[Update: I have changed the formatting so his words are in red and italicized, so it is easier to separate what he says from other sources I quote. Let me know if that helps make this more readable.]

From: [Brett Kimberlin]

Date: Friday, December 30, 2011 12:09 PM

To: [My Maryland lawyer]; [her associate]

Attach: Socrates Final Peaace Order.pdf

Subject: FW: Kimberlin v. Allen

Dear [My Maryland Lawyer]:

Nice chatting with you. Please do not send this email to Mr. Worthing because he will post it on the Internet as he did with my legal communications to him.

Um, yeah, Brett, you just asked her to commit an unethical act. In Maryland’s Lawyer’s Rules of Professional Conduct (hereafter “MRPC”), Rule 1.4 states in relevant part that “[a] lawyer shall… keep the client reasonably informed about the status of the matter… [and] promptly comply with reasonable requests for information[.]” The official commentary further states that “[a] lawyer may not withhold information to serve the lawyer’s own interest or convenience or the interests or convenience of another person.” There are a few instances when something can be ethically withheld, such as when there is a court order requiring it, or if the lawyer believes the client is going to physically hurt himself or others in response, but those exceptions don’t apply here.

So she couldn’t comply with your wishes. And of course there was never any question in her mind about passing it on to me and indeed, I don’t know a single minimally ethical lawyer who would ever even consider honoring such a request.

I also want to mention another possible conflict of interest other than your representation of ACORN.

That is right. She or her firm represented Acorn. Yes, that Acorn. And although Andrew Breitbart is peripherally involved in this case (because he was cc’ed on a few of the relevant emails), and I have occasionally blogged at his Big Government and Big Journalism sites, and even though I don’t think my lawyer likes Mr. Breitbart very much, she agreed to represent me. Which says to you, dear reader, that the issues in this case transcend ordinary politics and reach into deeper principles. And it serves as a reminder that most good Americans have a common belief in certain baseline principles, rights and freedoms, freedom of speech being one of the big ones. Most of the people on the other side aren’t evil. At worst, they’re mistaken.

Now at the end of this email Brett copies and pastes a lot of specific rules from the MRPC, but curiously he doesn’t quote from the one on conflicts. Let me do that for him, quoting from MRPC Rule 1.7 in relevant part:

(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b), a lawyer shall not represent a client if the representation involves a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest exists if:

(1) the representation of one client will be directly adverse to another client; or

(2) there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by the lawyer's responsibilities to another client, a former client or a third person or by a personal interest of the lawyer.

Likewise Rule 1.9 discusses duties to former clients, stating in relevant part:

(a) A lawyer who has formerly represented a client in a matter shall not thereafter represent another person in the same or a substantially related matter in which that person's interests are materially adverse to the interests of the former client unless the former client gives informed consent, confirmed in writing.

(b) A lawyer shall not knowingly represent a person in the same or a substantially related matter in which a firm with which the lawyer formerly was associated had previously represented a client

(1) whose interests are materially adverse to that person; and

(2) from whom the lawyer had acquired information protected by Rules 1.6 and 1.9(c) that is material to the matter;

unless the former client gives informed consent, confirmed in writing.

And there are various escape hatches, but you don’t need to worry about them because this situation doesn’t even fall within the rule. Acorn is no more. It is dissolved as a company and has no corporate existence. Now some people have argued that other corporations and/or organizations are really Acorn in all but name, but as far as the law is concerned, Acorn doesn’t exist. So literally everything Brett says in the next paragraph is irrelevant to the issue.

As noted, my organizations and my business partner Brad Friedman have been very involved with the ACORN issue, putting up rewards when their offices were attacked, urging accountability for James O’Keefe et al for their illegal wiretapping of ACORN employees, having Bertha on Brad Friedman’s radio program, writing dozens of articles about the destruction of ACORN, and working with members of Congress and the California Attorney General’s office to get to the truth about the attacks on ACORN. Mr. Worthing has been part of that attack machine, blogging for right wing ACORN hater Patrick Frey. In fact, it was Brad Friedman’s expose of that cabal with regard to ACORN which caused this attack machine to first target him, and then me.

All of which amounts to that he stuck up for Acorn in various ways as did his business associate, Brad Freidman, which doesn’t create a conflict of interest as that term is understood in the MRPC, requiring her to withdraw. It doesn’t even come close. But one gets the feeling that this isn’t really about that, so much as trying to convince her that I am a horrible person and that I don’t deserve even a chance to defend myself in court before my name and home address is given to a convicted terrorist who has proven that his word cannot be trusted by being convicted of perjury. I can’t prove that is his intent, so this is an opinion based on simply the words I just quoted to you, but that is my opinion.

In addition to this, Velvet Revolution, an organization which I am involved, has a campaign called www.StopTheChamber.com, which exposes excesses of the Chamber of Commerce. We have worked with Chamber Watch, a client of your partner [G.H.], and I have talked with [G.H.] about the Chamber and its IRS issues. We in fact are presently working with the FBI in an investigation of the Chamber and prepared a White Paper for the Bureau which includes as an exhibit the filing that [G.H.] and [C.M.] prepared.

That’s right, he talked to one of their lawyers in some case unrelated to this one, therefore he thinks that this means she can’t represent me. Which is not what the rules say.

One of our Board Members also has a connection to [G.H.], I believe through Friends of the Earth.

Yes, and did you know that Gwyneth Paltrow has a connection to Kevin Bacon? You see, she appeared in Shakespeare in Love with Joseph Fiennes. Mr. Fiennes in turn appeared in Enemy at the Gates starring Ed Harris. Mr. Harris appeared in A History of Violence with Viggo Mortensen. Viggo Mortensen appeared with Ian McKellen in the Lord of the Rings. Ian McKellen appeared with Hugh Jackman in Xmen I and II. And Jackman appeared in Xmen: First Class (a brief, very funny cameo) which stars… Kevin Bacon.

But that doesn’t mean that a lawyer who is friends with Kevin Bacon is forbidden from representing Ms. Paltrow, Mr. Fiennes, Mr. Harris, Mr. Mortensen, Mr. McKellen or Mr. Jackman, even in a suit against Mr. Bacon himself.

I will be happy to provide her name to you as well as the White Paper if you need them to make your conflict of interest determination. The Chamber of Commerce hired military intelligence contractors to attack our group, Chamber Watch, and me personally as part of a six million dollar campaign of destruction. See http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8354

Although Team Themis was exposed, the Chamber continues to fund operations against us and me, and Mr. Worthing is part of the cabal that the Chamber uses for its nefarious purposes...

Which is supported by absolutely no evidence. I mean, even assuming that the Chamber is out to get him (and I have no idea on that point, but given his track record I doubt it), he cannot show that I have even spoken to anyone at the Chamber of Commerce, or received a payment from them, let alone conspired with them in any way, because I have not. So what he just did there was he defamed me. And indeed I would say that it meets the legal definition of malice, given that he is showing a reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of his claims.

...along with others such as those cc’d on the death threat email from Mr. Allen to Mr. Worthing.

We have been over this before, but it was not a threat. A threat has to be communicated to the target. He was communicating with us. You can read the email here (see Exhibit E), and you will see that in fact it was nothing more than a stressed out and angry man ruminating on the idea of murdering his tormenter. Mandy Nagy, one of the recipients did get nervous enough that she reported it to the police, but has since determined that he was just blowing off some steam.

We are presently in consultation with counsel about filing a lawsuit against the Chamber et al for the Team Themis campaign of destruction and there is a very real possibility that Mr. Worthing will be named a defendant in that action, which will most likely be filed in federal court.

It’s always important to notice what he is not saying. You can walk into virtually any law office and “consult” with counsel on any topic. They will listen to you, although they might charge you for even that time. But it is highly doubtful that they will take Kimberlin’s case. Any attorney knows that if they file this case in federal court, they will have to sign the complaint and by signing it they will have pledged to comply with Rule 11. It says in relevant part:

(b) Representations to the Court. By presenting to the court a pleading, written motion, or other paper—whether by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating it—an attorney or unrepresented party certifies that to the best of the person's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances:

(1) it is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation;

(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law;

(3) the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery; and

(4) the denials of factual contentions are warranted on the evidence or, if specifically so identified, are reasonably based on belief or a lack of information.

Further, this rule provides for sanctions for its violation visited on either the client or the attorney—that is, a judge can order an attorney to pay her share from her own funds and not to pass it on to the client. So you can bet that this counsel they spoke with is going to demand strong evidence on each element of the offense. Lawyers tell their clients all the time , “I can’t file that. I will be sanctioned.” And if Brett’s motion to compel is any indication, he has absolutely no evidence that I have conspired with anyone. What he has is evidence that I have communicated with Patrick, Mandy and Breitbart, as have thousands and thousands of other people. Communication is not a crime or a tort (civil wrong) and none of my communications with them have ever indicated any such conspiracy or cabal existed. And he can show that I have advised Mr. Allen, a person whom I have entered into a limited attorney-client relationship with. Which is kind of what lawyers do, you know?

Indeed, in my filing last Thursday I have already presented evidence that Mr. Kimberlin committed serial violations of the Maryland version of Rule 11 (called Maryland Rule §1-311) already. I doubt he will find a single lawyer in the country willing to take on this case and sully their reputation.

Finally, I want to memorialize my concern about Mr. Worthing’s violations of the Rules of Professional Responsibility…

Notice he doesn’t say that these are possible violations of the rules, but that they are actual and definite violations of the rules. So he has stated for a fact that I have behaved unethically, and every time I prove him wrong, that means he has committed an additional act of defamation against me.

...and the possibility that this may impact you if a Court or Bar finds that you somehow contributed to this unprofessional conduct.

And that’s a consistent theme with him: punishing or threatening to punishing attorneys for representing others. He’s doing it to me for representing Mr. Allen, and he is doing it to my attorney. I mean, that is my opinion based on the facts I have presented at this blog, but it fits the facts, doesn’t it?

Mr. Worthing entered into an attorney client relationship with Seth Allen using a false name...

First, as usual, he is asserting knowledge of matters he couldn’t possibly know about. For all he knows, the moment I emailed Seth in private I told him my real name.

Second, I ask him to quote me the rule of professional conduct that requires me to provide my client with my real name. My name is not important.

...and is trying this case on the blogs...

Which is a reference to posts like this. And to bolster this claim he later quotes from part of MRPC Rule 3.6. His version’s formatting is too messed up to quote here, but what is important is he only quotes Rule 3.6 (b) and then some official commentary. Which means that he has cut out the actual operative language of the rule in subsection (a). So let’s see what that says:

(a) A lawyer who is participating or has participated in the investigation or litigation of a matter shall not make an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.

Now first, there is a question of whether or not I am a lawyer in this at all. I don’t mean to cast any doubt that I am a lawyer outside of Maryland, but I am not a Maryland lawyer and I am not appearing in Maryland in this case as a lawyer, but as a third party potential witness. And that is actually an important distinction in the rules. For instance, in the preamble the Rules state that

there are Rules that apply to lawyers who are not active in the practice of law or to practicing lawyers even when they are acting in a nonprofessional capacity.

By expressio unius, this means that are also rules do not apply to lawyers when they are not acting in a professional capacity. Is it the opinion of the Maryland Bar association that unlike the parties to this case, I, as an involuntary participant as a potential witness, am uniquely prohibited from speaking out about this case? And indeed by making it clear that the language of the MRPC doesn’t always apply to lawyers when they are acting in a non-professional capacity without specifying when it does and when it doesn’t, the bar association seems to have rendered this an impermissibly vague and overbroad limitation on freedom of speech. First Amendment lawyers know that this is a serious problem. I would suggest that they consider clarifying what rules apply when as soon as possible.

In any case, the language in section (c) strongly indicates that the rule is not designed to apply to attorneys representing themselves:

(c) Notwithstanding paragraph (a), a lawyer may make a statement that a reasonable lawyer would believe is required to protect a client from the substantial undue prejudicial effect of recent publicity...

And it goes on but the point is that the language of the rule is plainly written imagining that we are talking about a situation where an attorney is representing a separate person who is a client, and is not designed to disadvantage lawyers when they serve as their own clients. There is, simply put, no good reason to restrict me and not Kimberlin or Allen, in our exercise of freedom of speech.

In any case, Kimberlin amazingly quotes the following from the rule, without understanding its import:

(b) Notwithstanding paragraph (a), a lawyer may state:

(1) the claim, offense or defense involved and, except when prohibited by law, the identity of the persons involved;

(2) information contained in a public record;

I won’t go on because remarkably he doesn’t even realize he has quoted a provision specifically allowing me to say virtually everything I have said, especially the really bad things I have said about him, because it is information contained in a public record. For instance, when I call him a terrorist (bomber, specifically) and a perjurer, I am doing so based on the language of court cases. These court opinions are emphatically public records. Otherwise I have quoted from my filing, which is also a public record. Or I cite information contained in that filing, which is stating “information contained in a public record.”

And that interacts with another provision in subsection (a). It is not that all trial publicity, by lawyers acting in a professional capacity, is verboten, but only if “the lawyer knows or reasonably should know” that such publicity “will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.” And the official commentary to these rules makes it clear that not all “adjudicative proceedings” are created alike:

[6] Another relevant factor in determining prejudice is the nature of the proceeding involved. Criminal jury trials will be most sensitive to extrajudicial speech. Civil trials may be less sensitive. Non-jury hearings and arbitration proceedings may be even less affected. The Rule will still place limitations on prejudicial comments in these cases, but the likelihood of prejudice may be different depending on the type of proceeding.

This reflects the common sense notion that a judge is less likely to be swayed by such publicity than a jury. And the determination of the matter at hand—whether I am outed or not—will be determined by a judge. Bluntly, I do not believe that the judge is likely to even visit my site, and he certainly is not likely to consider any information I present here that is not reflected in a court document. And certainly there is no substantial chance of prejudice when sharing information already presented to the judge in court documents.

That’s not to say it is impossible for my communications to prejudice the matter. For instance, if I personally insulted the judge, then that would be a problem. Indeed it might force the judge to recuse himself, which would obviously prejudice the administration of justice. But simply putting out truthful information, mainly based on court documents? No, there is no substantial likelihood of prejudice.

And let’s remember that the commentary also recognizes that “[t]he public... has a legitimate interest in the conduct of judicial proceedings, particularly in matters of general public concern.” The right of a person to speak anonymously is a matter of general public concern as is whether the courts will uphold that right.

Of course Kimberlin quotes from the commentary, too, citing where it says, in relevant part:

There are, on the other hand, certain subjects that are more likely than not to have a material prejudicial effect on a proceeding, particularly when they refer to a civil matter triable to a jury, a criminal matter, or any other proceeding that could result in incarceration. These subjects relate to:

(1) the character, credibility, reputation or criminal record of a party, suspect in a criminal investigation or witness, or the identity of a witness, or the expected testimony of a party or witness[.]

But as the introductory paragraph indicates they are primarily concerned with matters before a jury. And of course the commentary, while useful in interpreting the operative language, does not trump the operative language. The operative language specifically allows me to provide information to you that is provided in public records (I don’t believe most criminal records are considered public records). And indeed there is nothing I say about the credibility, reputation and criminal record of Brett Kimberlin that I didn’t also say to the court in formal documents. So how can repeating those statements have a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing” the issue?

Moving on:

…attacking me personally and as a party…

It’s funny how in their writing, criticism is “attacking” likening it to a physical attack. Of course, I have never physically attacked him—I have never even met the man—and as for attacking his character… it is directly relevant. His penchant for violence means that there is a risk that he may get violent with me. And his history of perjury goes to the credibility of any factual assertions or promises he makes, as does the allegations in my filing that he lied to the court in this very case. In any case, there is no rule in the MRPC prohibiting me from providing truthful information that reveals the exact contents of his character.

...and now threatening to present criminal charges to obtain an advantage in a civil matter...

Now, the hilarious part is when he quotes the MRPC he writes the following:

RPC 3.4. Fairness to Opposing Party and Counsel

A lawyer shall not:...

(g) present, participate in presenting, or threaten to present criminal charges to obtain an improper advantage in a civil matter.

But there’s only one problem with that. The rule doesn’t exist. And I see references to the very same Cornell Law School website I have been using interspersed with his quotations of the rules, so clearly he knows of this site. And indeed the rules have existed in this form since at least 2007 (and I have verified that this rule is still in that form). So how did he not know that this rule doesn’t exist?

Secondly, I have not done this to gain an advantage over him in the civil matter, but because I believe that sufficient evidence exists justifying an investigation. I suspect a grave injustice was done to Mr. Allen, and I would like to see justice done.

But I find it interesting that on one hand, in his motion to compel he chides me for not reporting when Mr. Allen ruminated about murdering him, even though Mandy Nagy told me that she was going to report him for saying that, and then told me afterward that she did. He somehow thinks I have a duty to report every time I think a person might commit a crime, even if someone already did report it. But now he is saying that I have a duty not to report my suspicion that crime has actually occurred.

Indeed, I believe that if I failed to inform the court of his possibly criminal conduct in the November 14, 2011 hearing, that it would violate the spirit, if not the letter, of MRPC Rule 3.3. requiring candor toward the tribunal. I would be allowing him to potentially perpetrate a fraud upon the court.

Alas, his list of complaints goes on:

…being a lawyer and a witness,…

And he later quotes from MRPC Rule 3.7. I will only quote the relevant part:

(a) A lawyer shall not act as advocate at a trial in which the lawyer is likely to be a necessary witness unless... [listing various exceptions].

Which doesn’t apply to the situation at all, because I am not acting as an advocate in a trial. And my pleading aptly demonstrates that I am not a necessary witness.

...using his blog to embarrass me, and making false statements about me.

Which is redundant on the first part, and as for the second, Brett, I will extend to you the exact same offer Patrick gave to you when you threatened him with a defamation suit. Point out to me a single false statement I have made and prove it is false. And let me be clear on what counts as a false statement. It means where I have stated a fact that is not true. I am entitled to draw my own opinions based on the facts.

Likewise, let me make clear what counts as proof. Your word doesn’t count. You are a convicted perjurer. A “double secret exoneration” that you can’t show me doesn’t count. Nothing that relies on your personal veracity counts, because you have none.

But if you manage to show that I made a false statement about you and prove it to be false, I will of course voluntarily take it down and even publicly take it back before the court if I made the statement in a court document. I will even apologize for the error.

But I have just shown where you have made multiple defamatory statements about me, and I am about to show even more, and I doubt you will ever take that back, let alone apologize.

See relevant rules below.

Actually, you cited no relevant rules.

I believe that any Court or Bar faced with a complaint detailing the actions of Mr. Worthing trying this case in the press with vile attacks on me, will find that his conduct violates the Rules. I subpoenaed Mr. Worthing in a civil matter and was attacked mercilessly on his blog, and in his tweets.

Here comes a major piece of chutzpah:

He has called me a murder suspect,…

Well, the Indianapolis Star thinks you were one:

When police began looking for a motive in the Scyphers slaying, they found there'd been a recent family clash. Julia Scyphers' daughter, Sandra Barton, had become involved with a man who seemed to Mrs. Scyphers to be inordinately close to one of Barton's young daughters. Mrs. Scyphers told friends she was so concerned that she'd arranged for both of her granddaughters to come live with her. Whether or not Mrs. Scyphers' fears were correct (no charges were ever filed to that effect), this incident led investigators to start looking at Brett C. Kimberlin.

And so did Mark Singer:

Early that afternoon, [Brett] Kimberlin went downtown to meet with Forrest Bowman. Along the way, he said, he passed a newspaper vending machine and saw the Indianapolis News's proclamation BOMBING SUSPECT IS LINKED TO MURDER.

"I saw this headline about the bombing investigation and I bought a newspaper and started reading it," he told me [reporter Mark Singer]. "I think: Oh, this might be interesting. And then I read the first couple of paragraphs--about a Broad Ripple business man--and I realize they're talking about me and I'm just floored.

Mark Singer, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin (1996), page 98.

Did you sue them? Did you win a judgment against them? Or even an admission of wrongdoing? (And double secret agreements that you can't show me don’t count.)

And even if it was untrue, here’s the problem you have. I never called you a murder suspect, except when quoting from my filing. And it is never defamation to accurately report the contents of a public document. Indeed, I didn’t even call you one now, I merely pointed out that others had and that I stated you had been called one in in my filing:

He goes on to complain I called him:

….a terrorist,…

Um, the Sixth Circuit called you a terrorist. Or more precisely a serial bomber, which in my opinion makes you a terrorist:

Kimberlin was convicted as the so-called "Speedway Bomber," who terrorized the city of Speedway, Indiana, by detonating a series of explosives in early September 1978. In the worst incident, Kimberlin placed one of his bombs in a gym bag, and left it in a parking lot outside Speedway High School. Carl Delong was leaving the high school football game with his wife when he attempted to pick up the bag and it exploded. The blast tore off his lower right leg and two fingers, and embedded bomb fragments in his wife's leg. He was hospitalized for six weeks, during which he was forced to undergo nine operations to complete the amputation of his leg, reattach two fingers, repair damage to his inner ear, and remove bomb fragments from his stomach, chest, and arm. In February 1983, he committed suicide.

After being convicted of the bombings and related offenses, Kimberlin was sentenced to a fifty-year term of imprisonment for manufacturing and possessing a destructive device, and malicious damage by explosives with personal injury in violation of 26 U.S.C. §§ 5861(d) and (f), and 18 U.S.C. §§ 844(f) and (i). He received a concurrent twelve-year sentence for impersonating a federal officer, illegal use of a Department of Defense insignia, and illegal use of the Presidential Seal in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 912, 701, and 713, respectively, and a five-year term for receipt of explosives by a convicted felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 842(i)(1). Finally, he was given a four-year sentence by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas on an earlier, unrelated conviction for conspiracy to distribute marijuana.

Kimberlin v. White, 7 F.3d 527 (6th Cir. 1993).

He goes on to complain I called him:

…a perjurer,…

Again, court documents say that you are:

[Kimberlin] argues that the Parole Commission erroneously computed his salient factor score in 1988 when it awarded only 1 point to petitioner's salient factor score because of 2 prior convictions. The convictions in question are a juvenile conviction for selling controlled substances and a subsequent conviction shortly after his 18th birthday for perjury before the grand jury relative to the involvement of others in the juvenile drug offense.

Kimberlin v. White, 798 F. Supp. 472, 482 (W.D. Tenn. 1992).

…and urged others to attack me.

Once again, we see the line blurred between verbal and physical attacks. I have never urged physical violence against Kimberlin. And I have never urged anyone to defame you. And to the extent that telling truthful information about your deplorable past is an “attack” even if I urged other people to do that, so what? I have a First Amendment right to do that.

He has called me out personally on his blog, urged readers to get the popcorn because he was going to destroy me and it will be fun to watch. http://allergic2bull.blo=spot.com/2011/12/tune‐in‐tonight‐at‐ten‐oclockeastern.html

Well, as a point of fact, I didn’t mention any plan to destroy you. But I confess in this I am having fun, because well, law is sort of my thing. It’s why I am a lawyer. And there is no rule of law or ethics that prohibits me from enjoying this.

This is not conduct that is allowed by an attorney. A blogger who did this could face a defamation suit,...

Anyone could face a defamation suit for anything. But any suit you might file against me for defamation would not only be thrown out, but you would face sanctions for filing a frivolous suit.

...but Mr. Worthing is representing himself as an attorney...

Well, it’s good to see ya’ll have decided I am a lawyer, now.

...who he says had an attorney-client relationship with a party to this lawsuit. Therefore, he is bound by the Rules of Professional Conduct.

I presume he means the Maryland Lawyer’s Rules of Professional Conduct, and as I pointed out, that is not necessarily correct. Or more precisely, they don’t apply under these circumstances.

I will be seeking sanctions against him for violating the Rules now that he has given the Court jurisdiction over him by filing his motion.

You go ahead and do that. I’m sure the judge needs a good laugh.

My dilemma now is whether you too have violated the Rules...

Aaaaand he’s back to threatening my lawyer again. (Note: that is my opinion based on what he wrote. Draw your own conclusions on this point.)

...by acting in a supervisory capacity to him.

Except she wasn’t. This would be the second time he has mistakenly thought someone else was supervising me, the first time being in his motion to compel when he thought Patrick Frey was my supervisor because I happened to put up a few guest posts at his blog. But having made this laughable error, he goes on, further threatening her (in my opinion):

As you know, Rules 5.1 and 5.2 specifically require both supervisory and subordinate attorneys comply with the Rules. I urge you to discuss these matters with others in your firm and get back to me no later than Tuesday, January 3rd as to the conflict of interests and the Rules violations so I can decide how to proceed with my sanctions motion. Beth, as noted in our call, I am a reasonable person...

Oh, get ready, dear reader, you are about to see some major chutzpah, here:

...and I did not ask for this fight...

That’s right folks, he’s not the aggressor, here! It’s mean old Aaron Worthing! Never mind that I never wrote a single post about him at Patterico’s Pontifications, and I barely wrote a word about him here or at any other blog until he started to try to obtain my identity. No, no, in his mind I started this fight, I guess by helping out Mr. Allen or something.

...and I don’t even blog. I want to be left alone.

Then maybe you should stop trying to brutally suppress anyone who attempts to tell the truth about your life. Because the more you try to suppress the truth, the more people want to know what you are trying to suppress. We call this the Streisand Effect.

So, if you want all of this to go away, then stop trying to suppress the truth. Stop trying to silence people who tell the truth. And stop trying to bully lawyers for nothing more than giving people legal advice. Ask for the judge to dismiss the injunction against Mr. Allen and go away and leave us alone. I barely gave two craps about you before you tried to risk the lives of my wife and I, and if you leave me alone, I will quickly go back to not caring about you again. I can’t tell you what Seth might do, but can’t you see that your conduct has elevated the man?

That’s what Judge Jordan told Seth Allen to do, but he refused to comply with that order...

Really, Brett? That was an order and not just a recommendation? Can you prove that? Because I don’t trust you to even know the difference let alone to be honest about it.

...or the permanent injunction.

Which only forbade him from tortiously interfering with your business relations, and from defaming you. I don’t know that he has done either and I certainly am not going to trust your word on the subject, especially when you say things like this:

Mr. Worthing has egged him on and advised him to violate the order.

Which is a flat out lie. While I can’t share with you what advice I gave to Mr. Allen, I can say this with absolute certainty: he does not have a shred of evidence suggesting that I ever told Mr. Allen to defame Kimberlin or to violate the order. Indeed as I showed in my filing, I once deleted one of Mr. Allen comments on the possibility that it might violate the injunction, and then asked him for a copy of the injunction for future reference. That is the respect I showed for the order.

Now Mr. Worthing is arguing frivolously that the injunction is tainted because I am a felon.

Dear reader, why don’t you read my filing for yourself and decide if I have made that argument of not.

He is urging criminal prosecution of me for what he frivolously argues is perjury.

Actually, I only said in my filing that he lied to the court. Perjury is a legal conclusion that others will have to draw, so I have not argued that he committed perjury, only his conduct should be referred to appropriate authorities to determine whether he committed perjury. And I will leave it to you, dear reader, to decide how seriously to take my allegations.

He chose this fight and he will have to answer to the Court and the Bar for his conduct. Maybe he has a First Amendment right to blog anonymously, but he does not have a First Amendment right to violate the Rules.

But the rules are limited and even trumped by the First Amendment when appropriate.

And I don’t believe that any Court or Bar will allow Mr. Worthing to remain anonymous after violating the Rules so blatantly.

Which demonstrates that he doesn’t know how a bar association investigates potential violations of the rules. First, it decides whether there is enough of a case to even bother—a step I doubt Kimberlin will get past. Then they will conduct a confidential investigation. So it is only if they decide I have acted inappropriately that my name might come out, and a fat chance of that happening.

I am a victim of stalking. I have a final Peace Order issued by a judge against Mr. Allen for stalking and death threats. I have a permanent injunction against Mr. Allen prohibiting him from defaming me or interfering with my businesses. Mr. Worthing’s conduct over the past week, even if it did not before, has crossed the Brodie line.

He is referring to Independent Newspapers v. Brodie, 966 A.2d 432, 457 (Md. 2009) which only applies when determining the name of a party to litigation, as I mention in my filing. I am not a party but a witness, which means that a different, more stringent set of rules should apply. But that’s in my filing.

He is publishing attacks on me personally in order to defame me and interfere with my business.

Actually, my intention is to defend myself and call attention to this abusive legal action. But here’s the other thing. Not all interference with business is illegal. Instead the cause of action is actually known as tortious interference with business relations, meaning that the interference has to be wrongful in some way. In the ordinary function of a free market economy, businesses interfere with each others relations all the time. So for instance if I manage a Burger King and I go into a McDonalds and recruit every single employee over to my restaurant by urging them to lawfully terminate their employment relationship with McDonald’s and to come work for me, that is interfering with that restaurant’s business, but it is not illegal. Likewise if telling the truth about you, Brett, is harming your business, tough. The First Amendment allows me to tell the truth. I suppose next he will think that Ford can sue Consumer reports if they give a poor review to their latest car.

Indeed just the other day I talked about a Virginia law that addresses conspiracies to interfere with business relationships and to harm one’s reputation. You see, I know something about these laws, Brett, because I deal with them in my day job. And I know what constitutes a violation and what does not.

But get ready for more chutzpah, folks:

You attempted to frame this as I am angry. No, I am a stalking victim and Mr. Worthing is continuing the stalking.

Yes, that is right, I forced him to drag me into this suit and to try to out me. I am so tricksey that way.

Really Beth, what lawyer in their right mind would attack a stalking victim with the same conduct that two judges in two different courts have found constitutes stalking, harassment etc.

Really Brett, two courts found this? Because I know of one court case, where you won by default. In other words you won because the other side didn’t show up to fight. That is far from any kind of definitive finding. And if you are referring to the “peace order” I have not engaged in the conduct that Mr. Allen did to earn that; I did not ruminate about murdering you. So if that is what you mean, you have succeeded in defaming me again.

I am attaching the final Peace Order for your information.

You have some thorny legal issues to sort out. I will look forward to hearing from you by Tuesday.

Yeah, I am sure you gave her a good laugh.

----------------------------------

* There is one thing to note in my quotation of this email. For some reason my copy substituted something like every 16th letter with an equal sign. So for instance this:

Please do not send this email to Mr. Worthing because he will post it on the Internet as he did with my legal communications to him.

Actually looked like this:

Please do not send this email to Mr. Worthing becau=e he will post it on the Internet as he did with my legal communications t= him.

So technically I am guessing what letter went in the place of “=” in each case, but how can I say this? Having lived my entire life with dyslexia, a disorder that causes my mind to sometimes spontaneously scramble words and letters, I am really good at guessing what a sentence should be saying. But of course if Brett feels I guessed wrong on any of this, I will be happy to correct it.

He has my email address, after all.

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Did Our Deadliest Sniper Take Out Jesse Ventura?

2012-01-05T19:39:00.000-05:00

I mean Chris Kyle didn’t kill him, but he allegedly decked him. Of course there is a warning language with this video, but here you go...

No, violence is never the appropriate response to words alone. Indeed, it’s a good thing the statute of limitations has likely run, because what he described would be a crime. But if this story is true, Ventura is a grade-A a—hole and unsuited for any political office again.

But I would like to know if there is independent verification of Chris Kyle’s story. And this is all in connection to a book tour relating to his claim to being our deadliest sniper, so... take it all with an appropriate grain of salt.

And in any case, it is worth remembering who Michael Monsoor was. So how about we let Presient Bush explain?

Hat tip: Soopermexican.

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Today’s AWESOME “Momma-Bear” Video (Update: Instalink!)

2012-01-04T20:20:00.002-05:00

Update: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the Instalink.

New visitors might want to check out my BLOCKBUSTER saga where a convicted terrorist and perjurer sought to obtain my true name and address by subpoenaing Google and Comcast. You might want to start with the filing I sent to the court, here. It has been described by another blogger as “one of the most epic pantsings I have ever seen performed anywhere” so you might enjoy it. You can also use this link to keep abreast of the whole saga.

The original post follows.

-------------------------

A eighteen year old single mother in Oklahoma faced her worst nightmare recently. Her husband had died on Christmas day and a pair of (alleged) burglars apparently thought she was an easy target (allegedly), trying to break into her home on New Years Eve. But instead she went into “Momma-Bear” mode and the intruders paid the price. ABC has the video:

The sad thing is that she was worried enough that she might get in trouble that she felt the need to ask 911 for advice. And frankly they should have known the law enough to have told her that she would be just fine.

A while back I ruminated on the way that guns allowed disabled people to achieve a certain equality in a way that was quintessentially human:

And gun ownership by the handicapped also taps into another big philosophical belief I have about the handicapped. In a very real way, humanity is the disabled species. Think about it. Compared to other species, we are slow, weak, blind and deaf; we have little sense of smell, our teeth and “claws” are weak, etc. If left naked in the wild we would be easy supper for the other animals out there. And yet we dominate the planet for one simple reason: our brains. And those brains have allowed us to create tools that in turn makes up for our deficiencies. So we can’t run as fast as a cheetah, but we invented motor cars that allowed us to move even faster and for long periods of time. We can’t see like an eagle, so we invented the telescope and can see things no other creature can. Our brains haven’t just leveled the playing field between animal and man, but in fact gave us a critical advantage over them which is why we rule this planet and no longer have any natural predator (except ourselves).

And in no area has our brains been more critical in making up for our psychical deficiencies than in combat. Now we might suspect a few tough souls like Chuck Norris or Todd Palin** could take on a grizzly bear with their bare hands, but for most of us, if we don’t have a gun we are SOL (and from my understanding, even with a gun they are hard to kill). Our only option is to run.

So to tell a disabled person that they can’t use artificial help goes directly against the grain of what we have done as humans. For instance, I have difficulty writing by hand. But it only affects my ability to write by hand, so I buy a computer and I am rendered “normal.”

Likewise, Mr. Boyd has cerebral palsy. I have known people with that condition and it almost certainly impairs his ability to win a fistfight. I’m not saying he can’t do it, but it’s almost certainly harder. Now, the anti-gun approach would tell him tough and that he would just have to remain defenseless and hope that if someone attacks him that he cops get there in time. But the second amendment allows him to say, “screw that,” and defend his own life and safety as need be.

Likewise, this woman probably was not a physical match for the men who broke into her home, especially given that they had her outnumbered and had a knife to boot. But rather than hope the cops get there in time—indeed in the face of a dispatcher that couldn’t even tell her whether she could use deadly force or not—she said “screw that” and defended the life or her and her baby.

And good for her for doing so.

Via the Daily Caller.

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Sidebar: And my gosh, what a horrible holiday season this woman has been having. Here’s hoping things turn around for her.

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About Those Crying North Koreans...

2012-01-04T18:55:00.000-05:00

It’s not because they are actually upset, its because they are scared of being seen as insufficiently mournful of his passing. So says John Sifton of Human Rights Watch:

Since Kim Jong Il's death was announced on Monday, many people have marveled at the mourning scenes featured on North Korean state television, made viral on the Internet: North Koreans prostrate, weeping, hitting the ground. Many have asked whether the anguish is genuine. How could citizens mourn the passing of a totalitarian, such a gross abuser of human rights?

The answer may be found in the human rights abuses themselves.

It is a lamentable characteristic of totalitarian regimes that they often demand acts of deceit from those they oppress. Often it is a matter of simple survival. Those who hate the regime are obliged to demonstrate patriotism. To fail is to risk persecution. The only alternative is to flee, a choice made by tens of thousands of North Koreans in the past two decades....

For many, to live in North Korea is to live in fear for one's very existence. In a context like this, there is no way to know what is genuine and what is theatrical. Totalitarianism and fear impair the idea of truth and the concept of objectivity.

Via Volokh.

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A Note on the Law of Cyberstalking in Virginia

2012-01-03T21:58:00.000-05:00

Now what I am about to say here is not legal advice . I am a lawyer but I am not your lawyer. In fact, let me quote from Beldar’s disclaimer:

Any legal opinions or information that I may publish on the BeldarBlog weblog should be considered to be exclusively for purposes of entertainment. No reader of this website should ever rely upon any legal opinions or other information published here — not even just a little bit! If you need legal advice or information that you can rely upon, I strongly recommend that you consult directly — in person preferably, or at a minimum by telephone, and not over the Internet — with a lawyer duly licensed to practice law in the state (or territory or country) where you live.

Now I won’t go that far. I don’t think this is purely for entertainment purposes, but often I talk about law so you can understand how our legal system works better, so that as informed citizens of the republic you can choose whether the law needs to be reformed or not. But you still should never say, “but Aaron Worthing said that the law said X” as a formal legal opinion. That would be a grievous mistake.

But in talking about the wisdom of the laws already on the books, I have to say that Virginia really has an eloquent solution to the problem of cyberstalking. Although the statutes in question originated in the 1950’s, Virginia’s statutes against business conspiracy provide a unique remedy to a certain version of the problem. I have used them a lot in my day job and they would work very well in certain cyberstalking situations. Those statutes are Va Code §18.2-499 and §18.2-500. These statutes make it illegal for two or more people to conspire for the purpose of “willfully and maliciously injuring another in his reputation, trade, business or profession by any means whatever[.]” §18.2-499. So in other words if two or more people agree to harm your business, your reputation, etc. then they run afoul of the statute.

Sort of. Obviously not all combinations to harm a business should be outlawed—indeed could be outlawed—consistent with basic economic freedom. The courts in Virginia have reasonably read into this statute a requirement that there be a conspiracy “to accomplish some criminal or unlawful purpose, or to accomplish some purpose, not in itself criminal or unlawful, by criminal or unlawful means.” Hechler Chevrolet, Inc. v. General Motors, 337 S.E.2d 744 (Va. 1985). As the Hechler court observed: “There can be no conspiracy to do an act which the law allows.”

So that means that if I and a friend decide to work together to build a car so great that it will drive all of the other car companies out of business, that isn’t a violation of this statute even if it is motivated by malice toward the car companies. That’s just free market competition. But if we conspire to make our car successful by sabotaging Toyotas, or even just by defamation of another company, then we can be held liable for that conspiracy.

So to the person facing cyberstalking, if it is more than one person working in concert, then this statute might apply in a number of ways. For instance, if defamation occurs, or if they intentionally inflict emotional distress on you or a number of other unlawful means on you, then you might be covered.

Now any lawyers out there might think, “ho, hum, we have something like that in my state.” And indeed, most states seem to have at least a common law cause of action for conspiracy that is similar, but not exactly the same, as these statutes. So what makes these Virginia laws so special?

The answer, simply put, is the law’s uniquely punitive approach. For starters, persons familiar with the Virginia Code know that §18.2, a.k.a. Title 18.2 is entitled “Crimes and Offenses Generally.” That is right, in Virginia, business conspiracy is a crime. But even more delicious is §18.2-500 providing victims with an extremely powerful civil remedy. First, the statute makes it clear that non-economic damages are available—so your payout is not limited how much money you lost, but also compensation for less tangible harms such as pain and suffering.

And then you are supposed to take all those economic damages and non-economic damages and triple them. That’s right, the statute provides for automatic treble damages. And then you add in attorneys fees and court costs to that award, as well as any additional punitive damages.

So what makes this law special is the remedy it provides for the violation of one’s rights. And the remedy is key. As I wrote over at Big Government:

About nine years ago, I sat down for my first class in law school: contracts. I don’t remember the name of the first case that our professor had us read, but I remember what it was about: remedies. The case was largely noteworthy for its discussion of the proper measure of “damages”—what us lawyers call the amount of money awarded to the victorious plaintiff. The professor explained how one casebook author used to start his entire first chapter and the first few weeks of class discussing nothing but the proper measure of damages—that is, how much money the plaintiff gets. Because in the end, that is how you demonstrate the value of the right in question: by providing an appropriate remedy when it is violated.

As I said in the beginning, this is not legal advice. If you are facing cyberstalkers, you should sit down with a lawyer to determine whether you can make use of this statute or what other options are available. A creative lawyer delights in finding solutions to a client’s problems. I know I do. But, still, if you are a Virginian besieged by one or more cybersalkers, this statute just might provide the remedy for the violation of your rights. And good for Virginia for providing it.

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Happy New Year

2011-12-31T23:37:00.000-05:00

Truthfully in my family it had never been a big deal. In my wife’s family, on the other hand, a very big deal. I think it is the Chinese influence.

Oh well, the world is ending this year anyway, right?

(No, it’s not. The Mayans didn’t think so, either. It was just the year that the odometer rolled over.)

Still, here is hoping you take this opportunity for a new beginning.

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The Exhibits (Almost Complete)

2011-12-30T22:04:00.005-05:00

Update: This is almost complete, except for figuring out how to reproduce that scribd document that, hilariously, disappeared.

So yesterday I provided you a copy of the filing I made in the Kimberlin case, opposing his attempt to obtain my true identity by legal process. And I promised a second post, containing most of the exhibits. So this is that post.

Now it will take some time to put it all together, so as of right now the post has the phrase (A Work in Progress). I will change the title when it is complete. But there are a lot that are in fact relatively easy to put in. I mean the first pass will mainly linking to blog posts and articles I printed out. And in a few cases it was quoting emails that I put at my blog, or something like that. So in that case, I will give you links. So in one form or another, I will give you most of them below the break. In some cases, however, I might not

Also, please let me know if any links go bad. I have caught them at least once trying to disappear the evidence down the memory hole. But of course I kept copies—I delivered them to the court, after all.

Exhibit A: Allegic to Bull post The American Bar Association Calls Out the LASC for Its Disability Discrimination (comments omitted).

Like many of these exhibits, this was a print out of a blog post. So go here.

Exhibit B: Patterico’s Pontifications post by Mr. Worthing A Declaration of Independence: “I Have Firearms and I’m Willing to Use Them If Necessary” (comments omitted).

A print out of this post.

Exhibit C: Email from Seth Allen to Aaron Worthing and others, August 22, 2011 at 8:36 p.m.

With some redactions, the email reads as follows:

Re: Making progress - urgent request

Truth Seeker [email omitted]

Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 8:36 PM

To: Liberty Chick [email omitted], edmd5.20.10@gmail.com

Cc: Andrew Breitbart [email omitted], [Patterico]

Hi Mandy and Aaron,

Mandy, the attorney wants $5,000 for retainer, and I don't think I can come up with it and don't expect anyone else to either.

But I do have an idea. This is why I am emailing Aaron Worthing of Patterico.com too. Aaron, I was wondering if you could find me some information. Apparently a sherriff signed an affidavit saying he served me a writ of summons. This of course never happened. The case # is V 339254 Brett Kimberlin V. Seth Allen aka anonymous cyber stalker, socrates, prepostericity.

I need to find out who this sherriff is and where he works and any other info that is in the court files pertaining to this. I think the papers were prepared for May 5th and allegedly handed to me on May 31st. But the strange thing is just mere weeks ago, someone left the writ outside my side door well over two months later.

If the sherriff is claiming this, all I need to know is who he is exactly and who he works for. If you or anyone could find out that info asap, I would greatly appreciate it. Then I can meet this person with a witness and confront him. I can't believe a sherriff would lie like this, so maybe Kimberlin made the whole thing up. This is total fraud, and I do think this could lead to the Speedway Bomber going back to prison if it can be proven. So not only would my case be thrown out, the whole scheme would have incredibly backfired, and we would have a major scoop on our hands.

So please help me. It's the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland 50 Maryland Avenue Rockville Maryland. I think this is the break I've been looking for to end this nightmare once and for all. Thanks for your time and consideration, Seth Allen from the Boston area

Exhibit D: Email from Aaron Worthing to Seth Allen and others, August 22, 2011 at 9:28 p.m.

This email is in direct reply to Exhibit C, and thus has all of that text quoted below it, but I am not going to reproduce it, twice.

Re: Making progress - urgent request

Aaron Worthing

Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 9:28 PM

To: Truth Seeker [email omitted]

Cc: Liberty Chick [email omitted], Andrew Breitbart [email omitted], [Patterico]

Seth,

Did it say he served it on you personally? I am a VA, not MD lawyer, but VA provides for there to be service by processes such as attaching it to the door of your last known residence.

Now I have gone here: http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp

And i used your name to find your case.

It looks like this has been going on for a few years (Patrick did you know they had attempted to subpoena you? Because I don't remember you mentioning it.)

But Seth, dude, you look like you are really behind the 8 ball on this. It looks like to me that they are claiming that a default judgment was filed against you, which is bad news.

If you give me your cell number, I will call you. There is a limit to what I can do, but let's talk it out a little. But you need a lawyer and i think you need to start thinking of people like the ACLU who can represent you for free, if you can't afford this guy.

Aaron

Exhibit E: Email from Seth Allen to Aaron Worthing and others, August 23, 2011 at 7:24 a.m.

This email is further down the string, so below it is quoted Exhibit C and D, which I am not going to quote again:

Re: Making progress - urgent request

Truth Seeker [email omitted]

Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 7:24 AM

To: Aaron Worthing

Cc: Liberty Chick [email omitted], Andrew Breitbart [email omitted], [Patterico]

Hi Aaron, thanks for the response. I think the default judgement is just for the preliminary injunction of deleting my blog. I am going to file motions myself. I will try to make it down to the next court session. But this is bogus. I need to know who this sherriff is. The record is in that courthouse, not at the website you mention. Brett Kimberlin is lying. That sounds like perjury and I want his parole officers to find out if he has yet again perjured himself. And all this time Breitbart just stands on the sidelines as if I don't even exist. I'll get this done myself if possible. I need to know that sherriff's name. I'm no lawyer, but you can't make claims in court that are lies. That means Kimberlin should go back to jail if that's true. Whatever, maybe I should murder him. Maybe that will finally get me some justice. This life sucks anyway. All anyone cares about is themselves and their own money. Freedom of speech is dead in America. Thanks for nothing Breitbart.

Exhibit F: Email from Aaron Worthing to Seth Allen and others, August 23, 2011 at 9:56 a.m.

And like the last few, this is further down the email string, so I won’t quote the above emails.

Re: Making progress - urgent request

Aaron Worthing

Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 9:56 AM

To: Truth Seeker [email omitted]

Cc: Liberty Chick [email omitted], Andrew Breitbart [email omitted], [Patterico]

Okay, let's not include andrew breitbart and the whole world on every bit of this exchange. I'll send a message to you alone in a minute.

Aaron

Exhibit G: Email from Seth Allen to Aaron Worthing and others, August 23, 2011 at 8:00 p.m.

And we are even further down the email string, with the quoted emails omitted as usual, but one email that is quoted was to me alone and therefore under privilege. But once he forwarded it to the group, that part is no longer privileged. That is because there is no privilege unless there is also privacy.

Fw: Sorry for my rant and hyperbole

Truth Seeker [email omitted]

Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 8:00 PM

To: Andrew Breitbart [email omitted], [Liberty Chick], [Patterico], edmd5.20.10@gmail.com

I thought I had addressed the bottom email to each of you, but it was only sent to Mr. Worthing. I am non-violent and did not actually mean I would harm Mr. Kimberlin. I will not email Mr. Breitbart again.

--- On Tue, 8/23/11, Truth Seeker wrote:

From: Truth Seeker [email omitted]

Subject: Re: Making progress - urgent request

To: "Aaron Worthing"

Date: Tuesday, August 23, 2011, 11:57 PM

Thanks Aaron. I have read your other email and appreciate it. To Breitbart, I'm sorry. To all of you, I am not going to do any physical harm to Kimberlin. I am a vegetarian and non-violent. That was hyperbole, and I apologise for saying something that awkward.

Exhibit H: Patterico’s Pontifications post by Mr. Frey Speedway Bomber Brett Kimberlin vs.: Socrates/Prespostericity: The Hilarious Result, including some of the comments.

A print out of this post.

Exhibit I: Patterico’s Pontifications post by Mr. Worthing PSA: Buy Frank J. Fleming’s New Book!, including some of the comments.

A print out of this post.

Exhibit J: Excerpt of Just Call Me Lefty post by “Lefty” Conspiracy of Turds: Patrick Frey, Aaron Worthing, Mandy Nagy, Andrew Breitbart & Seth Allen at [here.]

The specific purpose in linking to this post was because it did have accurate screencaps of a post I left at Seth’s blog. If you don’t want the scummy feeling of going to that blog, let me just copy the screencaps.

Exhibit K: Allegic to Bull post Thuggery Fail! Brynaert Tries (Desperately) to Out Me including all comments.

A print out of this post.

Exhibit L: Email from Blogger to Aaron Worthing, December 14, 2011 at 4:41 a.m. containing the text of a comment left by “socrates” since deleted from post excerpted in Exhibit K.

This is an emailed copy of a comment I subsequently deleted in an overabundance of caution:

[Allergic to Bull] New comment on Thuggery Fail! Brynaert Tries (Desperately) to Ou....

socrates Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 4:41 AM

To: aaronjw72@gmail.com

socrates has left a new comment on your post "Thuggery Fail! Brynaert Tries (Desperately) to Ou...":

I don't blame Liberty_Chick for ratting me out. I messed up. I made a joke that was too unclear.

As Aaron points out, there was no direct death threat made. All that has been going on in Maryland and continues to go on is because of the direct actions of Brett Kimberlin.

I am awaiting the audio cd for the November 14th hearing. Even if MSM doesn't cover this story, we will know within our milieus the truth,

Yes, Brynaert, Neal, KK, and probably a few others are cybersmearers. We can theorise about their motives and whatnot. Here and there we have. There is a website called Indict Breitbart dot Org. Wtf is up with that?

It comes down to the Maryland Court and whether they are for justice or full of shite.

I have yet to receive anything from the Maryland court. Everything now going on is a direct result of Brett Kimberlin continuing to harass me.

I'm done taking any more shite from him. As soon as I have the audio, I am gonna expose that creep for the whole world to see.

I was in court on November 14th. That dude slandered me. If the MSM wants to ignore this, fine. But the Maryland court system is gonna have to extradict my ass, if they want me. Then maybe I will sue them and their whole state, if that's what they want. I'm not going to be a doormat any longer.

Posted by socrates to Allergic to Bull at December 14, 2011 4:41 AM

Exhibit M: Email from Brett Kimberlin to Aaron Worthing, December 15, 2011 at 12:15 a.m.

The text of that email is reproduced in relevant part, here.

Exhibit N: Email from Brett Kimberlin to Aaron Worthing, December 15, 2011 at 19:34 a.m. and attached Word document “Socrates Motion to Compel Worthing.docx”

That was all reproduced, here.

Exhibit O: StarFiles: The Speedway Bombings, Part 2, The Indianapolis Star, October 6, 2010.

A print out of this article.

Exhibit P: Excerpt from Patterico’s Pontifications post by Mr. Worthing, Palinageddon!!! Sarah Sicks Her Lawyers on Crown Publishing/Random House!

A print out of this post.

Exhibit Q: Email from Ron Brynaert to Aaron Worthing and numerous recipients at Yale University, December 12, 2011 at 6:58 p.m.

That exact email as produced, with numerous breaks as I fisked him, at Exhibit K. The only difference was that this exhibit produced the email cleanly, without fisking.

Exhibit R: Email from Aaron Worthing to numerous recipients at Yale University, December 12, 2011 at 9:35 p.m.

This email is in response to Brynaert’s email in Exhibit K/Q, so it includes that text, which I am omitting.

[redacted]

Exhibit S: Email from [K.A.] to Ron Brynaert, December 13, 2011 at 11:24 p.m.

This was reproduced in relevant part, here. Please note, I am using the same abbreviations as I did in my redacted copy of the pleading.

Exhibit T: The Brad Blog post by Mr. Brynaert, US, UK Media Ignore Musharraf Arrest Warrant in Bhutto Assassination Sent to Britain, March 10, 2011.

A print out of this post.

Exhibit U: Massimo Calabresi, The Wizard of Odd, Time Magazine (January 5, 2007)

A print out of this article.

Exhibit V: Email from Mandy Nagy to Aaron Worthing, December 20, 2011 at 11:47 p.m. forwarding an email from Ron Brynaert to Mandy Nagy, October 13, 2011 at 2:08 p.m.

Fwd: Ron forwarding Brett's email

Liberty Chick [email omitted]

Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 11:47 PM

To: "A.W."

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Ron Brynaert

Date: Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 2:08 PM

Subject: Re: did you call?

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: OK, here is the final

Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:38:55 -0400

From: Justice Through Music

To: Kevin Zeese [email omitted], Shahid Buttar [email omitted], Kyle Hence [email omitted]

I plan to hand deliver this at 1pm today to DOJ. I did add the torture definition and made a few other minor edits to clarify. I will work on a press release based on this for release tomorrow morning at 8am.

I think that this takes the right tone, simply and forcefully laying out the law and the dangers of a limited probe. Brett

Exhibit W: Print-out of Twitter message from Ron Brynaert, September 15, 2011.

It is a major pain in the keister to go back that far and give you a link to that tweet, so frankly I am not going to bother. But here’s the text of it.

@Stormpeedo Can we get to Socrates arrest? Signing out is pointless...does nothing to see blocked tweets is my point, as you know.

Exhibit X: Hackers and Fake Newz post by Mr. Brynaert, State’s Attorney to mull criminal action against Patterico Troll Socrates and blogger profile page demonstrating that author “nosockz” is Ron Brynaert.

Rater than give him additional links to the blog, here’s the relevant part of his post:

December 21, 2011 update:

An alleged lawyer who admitted to using an alias on the internet has responded to a subpoena based on his involvement in a cyber-stalking case, by publicly posting an email sent by the plaintiff which said that it was "regarding a legal matter in which [he was] a potential witness. This correspondence is strictly for legal purposes and you do not have my permission to republish this email or its contents in any public venue."

"I don’t need your permission," "Aaron Worthing" blogged before posting the December 15 email sent by Brett Kimberlin [see below for more background on this case].

From the email:

I would like to ask that you voluntarily appear as a witness in this case to testify about your relationship with Mr. Allen, your advice to him, and whether that advice included your legal opinion that, as Mr. Allen says, he has a First Amendment right to defame, harass, and stalk me because I am a “public figure.” I would also like you to testify if you advised Mr. Allen that he could attack Judge Jordan with his threats and posts under the First Amendment, and whether you told him that he could not be extradited to Maryland under a contempt order.

Mr. Worthing also accuses me of being Mr. Kimberlin's "associate" because of a ridiculous conspiracy theory that Mr. Allen has been spreading on the Internet for years.

To be continued....

Note: I had not yet revealed to the world that I had been subpoenaed. So how did he know?

Exhibit Y: Scribd document posted at http://www.scribd.com/doc/70554371/Seth-Allen-Libel.

Funny, since I outed this document, here, and mentioned it in my filing, Neal Rouhouser has since shifted the document from being publicly available to being only privately available. But as I said at the time, “[d]on’t bother making it disappear, Neal, because I have already preserved it.” And I did. But I will have to take a bit to figure out how to share it with you.

Exhibit Z: Screen cap from Scribd, demonstrating that Exhibit Y was uploaded on October 27, 2010.

This is the same issue as with the document itself.

Exhibit AA: Qritiq post The Conversation, and selected comments to that post.

A print out of this post.

Exhibit BB: Email from Neal Rauhauser to Aaron Worthing, December 21, 2011 at 12:08 a.m.

This email was reprinted here.

Exhibit CC: Email from Neal Rauhauser to Seth Allen, October 5, 2011 at 12:06 p.m.

From: neal rauhauser [email omitted]

Subject: I just posted this on qritiq

To: [Seth Allen’s two emails, including one only to litigants in the Kimberlin v. Allen

Date: Wednesday, October 5, 2011, 12:06 PM

Read & consider. I think the only way to get the troubles you have now off you is to come clean on who was guiding you in the first place.

http://qritiq.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/the-conversation/#comment-1181

Absolutely Seth Allen of South Easton, MA.

These are the very words you can hear on the audio of him appearing at a hearing in Montgomery County, Maryland, last month. His prior conduct, his demeanor, and the things he said during the hearing got him arrested and jailed for two days.

I don’t think Seth is a bad guy, but he is a conspiracy theorist with the attendant paranoia and he is vulnerable to manipulation because of this.

What we’re seeing here is a common pattern for a certain group of people active on the internet today.

1. locate vulnerable individual such as Seth Allen, or Ron Brynaert. Paranoia and impaired judgment are prerequisites.

2. manipulate them into believing that some group or person is the root cause of whatever paranoid theories they had which initially got them noticed.

3. incite stalking behavior from the victim, telling them that just one more blog post or a few more tweets will be all it takes to forever end the menace they perceive.

So, Seth, I know you are reading this. Let’s review what really happened.

1. You were guided to attack someone and you provoked the target to the point where they sued you and you got outed.

2. The person involved in the planning simply cut you loose – they never imagined you’d get caught, and now they don’t know what to do, or they’re unwilling to pay the $40,000 retainer to defend the libel case.

3. You turned to one other person in that circle and they “ratted you out” – your words. My view is that they did the responsible thing and kept you from spending the rest of your life in prison.

There is just one conspiracy in play here, Seth, and you’ve been a tool of it for the last two years, a pawn to be guided, and once you found real danger they abandoned you to your fate.

Call them and ask for help. See what sort of response you get.

I think all you really have to do here is be completely honest about how you came to be in the predicament you face today, and then it will be the people who guided you to it that suffer the consequences, not you.

I’m going to send you an email that will suggest a path you can take. You’ll have to come clean on what happened, including turning over all communications you had with them and describing how you were paid, but then it’ll be over.

mailto: [email omitted]

GV: [phone number omitted]

Exhibit DD: Email from Ron Brynaert to Seth Allen, November 19, 2011 at 3:58 p.m.

From: Ron Brynaert

Subject: if you want

To: [Seth Allen]

Date: Saturday, November 19, 2011, 3:58 PM

Hello,

This is the only letter I'll email you if you don't respond or if you respond with anger or leak it or

something.

If you want to talk on or off the record, you can to me. As long as you don't leak my emails or menace or harass me I will never publish anything you write me unless you agree to it. I have a ton of sources the last five months on this story who I've never outed and never even published a word based on their convos...it's just background.

Mike Stack leaked my letters to Breitbart etc. so don't listen to them if they say I would do that to you.

I'm more sympathetic to you than you probably think...but I also have a long history of being fair to both sides and giving people other chances to clear the record or correct mistakes.

I've defended myself in court so I know how that feels...

I have a long history of criticizing the Netroots and Markos and one of the main reasons why everyone on the left hates me now is because I've argued with them behind the scenes about why they continue to support Jason Leopold. It perplexes me that you continue to think I'm one of them...when I'm easily the biggest liberal critic of liberal blogs and probably most hated. Markos said my name once in an atrios blog post in 2003 and hasn't ever mentioned me again..but he attacked many of my articles and slandered me...such as Ann Coulter plagiarism. His readers thought he was insane for saying it wasn't plagiarism - but that was a crushing blow to a story that got in the AP and Newsweek etc.

Anyway, everyone working under Breitbart betrayed me and is menacing me, but I tried to give them all a chance.

I am on no one's side. I work for nobody. My journalism record speaks for itself. I was crucified for defending WaPo reporting on Dems and Abramoff and I never care where the story takes me. I only care about the truth and I always correct mistakes and try to give the other side.

thanks,

Ron Brynaert

Exhibit EE: CL’s Blog post by CL posted at Occupy For Accountability website, Right Wingers Attack Michael Moore: OFA Responds in King to Patrick Frey and Andrew Brietbart.

A print out of this post.

Exhibit FF: Email from [K.A.] to Ron Brynaert, December 14, 2011 at 9:49 a.m.

This includes text already quoted, so I won’t be reproducing it. And surely you know by now how to read an email string: start at the last email and move up.

Re: Unlike Aaron Worthing

[K.A.]

Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:49 AM

To: "A.W."

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: [K.A.]

Date: Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:47 AM

Subject: Re: Unlike Aaron Worthing

To: Ron Brynaert

Mr. Brynaert:

Feel free to do whatever you like with respect to the North Carolina Bar Association.

For what it is worth, I have no legal or ethical obligation to reveal the name of a lawyer (or even a non-lawyer) who chooses to blog under pseudonym. Advocacy under a pseudonym has a long-standing history in this country, and if you don't believe me, I suggest you run to your local bookstore and by a copy of The Federalist Papers.

In fact, if I were to reveal Aaron Worthing's true name, that would arguably be a breach of ethics.

Your allegation that he "defamed" you on the internet does not alter the analysis. For one thing, I doubt that you understand the area of law in which you claim to be wronged. And for another thing, you seem to have a penchant for wielding implicit and explicit threats, including ones in your very first communication to me. All told, I bear no independent knowledge that Mr. Worthing has done anything unethical, and I therefore have no obligation to join you in your quest to destroy him.

Now please go away.

[K.A.]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 4:57 AM, Ron Brynaert wrote:

This will be my last communication to you, [K.] I do indeed plan to make a complaint to the North Carolina Bar Association about your deplorable conduct.

Your lack of regard for internet privacy is extremely disturbing...I'm rather shocked - as a practicing lawyer - that you would send a private email to someone who is defaming me under an anonymous name. You admit to knowing who he is, as well.

Leaking my email to Aaron Worthing who published it was pretty vile and led to the defamatory tweets copy and pasted below....tweets that you are directly responsible for with your shocking disregard for my right to privacy.

I'd appreciate it if you don't leak this email to Aaron Worthing or anyone else. It is a private email and as a lawyer you have a code of ethics that you need to adhere to, and your actions are rather shocking and brazen.

Please don't respond to this email. I want nothing more to do with you since you appear to be utterly lacking in ethics.

[Now, he is quoting “defamatory” tweets, which are in fact, as a matter of law, not defamatory but just opinions he doesn’t like.]

DanRiehl

@Liberty_Chick Damn, just read tht madness. We shld all chip in 2 buy @ronbryn a hooker 4 a hand job, relieve his stress @aaronworthing

1 hour ago

Liberty_Chick

I hope people start figuring out for themselves why @ronbryn REALLY wants your ID, @aaronworthing. I know it's not for him. #SpeedwayBomber

1 hour ago

Liberty_Chick

More (Hilarious) Thuggery Fail! @ronbryn contacts ANOTHER person to lie & demand the ID of @aaronworthing bit.ly/u31hul #stalkerfail

1 hour ago

Exhibit GG: Email from [K.A.] to Aaron Worthing, December 14, 2011 at 11:20 a.m.

one more thing...

[K.A.]

Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:20 AM

To: "A.W."

Actually, I might need Patrick to return the favor as now Ron has threatened to email all of my co-workers that I am harassing him. That *I* am harassing *him*.

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:02 AM, [K.A.] wrote:

Absolutely, go ahead.

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:56 AM, A.W. wrote:

Ron is also doing his best to get Patrick fired and has done some other creepy things. Patrick has asked me to forward to him any emails i recieved from Ron so he can show the world what a nutjob he is.

Would it be okay if i also sent your emails back and forth with Ron to Patrick as well? This is not for publication, but so he can defend himself to his superiors. I will completely understand if you say no, though.

Aaron

Exhibit HH: Email from [K.A.] to Aaron Worthing, December 16, 2011 at 9:18 a.m.

fyi... a head's up...

[K.A.]

Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 9:18 AM

To: "A.W."

On my end, I got a call from Human Resources saying they received a complaint from somebody named Ron Bryaent, and just from the complaint they could tell this Ron guy was "a bit odd" (their words), and they're not going to do anything about it. Actually, they told me they "had a good laugh".

Fortunately (or unfortunately), I have bigger fish to fry, including Christmas, work, and -- you'll appreciate this -- massive plumbing problems at the home. So I think I can safely bow out of this controversy at this point. Perhaps I am missing something, but I'm not sure how anyone -- Bryaent, Kimberlin, you or Patrick -- benefits from these Internet wars. The stakes are way too small, and I'm not sure what a victory looks like or means. But that's just me. Good luck though.

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 2:43 PM, A.W. wrote:

last night brett kimberlin sent me a legal notice. He is trying to use the courts to out me. I am mulling my options, here. Patrick says ignore them and they won't be able to do anything. But i don't know. I mainly think that if i fight i have such a strong chance of winnning, that i should fight. i mean its a balancing of the right to anonymity v. the need to know, and he really has no legit need to know.

Aaron

Exhibit II: Patterico’s Pontifications post by Mr. Frey, Brett Kimberlin Threatens to Sue Me: UPDATED with Second E-Mail from Kimberlin (comments omitted).

A print out of this post.

Exhibit JJ: Fefer, Mark D., On the Advice of the FBI, Cartoonist Molly Norris Disappears from View, Seattle Weekly (September 15, 2010)

A print out of this article.

--------------------------

Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.

The Playstation Move/Sharpshooter/Resistance 3—A Review in Progress

2011-12-30T19:40:00.000-05:00

Well, we can’t just talk about my litigation all the time and I like to put up something frivolous on a Friday, so... how about a game controller and game review? After all, let’s face it, I did have a need for stress relief... And after I post this, I will get to work on the exhibits post.

Now first, let me get out of the way that this is not the case of anyone sending me anything for free to review. I had to spend my hard earned money on this, just like anyone else.

As you saw in a prior post, I got the Playstation Move Mayhem Bundle, which came with two first person shooters, a full kit for the Playstation Move (more or less their version of Wii controls), and the sharpshooter. The sharpshooter was what got me excited. I had tried a number of gun-shaped toys for the Wii, but bluntly none of them worked right. All they typically did was pull the trigger, forcing you to reach up to the top of the “gun” in order to do anything else. So when playing Metriod Prime Trilogy I was stuck using the normal Wii set up.

But the sharpshooter is a little more bad-@$$ed than that. Watch this video to get an idea of it:

So I got the bundle and I am a one-game at a time kinda guy, so I settled into Resistance 3. I had followed this series from the beginning, considering the original to be the best of the series, with the second being a bit of a stumble as they tried to be too much like Halo and other shooters. For instance, in one of the most criminal acts of the series, Insomniac, which is known for creating awesome and insane weapons, limited you to two weapons at a time. Yes, I guess that is more realistic (like as if any first person shooter was realistic), but what is the fun of creating about 20 awesome weapons if you only can carry two at a time?

I think then it was the very awesome Resistance: Retribution on the PSP that taught the series to be itself again. While they did transform the game from a first person shooter to a third-person, cover-based shooter, back were several elements I loved from the original—the ridiculously massive amount of guns carried on you at all times, the faux-documentary style and so on—that they captured, all while giving you a more likeable main character. While there is not attempt to revive the faux-documentary element, is it just me, or does the new hero of the story, Joseph Capelli, look an awful lot like James Grayson?

Here’s Capelli:

And here’s Grayson:

And not only does it invoke in some ways this PSP game, but they manage to make the character more relatable. Nathan Hale started off as a pretty normal soldier, so there was some connection, but by the second game he is a bad-assed super soldier who is solely losing his mind to the Chimera (the villains of this series), which is kind of hard to relate to. Capelli, by comparison, after being somewhat unlikeable as a side character in Resistance 2, wins you over with the depiction of a family man who is forced to fight once more.

And yes, the gameplay gives you back all your weapons at once, which is nice. And they even add, for an insane extra element, the ability to level up your weapons. This is a direct rip off of a mechanic in most of the Ratchet and Clank games, and while it makes absolutely no scientific sense... it still rocks. Basically your guns get better the more you shoot them, which is kind of the opposite of reality.

Which is all well and interesting, I hear you say, but how does it play with the sharpshooter.

Very well, actually.

Now, first get out of your head the idea that you are going to just point at the screen like as if it is a gun and what is in your sights you will hit. Nope, that ain’t gonna happen. It just doesn’t line up your shot all that well. I always find it pulls a little to the right.

But still if you think of it as a way to control the cross hairs of the gun... yes, it works really well. You ain’t going to aim down the sight of the gun like a real gun, but you can use it as a convenient way to control the crosshairs, and for that, it works extremely well. I found myself running out from behind cover, zooming in with a sniper rifle and shooting an enemy sniper before he could take a shot at me, in no time—something that was always difficult when using a traditional controller.

And it all feels pretty dang good. When you want to reload, for instance, you pull back on the slider holding the navigation controller. Your zoom button is well placed, so you can easily and constantly zoom in on your targets.

Some things did not work so well. For instance, its awkward trying to change different grenade types, making it hard to really use grenades. By comparison in the original, I was tossing them left and right. And jumping, was just plain hard. The jump button was underneath the joystick on the navigation controller which controlled your character’s movement, making it almost impossible to make your character jump as he or she moved, without taking your hand off the trigger. Fortunately, having gotten pretty far into the single-player game, I have never had to jump in any pressured situation, so I don’t mind it very much.

More serious is the fact that in the trade off it is just harder to turn your character’s body. It might in part be a matter of getting used to things, but I find I can never get the camera to point exactly where you want it to be. And if you have a creature smacking you from behind, it can be a challenge to wheel around quickly enough to deal with it. But the designers of the game were smart enough not to make that happen too often.

Still, on balance, I am really enjoying it. Will this render me spoiled for controller-based FPS’s? I doubt it. But it is a much better experience and if Microsoft was smart, they would be ripping them off, as soon as possible.

Of course I haven’t even finished the game yet, and have not yet ventured onto multi-player. So this review is not yet complete. But so far, I am liking all of it, and genuinely addicted.

--------------------------

Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.

A Note to Users of Google Reader

2011-12-30T08:27:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I filed my response in the Kimberlin saga, as in the actual legal pleading/motion I filed and posted it at my blog. But for some reason, I am not finding it in Google reader. So if you would like to read what I filed in court, go here.

This post was created using email on the go, so I apologize in advance for any formatting weirdness.

“There’s a Hole in the Bucket...” My Bureaucratic Hell Filing My Response

2011-12-29T22:55:00.002-05:00

Update: Now it can be told... Ken at Popehat has more on this case.

As you saw when you (hopefully) read my response two of the leading cases in Maryland on point is Lubin v. Agora, 882 A.2d 833 (2005) and Independent Newspapers v. Brodie, 966 A.2d 432 (Maryland 2009). Lubin is actually the better precedent to apply because like the present case, it concerned the subpoena of persons who was not a party to the instant case, but might have useful information. Still, Brodie provides important guidance on many points.

One thing that Brodie makes clear is that when a subpoena is aimed at identifying an anonymous writer, that anonymous person has a right to be heard before he or she loses their anonymity:

Thus, when a trial court is confronted with a defamation action in which anonymous speakers or pseudonyms are involved, it should ... require the plaintiff to undertake efforts to notify the anonymous posters that they are the subject of a subpoena or application for an order of disclosure, including posting a message of notification of the identity discovery request on the message board... withhold action to afford the anonymous posters a reasonable opportunity to file and serve opposition to the application;

And anonymous filings are not unheard of. For instance, when I sued the LSAC a while back, I did so anonymously. And when we discuss whether there is a constitutional right to abortion, we are likely to mention a case featuring an anonymous Plaintiff; indeed not only was Jane Roe a pseudonym, but there was also a married couple challenging the law known only as John and Mary Doe. So what I was asking for was not actually very unusual.

But there is one difficulty. Maryland Rule §1-311 requires that every pleading be signed, either by the lawyer or if the individual is proceeding pro se (that is, when you represent yourself). And while it doesn’t say it in so many words, obviously they mean that you have to sign your real name.

It’s worth noting that the signature requirement is actually an important safeguard against frivolous suits and filings. There appears to be a version of this rule in virtually every American jurisdiction, where they declare that every paper you file with the court must be signed and by signing it, you are assuring that to the best of your “knowledge, information, and belief there is good ground to support it; and that it is not interposed for improper purpose or delay.” The language will change, but the thrust of the thing is the same: you are assuring that you have factual and legal support for your claims and you are not using this filing as a sham for some improper purpose. And if it turns out that the court later finds that a pleading was filed in violation of this promise significant sanctions are available. For instance, in the movie A Civil Action, based on a real case, the judge eventually finds that Travolta’s character violated this the Federal version of this rule, called Rule 11, and dismisses the entire case as a sanction for violating that rule (this happened in reality pretty much just as it did in the movie). So the signature requirement is not a small technicality, but in fact part of an important procedural requirement that provides some protection against lawsuit abuse, at least in theory. It wasn’t a requirement to just blow off.

But there had to be some way to file, and preserve my anonymity. I suggested in my filing two ways around this problem, writing:

As a preliminary matter, we respectfully move this court to grant a limited exception to Maryland Rule §1-311 requiring that all documents be signed, since signing this document with Mr. Worthing’s true name will have the effect of breaching Mr. Worthing’s anonymity before he has a chance to defend it. Mr. Worthing recognizes however that he is still bound to all of the other provisions of Maryland Rule §1-311, including but not limited to the certification that Mr. Worthing has read this document; that to the best of his knowledge, information, and belief there is good ground to support it; and that it is not being interposed for improper purpose or delay.

In the alternative, Mr. Worthing moves to file a second copy of this Motion and Opposition under seal and to sign it under his true name and contact information, if the court deems it appropriate. This would allow the court to ensure that a real person who can be located made the certifications required by Maryland Rule §1-311, without piercing Mr. Worthing’s right to anonymous speech McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U.S. 334, 341-342 (1995) before he has a chance to defend it.

So I had my pleading written out and I called the court to try to speak to the judge’s chambers about how to solve the problem on Friday, December 23. Oh, except there was one tiny problem: the court was closed. And looking on the internet showed that they were closed again the following Monday, December 26, and closed Friday, December 30. So effectively I had only three days to file this and additionally, if Kimberlin or his allies wanted to try to stake out the place, I had accidentally made it pretty clear when I was likely to be there. Maybe that is paranoid, but a great man once said, “just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you.”

So maybe I was being paranoid, but its pretty plain they are after me, too. So I intentionally gave some misdirection, believing I could definitely file it person on Tuesday. Well, first I learned that the judge in the particular case wasn’t going to be in chambers until Thursday. So I was unable to get any kind of ruling or guidance from the judge how to proceed. So instead I talked to several officials. I won’t name them and try to embarrass them. They were repeating what they were told and what they were told didn’t seem to account for this situation. So I was told that the only way to do this was to file the motion under seal. And that had to be accompanied by a separate motion to file under seal. In writing. And signed. In my own name. And that document would be part of the public record.

And now, for another musical interlude:

Like I said, I bear no ill will toward the people who told me this. This was clearly not a situation that arose every day. Still this was a serious problem and I didn’t seem to have very much time to address this.

Now prior to this I had made a half-hearted attempt to obtain a pro-bono attorney, knowing it would useful to have one. But after Tuesday, it was clear at that point that local counsel was not a luxury but a necessity. And Ken at Popehat will surely tell you more tonight, but let’s just say he and a very nice attorney come through, big time. So she is representing me for the purpose of securing the right to represent myself anonymously—or more precisely without revealing my identity to a convicted terrorist and perjurer. So she filed a motion to allow me to file anonymously. It’s like Liza telling Henry that she has a second bucket: problem solved. But it took a few days to do it, and because I thought I might have to go to court on Thursday, I engaged in slightly more disinformation to make everyone think it was already filed. I know, I know, if you can’t trust a guy to tell his stalkers the truth about where he will be and when, what is this world coming to?

So all’s well that ends well. My pleading was filed and you get to see it... a few minutes ago. I meant to finish this post first, but it took longer to write than I anticipated.

But let me say something to the court... some constructive criticism, if you will. While I am not angry about the bureaucratic difficulties I went through this week, it became clear to me that this needs to be changed. It was difficult for me, a licensed lawyer from another state, to navigate this situation and without some help from a Maryland lawyer, I wouldn’t have been able to get around this problem at all. When someone seeks to reveal the name of an anonymous or pseudonymous writer, that person should be allowed to object and they shouldn’t be required to find a lawyer to do it for them. I mean Brett Kimberlin hasn’t been forced to hire a lawyer, and neither is Seth Allen. But while I actually am a lawyer (just not in Maryland), I was the one being effectively forced to hire counsel and on an extremely short basis. It is a basic premise in our adversarial system of justice that justice is more perfectly done when there is vigorous advocacy on both sides of any question. And yes, two sides represented by counsel is the ideal, but not every person can afford a lawyer and in many cases the most rational answer is to represent yourself—especially when that person is himself a lawyer. There needs to be a new rule, a new procedure to deal with this kind of situation more smoothly, that allows a person, representing him or herself, to ask this court to allow that person to preserve his or her anonymity without hiring a lawyer when challenging this sort of action to reveal their true identities.

And I would thank this court if to consider this circumstance and at the first opportunity rewrite the rules a little account for this circumstances. Not so much for myself, but for the next anonymous writer.

--------------------------

Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.