One Year Ago

One year ago, today, I took a giant step in my journey to hold Brett Kimberlin accountable for his latest crimes.  I published my epic post entitled “How Brett Kimberlin Tried To Frame Me for a Crime (And How You Can Help!).”  This is the summary/preview post that will lead you to the epic post, or the version that is broken up in eight parts (more easily handled by most computers).  In it I showed with documentary and video evidence how Brett Kimberlin attempted to frame me for a crime.  Essentially he claimed I beat him up in a Maryland courthouse.  And of course, I have the security footage that proved this to be a fantasy.

In that year since, I have had my First Amendment rights unlawfully taken away from me and when they were restored I was SWATted in retaliation.  My wife has been stalked.  I have been defamed continually by Kimberlin and various goons he has hired.  I have even been jew-baited by a holocaust denier despite the fact I am not Jewish by ancestry or faith.

In some cases friends and associates have disappointed me in not standing by my side, though most have.  My wife in particular has strong at my side, giving me needed strength.  And in other cases, complete strangers have reached out to help me even knowing what Kimberlin had done to me for helping another person.  And many of those persons, previously total strangers, I can now call friends.

Today another chapter in the story will occur as Mr. Hoge goes to court on the appeal of Hoge v. Kimberlin.  It is, fyi, a de novo appeal.  That means it is a brand new trial.

And for some reason, Kimberlin’s attorney Mr. Kim is no longer representing Mr. Kimberlin.  Indeed, Kimberlin filed a failed motion to consolidate his case with Mr. Schmalfeldt in what appeared to be a transparent attempt by Kimberlin to play lawyer for his employee.  This seems to be a strange decision given that Mr. Kim had won every round before then.  Is Kimberlin getting arrogant in these victories?  Or here is the other possibility: maybe Mr. Kim finally figured out what a pathological liar Kimberlin was and became concerned of involving himself in an ethically murky situation.  Or is it possible that Kimberlin is running out of money?  Perhaps time will tell.

Whatever happens in the hearing, I can say this.   One year later, I’m still standing.  Kimberlin has done his level best to cow or silence me, and has failed.

Do you think maybe he regrets what he has done?  Not out of guilt—guilt requires compassion and morality—but because of what it has done to his public reputation...  I suspect he does.

So let’s celebrate with a little Tom Petty, shall we?  It has been my theme song, after all:

If you are inclined to learn more about this story, I would suggest you start, here.

Untangling Michelle Goldberg’s Confused Thinking on Abortion

Well, I predicted it, didn’t I?  On Friday I wrote a post talking about how Ariel Castro might be tried and executed for the unlawful termination of Amanda Berry’s children (thanks to Ace for the link).  And I predicted at the time we would see pushback from the pro-choice side and what do you know?  Pro-choice feminist Michelle Goldberg is making the argument that if we try Castro for the murder of Berry’s fetuses, this is somehow a blow against choice or something.  Let’s examine her arguments for a moment.

First, she is complaining that this means “that legally, ending a pregnancy is a greater crime than keeping three human beings locked in a squalid dungeon for a decade.”  Well, she is viscerally right.  What Castro allegedly did to those three women calls for the death penalty on its own, even if no child was conceived and killed.  But this potential incongruous result isn’t the fault of the people at large, but the Supreme Court’s activism.  The Supreme Court had long said that raping adult women could not be a capital offense and more recently added that this was the case even when the victim was a child (as these girls were when abducted).  I have considered those opinions ultimately unjust, but the fact we can’t get the fullest measure of justice—execution—for those women is no reason to deny justice to those unborn victims of Castro.

Besides there is a practical benefit of making this guy dead so he can never bother anyone again.

Also Goldberg is concerned that the precedent might then be applied to women who carelessly (or otherwise) harm their own bodies.  “They’ve been employed to prosecute pregnant drug addicts, alcoholics, and those who refuse medical interventions recommended by doctors.”  So with the first category she apparently wants to protect a woman’s right to choose illegal drugs.  And likewise she is concerned about legal but self-destructive behavior that harms third parties.  Personally I don’t see how that is different from drunk woman accidentally driving her car over a cliff with her (fully born) baby in the seat next to her, killing her child but not herself.  Certainly in that case charges for negligent homicide would probably be appropriate.

Gosnell Found Guilty! (Updated with Details on the Verdict)

Details pouring in, but it was three First Degree murder verdicts.  That means an assurance of three life sentences for him and the possibility of the death penalty.

Expect updates.  But the obvious question is, did they make a mistake resting the defense without putting on a case.

Honesty, how can this not be a death penalty case?  This was the deliberate murder of babies.  This is infanticide.

By the way, let’s all remember that Barack Obama will do anything to save one child’s life, except banning infanticide.

And keep your eye on my blog.  I have a large abortion post coming soon.  (Update: go here!)

Update: And let's note that this is finally justice for the victims of the Mother's Day Massacre.  That would be on the day after Mother's day, forty one years later.  Read here for details.

Update: More details on the reaction inside the courtroom when the verdict was read by video, here.  And more details about the 2 trillion other counts against him via Reuters:

Gosnell also was convicted of infanticide and conspiracy in the babies' deaths.

In addition, he was found guilty of 211 counts of failing to comply with a state law that requires a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion is performed. Each of those 211 counts carries the possibility of up to one year in prison.

Gosnell appeared to be shocked.  Well, very often evil convinces itself it is good, so that doesn’t surprise me.  I am looking for information about his co-defendants, though.  And there is some on his co-defendant:

After a 2010 raid of the clinic, prosecutors charged nine workers, including his wife, with crimes ranging from perjury to murder. Eight pleaded guilty and a number took the stand against Gosnell.

At the trial, Gosnell's co-defendant Eileen O'Neill was found guilty of conspiracy to commit corruption and theft by deception for deceiving patients and insurance companies by pretending to be a licensed physician.

By the way, you can read the original Grand Jury Report, here.  But it’s not for the squeamish.  Seriously are they going to have some therapy for the jurors and other good people involved in this.  They might have nightmares.

The IRS’s Selective Investigations and Non-Investigations

So as is usually the case when the Obama Administration does something truly awful, the news came out Friday... that the IRS admitted to selective scrutiny of various conservative and Tea Party groups.  One weak justification offered for this kind of conduct in various news accounts is the precedent in Bob Jones University v. U.S. (1983).

In that case, Bob Jones University lost its tax-exempt status because it was at the time a racist university.  They claim today they have reformed, but bluntly I’d be reluctant to attend if I needed to attend college.  Redemption is always possible, but organizations that racist don’t change their stripes overnight.  But whatever you think of their claims of reform, there was no question at all they were racist back then, going as far as to ban interracial relationships.

Now a school is one of the categories of presumptively charitable activities listed in the U.S. Code, so ordinarily a private school is considered a charitable institution with very little effort, if they choose to be a non-profit.  So normally BJU would find obtaining charitable non-profit status to be a cakewalk, but the IRS denied it to them specifically because they practiced racial discrimination.  And this policy was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court where the Supreme Court put its stamp of approval on the policy saying: “a declaration that a given institution is not ‘charitable’ should be made only where there can be no doubt that the activity involved is contrary to a fundamental public policy.”

Now first, it is extremely doubtful that the Supreme Court was saying that the IRS could discriminate based on viewpoint.  The language of the opinion is not expansive.  Instead, I believe the best reading of the case is that it the IRS could only discriminate based on behavior—in this case, the act of discriminating according to race.  That behavior might have been driven by a certain viewpoint, but it is the behavior that matters.

How Ariel Castro May Have Violated the Constitution

Ever since the story of how Ariel Castro (allegedly) held Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight for over a decade came to light, I found there was something creepily familiar about it.  I kept thinking, “I heard of something like this before, but I can’t remember where.”  It wasn’t until I was watching yesterday (Thursday’s) O’Reilly Factor that I made the connection.

You see there is a term for what he had with these three girls.  I had learned of it over a decade ago when I was studying Chinese History, although the subject is in fact contemporary.  As in, it is happening right now.

That term?  Slave marriage.

The “You Go Girl!” Video of the Day

First, I have said that I am a proud feminist of the old school variety.  Conservatives should not let liberals own this word.  It doesn’t have to be abortion on demand and women doing “sl__ walks.”  It can simply be a demand that women be given the same opportunities that men are, and letting the market sort things out.

The irony is that too often liberals find that feminism ends where multiculturalism begins.  They demand equality of opportunity for Christian women, but when faced with an allegedly Islamic demand that a woman cover her head, etc. they too often shrink into moral relativism.  Which, by the way, is a discrimination against Muslim women.

Cultural purity in all frankness is too often preserving cultural silliness just to preserve it.  For instance, once when I was around eight years old my parents had a genuine Scottish bagpiper come to our house and play a few tunes.  I was brutally honest in my assessment in the way only young kids can be.  Something to the effect of “this is giving me a headache.”  And my parents were telling me that I should listen to it and like it because it was my culture.

But I had made up my mind.  The music sucked.  I had no interest in it and prayed it would be over soon.  And I have only voluntarily subjected myself to Scottish bagpipe music a few more times and my assessment has never changed.

Years later I was watching a History Channel special on the history of Scotland (you see, children, at one time the History Channel actually had history related documentaries on it), and they explained what Scottish pipes were really for.  They explained that, Scottish bagpipes were actually weapons of psychological warfare.  That is, a guy would stand in the hills above the enemies (read: the English) and play the pipes and it would so irritate their enemies it would reduce their effectiveness on the battlefield.  It was the medieval equivalent of, well... this:

The Mystifying Stupidity of Meghan McCain

Update: I missed it but I am greatful for the Aceolanche and the Blazeolanche.  Ace's link is uniquely interesting because you know about that whole Dresden bombing thing?  Yeah, um, you don't.  You really don't.

Okay, here’s a question.  Meghan McCain tweeted this out last night after:

None of you crazy, extremists scare me. I've been doing this since my gestation. Gay marriage will be legal everywhere in America very soon.

This was after various people took objection to her silly ranting about Sanford.  Because only crazy right wing extremists think that she was babbling, ya know?  Don’t bother to look it up on her twitter feed.  She deleted it, but Twitchy preserved it.

So here’s my question.  Gestation refers to the time when someone is in the womb.

So is she actually asserting that she had been doing “this” (promoting gay marriage? Expressing herself?) since before she was born?  And if so, how does she square the fact that she apparently believes that politics begins before birth with her declaration that she is pro-choice?

I mean if you think that a fetus at some point becomes smart enough to be political in some way, doesn’t that mean that abortion really is murder at the same point, and thus you cannot be pro-choice?  Or does she think that murdering even a conscious human being should be a matter of choice?

But then again, Meggie Mac “frequently uses words and terms incorrectly” as noted in this epic review of her book Dirty, Sexy Politics by Leon H. Wolf.  Mr. Wolf makes the persuasive case that stupidity is usually the best explanation for her odder comments:

It is impossible to read Dirty, Sexy Politics and come away with the impression that you have read anything other than the completely unedited ramblings of an idiot. This being a professional website for which I have a great deal of respect, I searched for a more eloquent or gentle way to accurately phrase the previous sentence – but could not find one.

So maybe the answer really is as simple as “she doesn’t know what gestation means and isn’t wise enough not to use words without a pretty good idea what they mean.”  Seems as good an explanation as any.

Cutting the Bull on the Sanford Victory

So the continued screeching over the Sanford victory made me pay attention enough to tease out a few facts.  I have been embargoing Politico ever since their bullying of College Politico, but this article on Sanford’s comeback is a much read.  And there is something that is very obviously going on between the lines of the story, which its author doesn’t quite articulate, making one wonder if he even saw it.

Let’s start with this fact:

Sanford completed his return from the political graveyard Tuesday night, easily dispatching Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in a deep red district that Mitt Romney won by nearly 20 percentage points.[...]

In the end, the nail-biter that late polls hinted at never materialized: Sanford crushed Colbert Busch, 54 percent to 45 percent.

And then there was this line:

In Colbert Busch, Sanford was running against a rookie opponent who made some rookie mistakes.

And then the reality of it snapped into place for me.   She was never really expected to win in the first place.  Remember, she was chosen as the Democratic candidate before the Republican candidate.  This is one of those places where the district leans so far against one party that they know they have very little chance to win, so they put up some kind of sad-sack up against the favored party every so often and hope for some bolt out of the blue might win the day, but mostly just to tie down the resources of the other side.  Meanwhile politicians with a real future tended to run for other offices or in other districts.

Meghan McCain Angry at South Carolinians... for Following Her Advice

So tonight in South Carolina, Mark Sanford achieved ressurrection won a special erection election.  (Darn typos.)

Now let me start by saying that Sanford should have been run out of politics forever, period.  It’s not just that he cheated, though that is bad enough.  It’s also the fact he abandoned his post.  There were several days in which literally no one knew where he was.  On that day he decided that boning his girlfriend was more important than doing his job.  We should make sure his job never gets in the way of that again.

So while I guess he was marginally better than Elizabeth Colbert Busch, it was still a lousy choice.  I joked on twitter the slogan should have been “vote for the louse, it’s important” a throwback to when Edwin Edwards ran for governor against David Duke, with some wags putting up bumper stickers that said, “vote for the crook, it’s important.”  Just as Edwards had no business being in politics, he was better than the other choice (though I don’t want to suggest Ms. Busch was as bad as Duke by a long shot).

Still watching the left screech about it on twitter was delicious, delicious fun.  And none more so than Meghan McCain, who said this:

@carolinemanzo I just can't right now. I am furious. You can lie and cheat and still get sent back to Washington!
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) May 8, 2013

And if you look up the tweet, you will see she is plainly talking about the Sanford election.  Of course the most hilarious response to this was from Iowahawk:

@meghanmccain if it wasn't for politicians cheating on their wives, you wouldn't exist.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 8, 2013

Ouch.  He knew he had a winner of a tweet:

What was the blast radius on that last tweet?
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 8, 2013

*mic drop*
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 8, 2013

Could her entire career be all about daddy issues?  Well, the alternate explanations are no dumber.

But less funny but more damning is the fact that she wrote an editorial on the Sanford scandal back when.  And what was the title of the article? Forgive Mark Sanford.

Yep, read the whole thing.  It is just as bad and hypocritical as it gets.

Could there be any further proof that she just reflexively hates Republicans now?  She asks them to forgive him and they do, and she rages that this means that you can lie and cheat and get back in politics.

Only one of those sentiments might be correct.

VIDEO: Hey Liberals, Can You Hear THIS Racist Dog Whistle?

Via Mediaite, we get this video of South Carolina Democratic Chairman Dick Harpootlian saying they hoped to send Nikki Haley, an Indian American—indeed, Sikh American—governor “back to wherever the hell she came from.”

SPOILERS: Why Iron Man 3 is Guaranteed to Annoy Fans of the Comics (And Some Non-Fans)

So I went to see Iron Man 3 last night.  The theater was so packed that they actually had to add an additional impromptu 2D show while I was waiting.  And there was a line to sit in the theater.  I never saw anything like this before and frankly given that experience, I am surprised that it didn’t rake in more money yesterday.

Still on balance I enjoyed it.  The tone is more “action/comedy” meaning that even in the middle of the action there is a ton of comedy.  When the comedy comes in the form of spoken jokes in the middle of gunfire, that is tolerable.  But when the comedy comes in the form of slapstick in the middle of the action, that is less enjoyable.  The climatic fight between the superhero and the supervillain should be a “no slapstick zone.”

Look, it follows the pattern of most of these Marvel Studios movies.  They don’t try to be particularly deep, as Nolan did with his Batman movies, to say something greater about life than just “here’s how this costumed good guy beat this costumed bad guy.”  No, the Marvel movies mainly just try to be a “good story well told” and be satisfied with that.  And that is for the most part all Iron Man 3 is, in my opinion.  I never give these things an A+ as I would with The Dark Knight, but always a B+, but these Marvel movies have been batting that average pretty consistently since the first Iron Man came out.

But there has been an undercurrent of some people absolutely hating this movie to the point that IGN ran an article today defending the movie against its detractors.  And while I don’t agree with the detractors, I think I understand the complaint.  I think part of why I was not annoyed is that I am not an Iron Man comic fan.  I have literally never read a comic in which Iron Man was a character.  Other people I know love it, and they may be right, but I never got around to it.  And Iron Man 3 absolutely butchers some of those stories.

But I have to get very spoilerish to explain what I mean although let me stop and ask a philosophical question.  Is this a spoiler?  It’s a twist in the movie, but normally you call it a spoiler because it ruins what is going to be a good surprise.

Like here’s an example The Shawshank Redemption.  If you have never seen it, this is a true SPOILER ALERT because I am about to tell you about a plot twist in that one.  So run go see it, and then come back here.

Okay, you’re back?  Good.  Because I remember watching that movie with my father.  I had to bite my tongue the whole time and he steadily decided that this was the most depressing movie he ever saw, actually going, “so he used the rope to hang himself? This is an awful movie.”  And right about when he decided it was an awful movie and wondered out loud why his son insisted on him watching it, they revealed that the character hadn’t died: he had escaped, and set up a good life for himself and screwed some bad people in the process.  And within about five minutes my father went from hating the movie to loving it.  And I think it is safe to say he was glad I didn’t give the secret away beforehand.

Now imagine if before you watched that movie, you were told it was about a prison escape?  Oh you could enjoy it some, but it wouldn’t be the same.  So telling a person beforehand is a spoiler, because it spoils what is ordinarily an enjoyable surprise.

And there is a twist in Iron Man 3, but the more I think about it, the more I think it might be wrong to call it a spoiler.  I think on balance it is not a pleasant surprise.  It’s annoying, actually.  And the more I think about it the more I think I would have benefitted from knowing ahead of time.  I would have seen the movie still, but I would have pre-digested the twist.  I am literally saying that if I could go back in time and spoil it for myself, I would have done it, and I think I would have enjoyed the movie more.

But in case I haven’t convinced you to let yourself be spoiled, I will talk about the twist after doing the obligatory SPOILER ALERT*.  Because seriously, I am not going to hold back on some major plot points below the fold.  For my money, I would have preferred to have been spoiled, but you might feel differently.  So if you don’t want to be spoiled, stop now, watch it, and come back later.