Some (more) bright news at the end of a depressing week:

Breaking:SLAPP suit against @patterico DISMISSED.Details to follow.@roncoleman

— Popehat (@Popehat) April 20, 2013

Details to follow at Popehat.

For now, I will say only that I have the greatest lawyers in the world: Kenneth P. White (Ken from Popehat), and Ron Coleman (from Likelihood of Confusion).

Comments are open.

UPDATE: Ken’s post is up here. I plan to blog this result in more detail on Monday morning. There are several reasons for this proposed delay. Hopefully, the entire country will not be as focused on tonight’s arrest of the Boston Marathon bomber. Hopefully, the steady drumbeat of depressing news of violence will have dwindled to a trickle. Finally, traffic should be back to normal weekday levels. I hope to publish my detailed post on this at a moment when the glorious tradition of people reading blogs at work is being observed with all the energy America’s workforce has to offer.

But for now, I would like to focus your attention on three brief points.

First: Ken quotes two footnotes from the judge’s tentative ruling, which was confirmed (and expanded upon) today. The judge twice threatened Nadia Naffe and/or her attorney with sanctions “for Plaintiff’s (and/or her counsel’s) willingness to play fast-and-loose with the language that is actually at issue here.” That’s a quote from the judge, folks. I didn’t make it up. As Ken points out, while the judge did not ultimately follow through on the threat, the language is nevertheless telling. To quote Ken:

Though Judge Wu did not ultimately award sanctions, I look forward to quoting those words on appeal or in a state court motion for sanctions if Naffe re-files there.

Second: Ken and I in particular got to face, not just criticism, but “vapid and dishonest partisan hacks” who criticized both of us for standing up for free speech — including “the greasy, demi-literate, demented Hutt who wrote an extended quasi-sexual fantasy about a mob murdering Patrick and me.”

Hi, Bill Schmalfeldt! I understand you were curious about the result of this case. I’m happy to be sharing that with you! And, your sick, twisted fantasies notwithstanding, nobody has yet beaten me or Ken with baseball bats or tire irons. No group of men has thrown us in front of a moving truck as part of a conspiracy to cause our deaths. (If you think I am exaggerating, I have uploaded a .pdf of Schmalfeldt’s violent fantasy here.)

Third: Ken’s post, and the conduct of Ken White and Ron Coleman throughout this litigation, is an inspiration to people everywhere who stand up for free speech. Ken makes the point well when he says this:

I defended [Patterico] because the First Amendment that lets him speak freely lets me speak as well. I defended him because malicious, frivolous, and politically motivated lawsuits aimed at censorship make it a little more dangerous for each of us to speak. I defended him pro bono because frivolous lawsuits can effectively censor people even when they eventually fail, because the expenses of lawsuits can be ruinous.

When I told Ken this evening by email that I could not thank him enough, he told me: “[T]o pay me back, keep writing what you want to write, and encourage people to support free speech, especially for people with whom they disagree.” That brings tears to my eyes. It makes me want to stand up and start singing “God Bless America.” And, on a more practical level, it redoubles my resolve to continue donating to organizations like FIRE — and to continue to stand up for free speech rights on this blog, even when I disagree with the opinions being expressed.

That’s more than I expected to say in this post — and yet, I plan to blog this result with a little more specificity on Monday. For those of you who have specific questions about the litigation, I hope to be able to point you to court documents that address some of the issues, and make it clear why this litigation has been such an abusive attack on legitimate criticism of a public figure.

In the meantime, go read Ken’s post in its entirety, and please give him and Ron Coleman your thanks for the service they have done, not just for me, but for the cause of free speech in America.

UPDATE x2: Thanks very much to Instapundit for the link. Once any new readers have finished bookmarking this site, I hope they visit the blogs of my pro bono lawyers: Popehat and Likelihood of Confusion.

UPDATE x3: And don’t forget to become a fan of Patterico on Facebook and to follow me on Twitter!

Hot Air is following this blow by blow. Relevant tweet:

BREAKING NEWS: Police have taken the cover off the boat containing the man believed to be the Marathon bombing suspect. He’s not moving.

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) April 19, 2013

We’ll bump this as appropriate.

UPDATE x2: Reminds one of Dorner:

Pete Williams: Fire in the boat

— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) April 20, 2013

UPDATE x3:

Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area. Stand by for further info.

— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 20, 2013

Bumped.

The link goes to Judicial Watch, and I’d like to see whether the report stands up to scrutiny. But if it’s true? Oh, man:

One of the Chechen terrorists who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings could have been deported years ago after a criminal arrest and/or conviction and the other was granted American citizenship on the 11th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who nevertheless could have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence arrest and conviction, according to a Judicial Watch source. That means the Obama administration missed an opportunity to deport Tsarnaev but evidently didn’t feel he represented a big enough threat.

Other reporting confirms Tsarnaev’s arrest for domestic violence but we’re seeking confirmation of a conviction. Nevertheless he would have been subject to removal for the arrest itself.

Ouch. But there’s a big caveat noted at Hot Air:

Gabe Malor notes on Twitter that the Judicial Watch piece about Tamelan Tsarnaev’s 2009 domestic-violence arrest doesn’t specifically say that Tsarnaev was convicted. JW’s trying to nail that down. You can be deported for an arrest if you’re a visa holder but, per Gabe, they need to convict you in order to deport you if you’re a permane[n]t resident, as Tsarnaev reportedly was.

Then we have this:

From CBS’Bob Orr: FBIinterviewed Tamarlan Tsarnaev 2 yrs ago abt extremist ties, found nothing & closed file. More on CBS Evening News

— Major Garrett(@MajorCBS) April 19, 2013

Meanwhile, we have the suspect surrounded, which we are covering in a separate post.

A California state senator who has been pushing a bill to (marginally) increase penalties for SWATting . . . you guessed it: has been SWATted:

Senator Ted Lieu was swatted earlier today … police responded to a 911 call claiming he had shot his wife inside their Torrance, Calif., home … law enforcement sources tell TMZ.

Lieu tells TMZ … he was out of town, his wife was home sick and the kids were at school. He vows he’s more determined than ever to squash the swatters.

Here’s a list of people SWATted: Ted Lieu; Erik Rush; Ryan Seacrest; Russell Brand; Selena Gomez; Justin Timberlake; Rihanna; Sean Combs; Chris Brown; Tom Cruise; Paris Hilton; Clint Eastwood; Brian Krebs; the Jenners and Kardashians; Justin Bieber; Miley Cyrus; Ashton Kutcher; Simon Cowell; Aaron Walker; Erick Erickson; Mike Stack; and me.

I fell asleep listening to local Boston news coverage of the incredible events of last night: a fatal shooting of an MIT police officer, a shootout with police, reports of a explosives being thrown out of car windows, a bag of grenades on the ground, and confusion regarding who had been taken into custody. I did a post last night about these events, and as soon as I heard details about explosives being thrown, I raised a question of whether the Marathon bombers were behind all this mayhem.

It appears they were indeed.

The live feed of the local TV station was still on in headphones stuck in my ears when I awoke just now to news that one of the Marathon bombers is dead and there is an intense manhunt for the second. It’s not quite 3 a.m. here but I feel compelled to type up a quick post noting this stunning development.

Now how am I supposed to try to get back to sleep?

UPDATE 3:23 a.m.: There are reports circulating about that purport to provide the names of a couple of suspects, but I would be very reluctant to believe any such report without official confirmation. For example, I see a blog post in the Green Room at Hot Air that states that one of the suspects is a missing Brown University student. But that is being contradicted by other reports.

We’ve been suckered by an incompetent media too many times in the past several days. Be skeptical.

Here is a fairly restrained video report from WSJ.com summarizing what we know.

Weird to break this kind of thing before Drudge!

Now I am going to try to sleep, and will probably fail.

UPDATE x2 3:45 a.m.: Sleep FAIL. AP reporting: “Boston bomb suspects from Russia region near Chechnya, lived in US at least 1 year.”

UPDATE x3 3:52 a.m.: BREAKING: AP: Surviving Boston bomb suspect identified as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass.

Supposedly the dead suspect is his brother.