If you’ve been monitoring the rightie blogs today, you’d notice they’re all raging about some guy named Brett Kimberlin. Some of them have been going on about Brett Kimberlin for the past few days, and for the life of me I couldn’t make out why they were so enraged about Brett Kimberlin. One blog post after another was just a weird word salad mingling George Soros, Barbara Streisand, Bill Ayers, Mumia Abu-Jamal, world Marxism, various progressive organizations, and the left generally, to this guy Brett Kimberlin.

Here’s one example, picked up from Steve M —

Read all of the incredible, sick-making story — which includes some perfectly typical and disgusting bile spewed by some of the violence-supporting left-wing animals who think things like this are just peachy — and gird your loins. Because it’s going to come down to shooting with these vermin eventually, if we’re to retain any rights at all. Patterico wouldn’t like me saying that, I’m sure; I don’t much like having to say it myself. But it’s a mere acknowledgment of current reality: we are in a cold war with neo-Marxists who are trying to steal our country, have already done enormous and probably permanent damage to it, and will stop at nothing –absolutely nothing — to see to it that our voices are silenced. That war must inevitably go hot, unless we’re willing to surrender to them.

This is fairly typical. The right blogosphere is screaming its head off about someone trying to silence them and how they’re going to have to shoot it out with us, i.e., anyone who isn’t them, and Barbara Streisand. And oh yeah, Brett Kimberlin. And no, I’d never heard of Brett Kimberlin either. I waded through one right-wing blog after another and never got a clear idea what Brett Kimberlin did that set them off.

John Cole, from a couple of days ago:

I’m so far removed from the online wingnut community that I no longer speak their language or know all the code words, so when I tried to read Captain Ed, all I could make out was that some jackass was threatening people. Given who we are dealing with here, I am sure this is all the fault of Obama, Holder, Jimmy Carter, Rosie O’Donnell, every Democrat in the country, and George Soros, but has anyone been following this and know what exactly is going on?

I was relieved to know that I wasn’t the only one who was confused.

From this article, I take it Kimberlin was convicted of a series of bombings in the 1970s. While in prison he gained some notoriety when he claimed to have sold pot to Dan Quayle. He was paroled in 1994. Since then apparently he has associated with some liberal causes, although I’m not sure how or which ones. (Here’s a 2007 Time magazine article about Kimberlin’s opposition to electronic voting.) His primary association these days was with an organization called Justice Through Music.

But then Andrew Breitbart found out that this guy convicted of bombings had connections to liberal activism, and tweeted:

The article linked above continues,

Stacy McCain began to dig into the Justice Through Music Project looking into donations, donors, its tax exempt status, etc…

He even wrote a detailed article about why members of the Left would associate with a convicted felon and even donate money to Mr. Kimberlin’s organization and named some names.

It is at this point that Stacy McCain felt he needed to go into hiding.

As we said earlier… nobody knows exactly why and this fact should raise suspicions amongst the level headed.

Mr. McCain appears to be keeping a tight lip about it all. Were I a Liberal I’d scream “cover-up” or “frame job.”

However, since I am not an ideologue I will only say there is more unknown than known about Mr. McCain’s actions and that something is going on regarding Mr. Kimberlin’s desire to remain as anonymous as is possible for somebody convicted of setting off bombs, saying he sold pot to a Vice President, and having had a book written about him.

We will keep you posted.

And, might I add, Barbara Streisand has a lot to answer for.

Anyway, allegedly Kimberlin retaliated, although it’s not clear to me how, and RS McCain felt compelled to take his family and go into hiding. I picked up from Steve M that blogger Patterico claims Kimberlin SWATted him — “you spoof a phone number, call as the person you’re targeting, say you just killed someone at your house, then the SWAT team shows up and maybe arrests the target … or opens fire. Patterico says it happened to him (and he was taken into custody) last year.”

Now, that’s a terrible thing, and one would think it’s something law enforcement ought to vigorously investigate and prosecute. Rightie bloggers are talking about other incidents of harassment, although it’s not clear to me exactly what they are. But, as Steve M. says, if Kimberlin is behind this he deserves to be denounced for it, as well as prosecuted.

But the weird thing is that rightie blogger after rightie blogger isn’t discussing what Kimberlin allegedly did to Patterico or McCain. They are calling for jihad on the entire Left. Everyone who has expressed even a mildly progressive opinion over the past 150 years is behind the Vast Conspiracy to silence the Right through intimidation (which, of course, bears no resemblance to what Breitbart and others were trying to do to Justice Through Music. [/sarcasm].) And so post after post rants hysterically about George Soros, Barbara Streisand, Bill Ayers, Mumia Abu-Jamal, world Marxism, various progressive organizations, and the left generally. Oh, and Brett Kimberlin.

I sincerely hope everybody stays safe, and that eventually they will calm down enough to string coherent sentences together.