This is for those of you who don’t care about the post-Weinergate story. I want to see if I can explain in a brief post why you should.

Most of you, if you followed the Weinergate story at all, know that Weiner talked dirty to women online, sent out a bunch of pictures of his schwanz, lied about it badly, got caught, and resigned. End of story, right?

Except that, for a bunch of shadowy Internet figures who played significant roles in the original drama, it’s not over. And their identities and relationships are a mystery — as is the reason that they continue to push the story long after Weiner resigned.

First we have Dan Wolfe, aka PatriotUSA76. He is (supposedly) a man who claimed to hear rumors of a Congressman with compromising photos; fixated on Weiner’s habit of following young women; and took screencaps of the famous Weinertweet, during the few seconds when it was still up. But for him, we might never have found out about that famous tweet. He is a mysterious figure who steadfastly refuses to speak to anyone on the phone, and some have alleged that he is in fact a woman.

Then we have the Reids. Nikki Reid was (supposedly) a girl who chatted up almost every girl Weiner followed. She invited Weiner to go to prom. After the scandal broke, she and her “parents” seemingly attempted to turn the tide of public opinion in Weiner’s favor, by telling journalists about Dan Wolfe, and claiming that Wolfe had harassed her and other young women who followed Weiner. Only the New York Times revealed that the identification they had provided to a journalist was falsified — and nobody could determine who they were. Her dad John later emerged after Weiner had already resigned, ostensibly to reveal the communications that Weiner had allegedly had with Nikki and with Gennette Cordova. Those alleged communications were sent to yours truly. I have published some of them, and am about to publish the rest.

Who is Gennette Cordova? She was the person for whom the Weinertweet was seemingly intended. She had Weiner’s cell phone number, and was texting him as late as the day he admitted having sent the picture. What’s more, Gennette says that she and Weiner discussed the fact that Nikki was fake — and likely conservative troll Dan Wolfe — before she or Weiner ever talked to Nikki. (As it happens, I agree that Dan Wolfe and John Reid are the same person.) Then, apparently at the direction of Weiner, Gennette went and exchanged, by her own account, over a thousand direct messages and e-mails with Nikki. Despite this evidence of very close communication with Weiner — and despite the fact that Gennette is an attractive young female with intelligence and a flawless writing style — despite all this, Gennette, alone of all Weiner’s women to whom he sent salacious pictures, claims to have had no sexual relationship with him. She claims to have no idea why he sent her a picture of his underwear enclosing his erect penis.

And then there are Neal Rauhauser and Darrah Ford. Suffice it to say that the former has been repeating the slanders of a convicted bomber against me, even as he has devised crazed theories that my wife and I are behind the hacking of Weiner — a hacking which never happened, by Weiner’s own admission. The latter has long carried a huge vendetta against a man named Michael Stack, who worked with Wolfe to expose Weiner’s penchant for following young women on Twitter. Circumstantial evidence ties together Ford and Rauhauser — and also ties them to a man named Ron Brynaert, a former editor of a web site connected to the bomber. You haven’t heard the last of him.

And somewhere in all this — again after Weiner’s resignation — Mike Stack, blogger Ace of Spades, and I were threatened not to look into the activities of Gennette and Weiner. The threatening parties have gone much further than that, in fact, and the matter has been turned over to law enforcement. I am not revealing details, but when we catch the people who did it, I predict that they will go to prison.

Someone in this story has risked a great deal. Someone has a considerable investment in the story, even after Weiner’s resignation, to the point where they are willing to risk prosecution and prison time.

Maybe that doesn’t explain why you should care about this, but hopefully it gives you some idea why I care.

UPDATE: Struck out two words for accuracy’s sake. Thanks to Gennette.

So this morning, I had intended to post a series of e-mails I exchanged with JohnReid9 last night. I even drafted the beginning of the post, but I just don’t have time this morning to do it justice. I have a couple of teaser quotes in the monster thread, and that’s where it will have to stay for now.

The plan is to publish that entire e-mail chain, in which I allude to just some of the reasons I believe John Reid is Dan Wolfe. I also plan to publish, probably separately, a comprehensive post that sets forth all of those reasons. These people are frauds and I have determined that I owe them nothing, so you will get to hear everything that is relevant. Also, I plan to do the final document dump of what Reid sent me.

Reid seems to be the latest person who thinks I was somehow vouching for him by publishing his stuff and giving him a forum. In the fullness of time it will become crystal clear that I was not — indeed, far from it. I think that’s already clear to those of you who are thinking this through clearly.

All in good time. For now, you’re still relegated to the monster thread. I’ll start a new one once I publish the new stuff in earnest.

[Posted by Karl]

Despite an unprecedented push from Big Labor, involving tens of millions of dollars and turnout near the level of a regular election, the left failed to gain control of the Wisconsin senate in recall elections sought after Republicans passed budgetary and collective bargaining reforms in the state.  From Allahpundit’s usual yeoman aggregation, note the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel held an editorial until late yesterday (presumably today in print) stating:

So it turns out that the sky isn’t going to fall on all local governments in Wisconsin. The numbers now starting to come in show that Gov. Scott Walker’s “tools” for local governments apparently will help at least some of them deal with cuts in state aid imposed by the state budget.

That’s contrary to the expectation and the rhetoric of critics in the spring, and it’s to Walker’s credit. It bears out the governor’s assessment of his budget-repair bill, although we still maintain he could have reached his goals without dealing a body blow to public employee unions…

This grudging admission from the establishment media ignores that the union reforms broke up the cozy dominance of the WEA Trust as health insurer for public school teachers (and forced the trust to offer competitive rates in other districts), creating savings all across the state.  The MJS knows how uncompetitive these rates were, too.

As Walter Russell Mead notes, Wisconsin is simply a preview of the future elsewhere:

The tide is running hard against the public sector unions.  Wisconsin has been a big, Battle of Gettysburg style defeat, but the unions are suffering almost as much at the hands of their “friends” — Democratic politicians in blue states — as from open enemies like the Wisconsin GOP.  In New York, in Chicago, even in California, Democratic politicians are playing hardball.  They can’t help it.  There isn’t any money.

The public sector unions aren’t fighting a party; they are fighting arithmetic.  Sooner or later, numbers win.

Eventually, even the establishment media may figure this out.

–Karl