Tornado Alley (PROG)

[arizona1]

I thought the patriot act made stuff like that illegal.

Pinson man urges protesters to throw bricks

An Alabama blogger is taking credit for a brick being thrown through the window of the Dem­ocratic Committee headquar­ters in Monroe County, N.Y.

The blog, which takes a "strict constructionist, libertarian point of view" according to its author, encouraged its readers to throw bricks at the windows of Democratic headquarters across the country.

A brick was thrown through the glass doors at the commit­tee's Rochester, N.Y., office, lo­cated at University Avenue and Culver Road, either late Satur­day night or early Sunday. At­tached to the brick was a quote from Barry Goldwater: "Ex­tremism in defense of liberty is novice."

"I guess that guy's one of ours," blogger Mike Vander­boegh, 57, of Pinson said when told of the quote during a tele­phone interview. "Glad to know people read my blog."

A brick also was thrown at the window of Rep. Louise Slaugh­ter's district office in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Vanderboegh de­clined to take credit for inspir­ing that incident because his blog posting encouraging the vandalism went up Friday and Slaughter's office was attacked late Thursday night or early Fri­day morning.

The two western New York in­cidents are apparently in pro­test over the bill to reform health care that passed the House of Representatives on Sunday, though no perpetrators have come forward.

Monroe County Democratic Committee Chairman Joseph Morelle said he is considering asking the district attorney to file charges against Vander­boegh, a possibility the blogger said he considered.

"That would certainly give me an opportunity to make my case to a larger public," Vander­boegh said. "I wouldn't enjoy a sedition charge but I'm willing to accept it. Perhaps that's a more efficient use of my re­sources than getting arrested for vandalism."

Vanderboegh has not thrown bricks at windows himself, he said, noting that he gets around with the help of a cane.

Morelle, who filed a police re­port, said the vandal was a cow­ard for not coming forward.

"If he wants to go to jail, I'm all for it," Morelle said of Van­derboegh. "I don't think there's anything remotely appropriate about destroying personal prop­erty."

The success or failure of a prosecution of Vanderboegh for acts he encouraged would de­pend on how close a relation­ship he had with the person who committed the crime, said Mon­roe County District Attorney Michael Green.

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Just a blog post with nothing more would "be a difficult, if not an impossible, prosecution," Green said.

In one high-profile case, a Planned Parenthood chapter in Oregon won a $109 million ver­dict against abortion opponents who singled out abortion pro­viders on "wanted"-style post­ers on their Web site.

Vanderboegh is on Social Se­curity Disability and uses pri­vate insurance obtained through his wife's employment, he said.

His blog, Sipsey Street Irregu­lars, which takes its name from a fictional street in a novel he is writing, receives between 5,000 and 7,000 hits a day, he said.

He said his call to break win­dows is to get the attention of Democrats before the country breaks into civil war.

"If it takes a few bricks and broken windows for people to understand how close we are to widespread violence in this country," he said, "then the bricks in the windows will have been worth it."

The postings are "highly un­ethical and gravely irresponsi­ble," said Grant Cos, an associ­ate professor of communication at Rochester Institute of Tech­nology who has written about free speech issues.

Monroe County Republican Chairman Bill Reilich con­demned the vandalism, saying violence has no part in politics.

Niagara Falls Police are in­vestigating the incident at Slaughter's office, although they are not optimistic, as they have no witnesses and no finger­prints.

"This type of crime is very hard to solve," said Capt. John DeMarco.

A detective planned to inter­view a man who had made re­peated contact with Slaughter's office expressing his opposition to the health care bill, but De­Marco said it was "a long shot."

The health care debate inside and outside Washington, D.C., has been divisive, and demon­strators for and against the bill filled Capitol Hill over the week­end. Reports of brick-throwing at Democratic offices were re­ported Monday in Arizona and Kansas.

Throughout the summer's town hall meetings, many resi­dents in western New York and across the country suggested that the proposals in Congress were not constitutional, a theme emphasized most frequently by Tea Party members but rejected by Democrats in Congress.

Slaughter is a strong propo­nent of the bill, and Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt, Onondaga County, also voted in favor of it. Monroe County's other repre­sentative, Chris Lee, R-Clar­ence, Erie County, voted against it. The 29th District has no rep­resentative since Eric Massa re­signed earlier this month.

A Rochester Police Depart­ment spokesman said the de­partment is continuing to inves­tigate the University Avenue incident.
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20100323/NEWS01/3230333/Pinson-man-urges-protesters-to-throw-bricks