My (Legal) Reply to Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin’s Bigotry

This is the latest post in what I half-jokingly call The Kimberlin Saga^®.  If you are new to the story, that’s okay! Not everyone reads my blog.  The short version is that Kimberlin has been harassing me for over two years, his worst conduct being when he attempted to frame me for a crime.   I recognize that this might sound like an incredible claim, but I provide video and documentary evidence of that fact; in other words, you don’t have to believe my word.  You only have to believe your eyes.  So, if you are new to the story, go to this page and you’ll be able to catch up on what has been happening.

Update: John Hoge has posted Brett's motion to reconsider I mention at the end, here.  And there is no need for cheese with that whine.  It is cheesy enough as it is.

So we are continuing coverage of the RICO suit.  And we are continuing to be happy warriors...

…and popcorn eaters.

As I promised, I would be dribbling out these documents on a daily basis (meaning weekdays) and I have kind of an embarrassment of riches in what to share with you.  Seriously, there are so many good filings on the part of the defendants, and so many juicily bad filings on the part of Brett Kimberlin it’s really hard to know where to begin.  But I’m going to be personal here, and share my Reply to opposition to my motion to exceed page limitations in my reply that he filed last week.  Yeah, that inept and whiny thing.  Why?  Because it is my formal, legal rebuttal to Brett Kimberlin’s grubby little attempt to appeal to disability bigotry.  And it is packed with goodness.

So without further ado, here’s my “Reply to Plaintiff’s ‘Opposition to Walker’s Motion for Leave to Exceed Page Limit and Motion to Strike.’”

  Reply to Opp to MFL

Of course the difference between this document I just shared and the actual one on PACER is 1) it is signed, 2) it is verified, and 3) there are selected pages from two transcripts attached.  That is right, I amazingly only had two exhibits.

I think most of it speaks for itself so I will let it.  I will note that I decided to address Brett’s silly claim that I can’t represent myself was with some humor.  I mean I put the meaty law stuff in there, but some self-depreciating humor seemed appropriate.  Really, the judge already probably had a sprained muscles in his eye sockets from rolling his eyes at that part of Brett’s opposition, so I didn’t really have to hit to hard on that point.  But I still wanted to remind the judge that he had made that silly point.

Also his whole bit about claiming I never ever won anything against him gave me the opportunity to review some history, to good effect.

But perhaps, dear reader, you would prefer to jump ahead to page 18, when I make Brett pay for the mistake of attempting to appeal to bigotry.  As I said Monday evening:

Really, as I drafted my reply to that motion I realized that Brett has no idea how bad a mistake he had made.  But, dear reader, I am going to have to play my cards close to my chest for now.  When I reveal what I wrote, you will hopefully see exactly why his mistake was so much more serious than you are likely to guess.  He opened doors to arguments that he is really not going to enjoy seeing, stuff I probably couldn’t have said to the court at this stage, otherwise.  And that is besides the fact that an attempted appeal to bigotry is inherently an act of bad faith.

Now as always, the lawsuit comes before the blogging, so I will not explain the comment.  But maybe you will see what I have done there and realize how Brett had screwed up.

This isn’t three dimensional chess in this case.  This is more like finding targets of opportunity, although one will never go broke betting that Brett will act improperly before the court.

Brett probably thinks he hurt my feelings or something.  Being a bully—and he is the real bully here, extra angry because we are not giving in like we are supposed to—he likes to try to do that.  What he doesn’t understand is this.  All my life I had people tell me I was stupid, lazy and so on, and I knew it wasn’t true.  As almost a survival skill I learned to be profoundly indifferent to what others thought of me.  Oh, there are some friends, family and loved ones whose approval I crave, but if I know I am right, the entire world can tell me I am wrong and I won’t care.

That is perhaps why these words from Dr. King spoke so profoundly to me:

Most people can’t stand up for their, for their convictions, because the majority of people might not be doing it. (Amen, Yes) See, everybody’s not doing it, so it must be wrong. And, and since everybody is doing it, it must be right. (Yes, Lord help him) So a sort of numerical interpretation of what’s right.

But I’m here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. (Yes) Eternally so, absolutely so. It’s wrong to hate. (Yes, That’s right) It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong! (Amen) It’s wrong in America, it’s wrong in Germany, it’s wrong in Russia, it’s wrong in China! (Lord help him) It was wrong in two thousand B.C., and it’s wrong in nineteen fifty-four A.D.! It always has been wrong, (That’s right) and it always will be wrong! (That’s right) It’s wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. (Yeah) No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it. It’s wrong! (Yes) It always will be wrong! And it always has been wrong. It’s wrong in every age, and it’s wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we’re revolting against the very laws of God himself. (Amen)

I think of my Constitutional hero Thaddeus Stevens, who makes an appearance in this thing (and the piece i wrote about him does as well).  One of the most unique features of Stevens is that he appeared to be wholly devoid of racism.*  Lincoln was racist as was around 99% of anti-slavery and abolitionists back then, but Stevens stood out from them.  He never made a racist comment and a few times specifically argued for the equality of races.  Can you imagine what it was like to live in days like that?  To know almost every single person around you was wrong about something so fundamental and to hold on to that belief in the face of that horrible consensus?  Sometimes everyone is wrong and one man is right, or sometimes just the majority is wrong and the minority is right.

And sometimes it is just a convicted terrorist who called my friend Ali Akbar a n-----r who is wrong, and everyone else is right.  Heh.

So that is it, right?  As I said before the usual flow of this is motion => opposition => reply and that is it, right?

Well, believe it or not, dear reader, the fight to allow me to file six more pages is not yet over.  Brett has filed an additional motion to reconsider that goes on, and on, and on again.  In it he gets very upset at me for calling him on his bigotry.  Seriously, this will go down as the Battle of Six Pages, to be heralded in ages to come.  So stay tuned and at some point I will share it with you.  I promise.

And always remain happy warriors.

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* I have something extra to say on how Stevens was depicted in Spielberg’s Lincoln but it is subject to the usual...

SPOILER ALERT

... still with me?  Okay so Lincoln is about getting the Thirteen Amendment out to the states, which first needed a supermajority in Congress.  In that movie, Stevens is played by Tommy Lee Jones.  Knowing all I had read of Stevens that was spot on casting; it was almost type casting.  So toward the end, the Thirteenth Amendment is sent to the states and Stevens goes home with the official copy of it.  And that is when they have the big reveal.  S. Epatha Merkerson (who you might remember as supervision police captain on Law and Order) is there, playing Lydia Hamilton Smith, and they both get into their night clothes and get into bed.  A white man and a black woman getting into bed.  And I don’t mean they are ripping the bodices and tearing off each other’s clothes.  They are precisely like an old married couple where lust had all but disappeared, but the love remained.  And he asks her to read the amendment to her.

This isn’t wholly made up but we also aren’t sure it is true.  Stevens had a housekeeper by that name.  She was considered black although looking at her picture on the left...

…tell the truth, if you weren’t told she was black would you have any idea?  Which would have surely highlighted to both of them how utterly stupid racism could be.  But did they definitely have an affair?  We will never know.  Smith only had two children, with her husband who had died before she started to work for Stevens.  Frankly her husband was also black, much darker than she, and her kids were also darker than she was, so... yeah, Stevens was unlikely to be the father.  So that rules out the possibility of a Sally Hemmings kind of situation where genetic tests might tell the tale.  The rest of the evidence is thin, but suggestive.  We know that he had affection for her, and even wept once at the thought that she could never be buried near him in the cemetery he originally chose to for his grave, something I talked about before.  I lean toward yes, but I could be wrong.  And if any such relationship existed, Spielberg got it exactly right: it would be more like a marriage than a torrid affair.

But at the same time, Spielberg got a bigger thing 100% wrong.  The point of the scene was to say to the viewer, “now do you see why Stevens was so devoted to equality of opportunity?  Because he was in love with a black woman.”

Well, no, I think that gets it exactly backwards.  I think Stevens was open to falling in love with a black woman, because he believed in the equality of the races.  That is he saw black people as equal to white people first and then from that point reasoned that there was nothing wrong with an interracial affair, either.  That is, assuming he had one.

Why did Stevens become so devoted to equality of opportunity.  My guess is because Stevens was disabled, too.  He was born with a club foot, which creates many physical limitations, but also carried with it a superstition that he was the child of the devil.  My guess is he figured out at a young age how stupid bigotry was against him and extrapolated from there that bigotry based on racism was even dumber.  As I wrote in another post “It is almost impossible to justify equality of opportunity for the disabled in a society that uses race to determine one’s status.”  I think Stevens reached the same conclusion.  I don’t mean in the sense that somehow being disabled is blessed or something like that.  The stereotype that a disabled person is either twisted and evil, or angelic, is just that: a stereotype.  But I simply mean that his disability presented him with a situation where certain modes of thinking just was more obvious to him.  I think he identified with African Americans and the stereotypes they had to labor under and saw it was even more ridiculous than the ugliness he faced.

And if you should ever pull up that article I wrote about him and dig through the footnotes, you will see I am not the only writer to have thought that.

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My wife and I have lost our jobs due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years.  I know that claim sounds fantastic, but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these claims using documentary and video evidence.  If you would like to help in the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin accountable, please hit the donation link on the right.  And thank you.

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.

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Disclaimer:

I have accused some people, particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct.  In some cases, the conduct is even criminal.  In all cases, the only justice I want is through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system.  I do not want to see vigilante violence against any person or any threat of such violence.  This kind of conduct is not only morally wrong, but it is counter-productive.

In the particular case of Brett Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him.  Do not call him.  Do not write him a letter.  Do not write him an email.  Do not text-message him.  Do not engage in any kind of directed communication.  I say this in part because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want that to happen to him.

And for that matter, don’t go on his property.  Don’t sneak around and try to photograph him.  Frankly try not to even be within his field of vision.  Your behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to mention trespass and other concerns).

And do not contact his organizations, either.  And most of all, leave his family alone.

The only exception to all that is that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might report.  And even then if he tells you to stop contacting him, obey that request.  That this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that a person asks you to stop and you refuse.

And let me say something else.  In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above.  But if any of you have, stop it, and if you haven’t don’t start.