NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — Thursday night, more than 500
people will crowd into Bobby McKey’s Piano Bar here to pay a sort
of backhanded tribute to a man who hates them: Brett Kimberlin, the
convicted bomber-turned-progressive activist whose attempt to
suppress the truth about his criminal history became a major
rallying point for conservative bloggers last year.
The National Bloggers Club, which will be hosting the fourth annual “Blog Bash” at the
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), helped call
attention to the plight of Virginia blogger Aaron Walker, whose
online battle against Kimberlin escalated into a series of
courtroom confrontations. Last May, “Everybody Blog
About Brett Kimberlin Day” helped called attention to the cases
of those who, as
syndicated columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin wrote, were
“targeted by convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin because they
dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did.” She
added: “The late Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin and
company.”
Breitbart, of course, was the digital media entrepreneur who
died last year, barely three weeks after he
accepted the “Changing the Narrative Award” at Blog
Bash — the only award for journalism Breitbart ever
received in his lifetime. This year, the award has been re-named in
honor of Breitbart, whose celebrated role in
exposing the Anthony Weiner cybersex scandal helped demonstrate
the power of online media. The connection between Breitbart,
Kimberlin and the Weiner scandal … well, it’s complicated. I spent
weeks last year covering the Kimberlin story (see, for example,
“Terror
by Any Other Name,” May 29, and “Online
Armageddon”), and its multi-layered complexity is a challenge
to explain briefly.
It begins with Brett Kimberlin, who in 1981 was convicted of a
weeklong string of bombings that terrorized the small town of
Speedway, Indiana. He was sentenced to 50 years, but served only 17
years, during which he managed to become a minor celebrity by
claiming to have once sold marijuana to Vice President Dan
Quayle.
After leaving federal prison, Kimberlin evidently leveraged his
political connections into a new career as a progressive activist;
in 2005, he co-founded two tax-exempt organizations that have since
raised more than $2 million. In 2010, one of those groups, Velvet
Revolution, took aim at Breitbart’s organization, urging
criminal prosecution in Maryland against James O’Keefe III and
Hannah Giles, the two young conservatives whose undercover video
sting destroyed the left-wing group ACORN. Breitbart fired back a
few months later, with a
lengthy article by Mandy “Liberty Chick” Nagy about Kimberlin’s
past. From there, a steadily escalating online war began, that
evidently put a number of bloggers — including Nagy, Walker,
Patrick “Patterico” Frey, and Breitbart.com contributor Lee
Stranahan — on Kimberlin’s list of targeted enemies.
Since May, when bloggers rallied around Walker, the enemies list
has grown to include the entire National Bloggers Club, which
helped defray Walker’s legal fees. In recent weeks, Kimberlin and
his allies have attempted to shut down Blog Bash, contacting the
venue and threatening protests against the event. If Kimberlin
thought he could intimidate conservatives, he was sadly mistaken.
Tickets to Blog Bash have become so highly coveted that many VIPs
can’t get in, as the club’s president Ali Akbar pleads that
fire-code capacity won’t allow any extra attendees. Texas Sen. Ted
Cruz made the guest list, as did 2012 presidential candidate Rick
Santorum, and yesterday the National Republican Senatorial
Committee announced
that it was co-sponsoring the event — a rare gesture by
the GOP establishment, reaching out to conservative bloggers who
are often critical of the Republican Party leadership.
This show of unity on the Right is, as I say, a backhanded
tribute to Kimberlin, whose criminal record and harassment of
bloggers is the subject of 5,000 flyers that the National Bloggers
Club will distribute at CPAC. But the true tribute is to Andrew
Breitbart, who
warned about Kimberlin, and who inspired bloggers to fight
back.
