Looks like my last few posts really got to Charles Johnson:

The reference is to a post by Aaron Worthing, my guest blogger, who published the post while I was at work. Aaron’s post began as follows:

Okay so metaphorically, we just chopped off Charles Johnson’s head and mounted it on a pike on our collective front lawn, so why not go for Andrew Sullivan next?

Note the level of dishonesty at work here. Charles seeks to mislead his dopey crowd into thinking that I made a real threat against him, as opposed to a guest blogger making an explicitly labeled metaphorical statement. He has “deniability” because:

• He didn’t actually say it was me, he just said it was my site, and of course that is technically true;

• While Dowdifying the quote, he did say it was “metaphorical” — in a way that allows his dumber readers to conclude that is merely what my defense would be.

But of course the real purpose is to stir up his little army of sycophants and try to get them to contact my work. If you read through his comments, you’ll see that the small-brained lizards all fell for Charles’s little truth-bending exercise. They all think I wrote the post; they all think it’s a real threat; and several of them are making the usual predictable noises about how they are going to call my office, etc. etc. Stuff I have heard a million times before. Some examples:

Any public employee should be ashamed of posting anything like that anywhere.

. . . .

Who does this guy answer to? (And who is that guy’s boss?)

. . . .

Omigod! I’m sorry to hear about this. I’m also shocked that the guy who posted it is in law enforcement. He really should know how horrible such a web post is.

. . . .

Personally? I think they should fire him.

. . . .

They should give him the ultimatum of first shutting down “Patterico’s Pontifications” and then ceasing to engage in “late night” errant behavior. If not then they should fire him. At least that’s what I think Los Angeles County District Attorney, Steve Cooley, should do.

This is, of course, exactly what Charles sought when he wrote the post. This is all about shutting down the guy who criticized their hero Charles. He knows they will react like that. That’s why he posted what he did.

One commenter even quoted a left-winger here, who cited extreme comments on a pro-life blog to make a point about right-wing hate speech, and pretended that the extreme comments were being made by commenters here and supported by me:

This comment from that blog is terrifying. Be careful Charles. This does not even pretend to be metaphorical.

Jasper says:
January 21, 2011 at 11:07 am
’2 cent solution’

I would propose the 4 cent solution. A .45 between the eyes ….

Jasper says:
January 21, 2011 at 8:10 pm
“We do our ministry with love, not with hate speech, not with slander, not with anger or outburst. with a calmed, rational and loving approach”

I promise Joy, I will calmly pull trigger of my .45 into an abortionist that cuts the spinal cords of innocent babies. There will be no anger, slander or hate speech, only justice.

The level of idiocy and dishonesty is a compelling testament to the low level to which everyone there has sunk. That quote is from this comment by leftist Jim, who introduces the quote with the phrase: “You mean violent comments like this on a noted pro-life blog?” Leftist Jim is making a point about violent rhetoric on another blog. And the LGF commenter who quoted the comment had to know this.

Of course, by shading the truth to make it sound like I (not Aaron) made a real (not explicitly labeled metaphorical) threat, Charles hopes to frighten me and silence me.

Here is how much I am frightened and silenced:

Charles Johnson, you are a hypocritical, dishonest lowlife punk. This post of yours guarantees that I’ll be doing a new post about you every single time I find out about another lie of yours.

Every. Single. Time.

In doing so, Charles Johnson, I will metaphorically crush you. I will metaphorically disembowel you and eat your innards. But I will not do a single physical thing to you. Nor will I encourage others to.

I will simply laugh and laugh as your reputation continues to shrink into nothing.

I have, of course, had people do this exact sort of thing to me many, many times before — and it’s not purely a tactic of the left, either. (In fact, there is one certain “classical liberal” site that did almost precisely the same thing a little more than a year ago.) Tbogg, Sadly No, Brad Friedman, his partner the convicted bomber, the aforementioned “classical liberal” site, and several disgraced reporters and columnists for the Los Angeles Times have all learned that the best way to get me to stop pointing out their dishonesty is to stop engaging in dishonesty.

You stop lying, I stop pointing it out. Simple as that.

UPDATE: It just gets better and better. Here is a Twitter message Johnson just republished:

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

UPDATE x2: Jeff Goldstein denies gratuitously using my name and job title to harm me — in a post that gratuitously uses my name and job title.

His denial is false.

Commenter Dustin reminds us of the numerous posts in which Goldstein gratuitously linked my name, job title, and the word “anti-Semitic.” Dustin’s comments are here, here, and here. As Dustin explained:

You google bombed his name and job with ‘is he an antisemite’. Why didn’t you google bomb his blog handle, Patterico?

It’s really obvious that you were hoping that people searching for Patterico’s professional name would see questions about his antisemitism.

This isn’t funny, and you’d understand if you had a job.

Another point, your family was harassed by a deranged stalker. You chose to associate Patterico in your constant mentioning of this stalker, even though Patterico begged you not to, as this would lead the stalker to harass Patterico’s family. And indeed, he was right… that’s what happened. Thanks Jeff. You’re a real classy guy.

Your evidence that Patterico is an antisemite? None. You just thought it was a funny joke to have someone’s name on google linked to that question because you really, really hate the guy. He’s done nothing to you. He’s always asking you to chill out and stop this blog war. If I post something critical enough of you, Patterico just deletes it and asks me not to provoke you.

And I realize the reason is that he does actually want to have a life outside of this blog crap.

I think even Dustin doesn’t realize how far Jeff carried the Google bombing campaign.

You perhaps did not know that Goldstein, having created this Google bomb, then fortified the bomb by going to numerous of his old posts and linking the “anti-Semitic” post. Here are a few examples:

and here:

and here:

and here:

and here:

and here:

and here:

and here:

and here:

Note that Goldstein was not linking to comments of mine that he wanted to criticize, which would have been legitimate. Instead, he was repeatedly and gratuitously linking to a trumped-up smear on me, which specifically included my name, my job title, and the word “anti-Semitic.”

Goldstein appears to defend this smear as “satire.” Apparently, in his view, false words spoken online and linked to a person’s name and profession can’t be considered harmful as long as the intent is to joke or be clever. Deb Frisch must be thrilled to learn of Goldstein’s support for this excuse for Internet harassment.

I note also this Goldstein comment in which he uses my name and job title, and falsely claims that I was trying to hurt him professionally. The record shows that I was doing the precise opposite — but the smear worked. If you click on Goldstein’s comment and scroll down, you will see Jeff’s commentariat spinning into the exact same frenzy Charles Johnson spun his commenters into — with people posting contact information for the District Attorney, suggesting that the Los Angeles Times should be told bad things about me, and so forth. When Charles Johnson pulled his gratuitous naming of me and my job (alluding to Goldstein doing the same as precedent), I was reminded of this behavior by Goldstein.

P.S. Dustin also reveals that, like me and EricPWJohnson and many others, Dustin’s comments were altered at Protein Wisdom: “He instantly started changing all my comments on his blog.”) You can add this to the mountain of other evidence proving that Goldstein alters even reasonable people’s comments when they call him on his bad behavior.

Goldstein also admits that he outs commenters, and defends it by saying that if you included part of your name in your e-mail address, and then criticize him, you were asking to be outed.

These are all tactics of the sort Charles Johnson has used. My point is that, unfortunately, they are not limited to the left.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: You can read the decision here.  H/t Volokh.

Wow, I am honestly impressed and surprised that any state court is willing to enforce election law:

The Illinois Appellate Court has tossed mayoral frontrunner Rahm Emanuel off the ballot, reversing the decision of a lower court.

The Appellate Court reached a 2-1 decision to remove Emanuel.

Appellate judges Thomas Hoffman and Shelvin Louise Marie Hall ruled against Emanuel. Justice Bertina Lampkin voted in favor of keeping President Obama’s former chief of staff on the Feb. 22 ballot.

Read the whole thing.  I will let you know when and if I get access to the decision.  Further the story indicates that the state supreme court can step in.  But, bluntly, unless they stay the proceedings immediately, I think this could significantly hobble his election campaign, so that even this ruling is reversed, he still might be so damaged by it, he loses the election.

Update: Having read the decision, here’s a few thoughts on it.

There are basically two issues before the court.  The first is the meaning of “residency” for the purpose of being a candidate.  As I have noted before, in the law there is a concept called domicile.  Basically, the concept isn’t just where you lay your head down at night, but where intend to you lay your head down permanently.  And intent controls, allowing a person to claim to have a domicile in a place for years without actually being present in that jurisdiction, as long as you intend to come back and live there permanently.  And very often the term “residence” and “domicile” are read identically.

But right off the bat, the court credibility points out that the state supreme court does not, citing Pope v. Board of Election Commissioners, a 1938 decision, where the court said “it is elemental that domicile and residence are not synonymous.”

But there is only one problem with that: when it comes to the qualifications of electors (voters), the terms are treated as exactly synonymous.

But, the court says, it is is different when we are talking about candidates for office and one of the things the court looks to is the purpose of the statue, saying, the purpose of this statute is obviously to make it so that mayoral candidates actually have contact with the people they propose to serve.  I don’t deny that this is an ideal we should pursue, but I am reluctant to warp the language of the statute for it.

Now, there is also language of being on the “business of the United States.”  The statute says at one point

No elector or spouse shall be deemed to have lost his or her residence in any precinct or election district in this State by reason of his or her absence on business of the United States, or of this State.

The court interprets this again to apply only to electors, not to candidates for office.  I find that part reasonably enough—they could have easily broadened the language to apply to candidates for office—but I am still dubious of the initial claim that residency is defined differently for electors (voters) and candidates.  I think if the law made a clear distinction in the language, it would be easier to defend.

Update (III): Video!

Court Rules Rahm Emanuel Should Not Be on Chicago Mayoral Ballot: MyFoxCHICAGO.com

Also, contrary to Rahm’s implication, they took as a given that he was off on the nation’s business. The court merely said that this exception does not apply to residency requirement for candidates. Which I agree with.

I will add that any liberal complaining that this is a political decision but being hunky-dory with Roe v. Wade is a complete hypocrite. If judicial activists can set policy without sanction of law, by what principle is it wrong for them to pick our leaders, too?

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Okay so metaphorically, we just chopped off Charles Johnson’s head and mounted it on a pike on our collective front lawn, so why not go for Andrew Sullivan next?  Sullivan, in his usual method of being immune to facts, has gone all “Trig Truther” on Jared Loughner, claiming 1) it was reasonable to assume that the right was responsible for the Safeway Massacre, and 2) it might turn out Loughner was inspired by the right.  This gets to be too much for Megan McArdle, who writes in part:

Andrew’s defense seems to be that there are a lot of right wing jerks out there, and that by combing Loughner’s writing, he can find a few sentences here and there that sort of sound like things that might have been said by one of those right wing jerks.  But I’m pretty sure that if I combed through Loughner’s writing, I could find some sentences here and there that imply that Loughner read Andrew’s writing, or gay rights literature, or Edmund Burke.

To which Sullivan replies:

Really? Go ahead. Make my day. Or withdraw the claim.

Um, “make my day?”  Isn’t that violent rhetoric?

And really coming from Sullivan, that sounds like overcompensation.

But as for the challenge… okay, guys, let’s “make his day.”  This is a full on bleg.  Let’s find quotes from Sullivan that sound a lot like Loughner and post them in the comments.  Probably the first place to start would be Sullivan’s Trig Trutherism, compared to 9-11 Trutherism.  So come on, let’s see if anyone can make his day.

H/t: Big Government, and Simon Jester.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

This is video from the massive water main break this morning that shut down half of the famous Washington, D.C. beltway:

Damn, that is massive.

You can read a lot more about it, here.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: Watching Sheppard Smith tonight, they explained that the bomb went off before security, meaning where people go to wait for their family to come out.

There are some reports around that this is a suicide bombing, which suggests a terrorist organization like al Qaeda is behind it.  But to be blunt the last time we had a breaking news story like that, the Safeway Massacre, very little of what was believed at first turned out to be true.  I mean Ms. Giffords can now use that familiar Twain joke “the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”  The fact that those rumors were published in major media outlets is correctly seen as an embarrassment.

So, take everything you are hearing as a “penciled in” report.  All of it could be wrong.  But hopefully as time goes on we will sort it out and I will try to update this post as details get clearer.

Anyway, here’s an example of the story.  There are many floating around.

P.S.: Whatever has happened, this is all Glenn Beck’s fault, right?

Update: It seems like it definitely was a terrorist incident (as opposed to an accident).  Reuters reports:

A suicide bomber killed at least 31 people at Russia’s biggest airport, Moscow-Domodedovo, on Monday in an attack that bore the hallmarks of militants fighting for an Islamist state in the north Caucasus region.

President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to track down and punish those behind the bombing, which also injured about 130 people during the busy late afternoon.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]