One Metric on Impact: SWATting

May 29, 2012
Posted by Erick Erickson
RedState

Last week I wrote about the Speedway Bomber and current left-wing activist Brett Kimberlin. In 2011, after writing about Kimberlin, LA County Prosecutor Patrick Frey was rousted out of bed after midnight by the LA County SWAT Team. Someone had called 911 claiming to be Frey saying he’d just murdered his wife.

Sunday night as my family and sister’s family were around the dinner table and playing outside, sheriff’s deputies pulled into my driveway responding to an accidental shooting at my home.

One deputy was in the driveway. Another blocked the end of the driveway with his car. A neighbor tells me another was up the hill from the house.

There was no shooting at my home. Someone called 911, claimed to be at my home, and claimed to witness a shooting at my home.

As the one deputy and I spoke, the other deputy walked up the driveway, positioned himself behind the car in the driveway, and kept his eyes on me and his hand on his gun. My three year old ran between us all thinking it was so cool to have a police car in the driveway with its blue lights flashing.

Luckily, after I had starting writing about Kimberlin, I advised the Sheriff’s Department to be aware this could happen.

It was a prank, but not just any prank. This is a prank left-wing activists are increasingly deploying against those who dissent from their political views. When Barack Obama told his supporters in 2008 to bring guns to knife fights, some of his supporters took him a metaphorically than I assume he intended.

The stories of what is happening are not getting much traction outside of right-of-center blogs and the occasional opinion column at the Wall Street Journal, D.C. Examiner, and Washington Times.

The Obama campaign set up a website listing major donors to a Super PAC supporting Mitt Romney. Naturally, individuals listed by the Obama campaign saw their lives turned upside down by investigators linked to Democratic opposition research firms. They, their families, their businesses, and their employees were harassed. Seemingly random people from random states started requesting old court case files involving the donors.

It was intimidation.

And now this. Brett Kimberlin has created several organizations that have gotten money from the Tides Foundation and other organizations. Kimberlin spent many years in prison, convicted of a series of bombings in Speedway, Indiana. Now, when conservatives start pointing out his past and his ties, they have been subject to swatting and other forms of bullying.

We do not live in a Banana Republic, but the left does not seem to care. I take my family’s swatting as a badge of honor. We are having an impact. It is very necessary though that we continue to speak up and not be silenced.

The activities of these people suggest one thing clearly — they are losing. We must ensure they do.