This morning, Kimberlin is scheduled for a court appearance in Rockville, Maryland, for a hearing in which he is seeking a "peace order" against Walker. That Kimberlin is the plaintiff in such an action -- claiming that a law-abiding attorney is somehow threatening the safety of a convicted violent felon -- is deeply ironic. Federal prosecutors once hoped that Kimberlin would never again be able to "terrorize any other citizen," yet he is now terrorizing them just as surely as he ever did during his infamous days as the Speedway Bomber.
Entire rightie blogosphere to go batshit postal in 5 … 4… 3 … 2… 1 …
The judge became “increasingly hostile” to Walker in the course of the hearing, McCain says.
Just going by McCain’s account, this is all very screwy. According to McCain, Kimberlin’s beef was that Walker continued to blog about him after Walker had obtained an earlier peace order. I’m certainly no lawyer, but I question whether a court can order somebody not to blog about somebody else as long as the contents of the blog posts don’t constitute libel, and if you stick to documented facts you can probably argue it’s not libel.
In an update, McCain says that Kimberlin claims to have received death threats as a result of Walker’s posts. What was Kimberlin’s argument that alleged death threats were directly connected to Walker’s blogging? No way to know.
The peace order conditions I found online and blogged about yesterday [ http://www.mahablog.com/2012/05/28/memorial-day-madness/ ] suggest that a peace order only prohibits one party from contacting or harassing the other. The rightie blogosphere insists Kimberlin is trying to stop them from discussing his criminal past, which is already in the public record and has already been discussed in Time magazine and a book issued by a major publisher.
One suspects we’re not getting the whole story. One also suspects the judge, whom McCain names, is about to learn the meaning of “blogswarm.” I doubt this will help Walker much, though.
UPDATE A copy of the court order [ http://i.imgur.com/55TPK.jpg ] issued today. Apparently the recent blogswarm against Kimberlin was one factor that caused the judge to rule in Kimberlin’s favor.
So now the judges rule according to what the government wants, not what the actual laws are.
Hello Banana Republic.
For good or ill, arresting someone who disagrees with this administration is now legal precedent. No longer does there need to be even a figleaf of someone being a suspected terrorist to be snatched and incarcerated without trial.
This is tyranny of the first water.
Good times. I still don’t know what Walker was arrested for, specifically, or if he was charged with something like violating a previous peace order. I suspect the latter, and I suspect he’s already out on bail by the time you read this. If so, that doesn’t exactly constitute a violation of habeas corpus.
I’m getting all information about this from right-wing blogs; I have no idea if Kimberlin or any associate of Kimberlin has posted his side of the story. Someday we may learn what’s being not said.
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