He and his family are OK. He just put up the tweet minutes ago:

I asked him if he was serious and he said yes. Again, he said that he is OK, though. After he started writing about Kimberlin, he told the local Sheriff’s Department to expect this might happen:

UPDATE: More at Red State.

UPDATE x2: I just got off the phone with Erickson. He says the caller reported an “accidental shooting” and that it was therefore less traumatic than my experience. However, he said, his kids were outside as the police showed up with lights flashing — and some of the cops were keeping their hands on their guns even as his children were running around.

Anyone else think CNN is going to talk about SWATting now?

UPDATE x3: Thanks to Instapundit for the link. Glenn observes:

Really, if the goal is to keep people from writing about Brett Kimberlin, this doesn’t seem like the way to do it. It was smart of Erickson to call his local Sheriff ahead of time. I did the same thing.

Of course, Erickson’s swatter could be a copycat.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: It was reported by Joe Gelarden that, when Kimberlin was incarcerated, he tried to have someone set off bombs with similar components to those set off in Speedway, to show that there was another perpetrator and that he therefore could not be guilty.

Something to keep in mind as the investigation unfolds . . .

UPDATE x4: I’m doing an impromptu podcast with Stranahan at 10 p.m. Pacific time — in 7 minutes. Listen here.

UPDATE x5: A person claiming to be the swatter called in twice to the show: once at 50:18 and again at about 65 minutes in. He mocked me for having been swatted, laughed at me, and mocked Michelle Malkin for the situation where her cousin is missing.

This is like a bad movie.

[UPDATE: I have heard once again from the Wikipedia editor who removed Brett Kimberlin’s Wikipedia entry. He refuses to tell me who claimed Kimberlin had been the victim of a harassment campaign. He evidently has no regrets about his decision even though Kimberlin has now been exposed as making repeated bogus claims of harassment.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia is moving to restore an entry after an absence of several months, and currently links Kimberlin to an entry on the Speedway Bombings. Over 700 versions of the article await review.]

[UPDATE x2: Symonds is now busy editing the Speedway bombings Wikipedia page. Here is Symonds removing the detail about Carl DeLong’s leg being taken off, and his wife being injured, and cleaning it up so it just reads that DeLong and two others were “injured.” Brett Kimberlin would be thrilled.]

I have described Brett Kimberlin’s campaign of harassment against his critics as “brass-knuckles reputation management.” The idea is to intimidate and harass anyone daring to bring up Kimberlin’s extensive criminal history. There are other examples I’m aware of that can’t be fully told for various reasons, although I hope the victims choose to tell them.

But one of the most concerning aspects of this reputation maintenance campaign is the way history is rewritten. And one example of that is the way that Kimberlin’s Wikipedia entry was whisked away from view on September 14, 2011.

Let’s look at the reason the editor gave for the deletion:

Oh, really? There was a harassment campaign against Brett Kimberlin, was there?

And here I thought it was the other way around. Here I thought he was the guy harassing others. Silly me!

And we certainly can’t discuss in public the reason that accurate facts are being whisked away from a source that 4 out of 5 suckers consider reliable.

The idea that there is a harassment campaign against Brett Kimberlin is a reputation management theory that has been pushed for months by Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, and Ron Brynaert — three people who engaged in the extraoardinary and very real harassment campaign against myself and other critics of Brett Kimberlin.

So where did the Wikipedia editor get the idea that there was a harassment campaign against Brett Kimberlin? In early May 2012, I decided to write the editor, Richard Symonds, and ask why the page was deleted.

Our dialogue follows.

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