Patterico's Pontifications

6/10/2012

Erickson SWATting on CNN

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:08 pm



Today I returned from a short trip. Starting Friday morning, I was in Catalina with my son, on an Indian Guides trip. It made observing the day of silence far more attractive, and indeed tempted me into two days of silence!

Yes, it was fun and relaxing. Thanks for asking.

Erick sent me a link to a copy of the SWATting tape last week. It was horrible. Yesterday CNN finally covered the story and played part of the tape:

The voice is clearly similar to the previous SWATtings of me and Mike Stack.

Erickson’s statement that the three SWATted conservative “bloggers” wrote about Brett Kimberlin strikes me as oversimplified. While it’s true that Mike Stack left a comment on my site in October 2010 mocking Kimberlin, it seems unlikely that this comment has much significance to the SWATting story. Instead, as I have already explained here, Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser provides a bridge of sorts between Mike Stack and me (who were writing about Anthony Weiner in June 2011) and me and Erick Erickson (both of whom have written and spoken about Brett Kimberlin):

As you can see from reading the document referenced, Rauhauser had a deep animus towards Stack. And he claimed that Stack was “harassing” certain people, including Brett Kimberlin. Moreover, he connected that to Weinergate. Rauhauser states in the document that one of the reasons Stack allegedly harassed Kimberlin and himself was that “Rauhauser wrote extensively about Stack, Frey, Bloom, and their fabrications regarding former Congressman Anthony Weiner.”

So you can see that from reading Rauhauser’s paranoid rant that, in Neal Rauhauser’s mind, there is a connection between me and Mike Stack (the two swatting victims from 2011), our alleged fabrications about Anthony Weiner, and our alleged harassment of Brett Kimberlin.

Remember that Rauhauser is Kimberlin’s associate and was present at the recent hearing where Aaron Walker was arrested.

I was invited to be on CNN yesterday, by the way, but couldn’t, what with my prior commitment to being with my son in Catalina. Putting to one side the previously mentioned quibble, Erick did a fine job, as I assumed he would.

Erickson’s SWATting, by the way, was initially characterized as a report of an accidental shooting — but in fact, it was the worst one yet. It was even more calculated to provoke an extreme police response than mine or Stack’s. The caller not only says he has shot his wife, but he claims he is going to shoot someone else soon. Nothing could be more premeditated and designed to bring out police with guns drawn and at the ready. Erickson is fortunate he warned his police ahead of time this could happen.

He didn’t warn them because he was talking about Anthony Weiner, either, by the way.

On our supposed day of silence, Ace had an epic post that is worth your time if you have not already read it. It was Ace’s idea to have a day of silence; now I realize that he just wanted people’s undivided attention so they could read his own 50,000 word post. And it’s worth every hour spent by the reader. I hear from people who started it on Friday and are still reading it that the first 5% or so is fantastic, and they fully expect to enjoy the rest in coming days and weeks.

I kid because I love. I’m sure my initial post on the SWATting was even longer.

Also, Breitbart.com has reported the incident from just after Erickson’s SWATting, where the purported SWATter (and I think it’s him) called me up and taunted me.

I miss anything else?


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