During the two years in which lying conman and convicted domestic terrorist Brett Kimberlin has been harassing friends of Andrew Breitbart, it’s surprising that what is about to happen to him hasn’t happened before. Kimberlin is about to discover that good people will fight his evil. Kimberlin won’t see it that way. Like all of his ilk, he truly believes he is the victim. Also, what Kimberlin planned for evil, God has turned to good.

It all seems to have started with a Mandy Nagy post about Brett Kimberlin’s phony charity, Velvet Revolution. The group sought to cause trouble for James O’Keefe III, using what would come to be their hallmark methods of legal intimidation, extortion, and personal destruction against any and all who oppose his tactics or support those who do.

Kimberlin, who is a lying conman and convicted domestic terrorist, has also spent the last several months harassing Los Angeles County Prosecutor Patrick Frey, who blogs as Patterico. Kimberlin and his associates Neal Rauhauser, Ron Brynaert have waged war on Patterico, even staging a phony 9-1-1 call to draw a swat team to Frey’s house.

Some of Patterico’s commenters went  Looking at the Velvet Revolution and Justice Through Music Books for two of  Brett Kimberlin’s shady organizations:

Velvet Revolution’s tax returns from 2006, 2007, and 2008. We also have tax returns from Justice Through Music from 2003, 2005 (with Schedule A), 2006, 2007, and 2008. All are .pdfs.

Erick Erickson notes at Redstate that

Justice Through Music, which claims to do “voter education and registration” is a Tides Foundation grant recipient. According to Breitbart’s Big Journalism site, Justice Through Music “has received a total of over $1.3 million in public gifts and grants since 2005 for these efforts.” (See also the Justice Through Music Project 2008 Form 990-EZ)

Likewise, Velvet Revolution, started with Brad Friedman of BradBlog, received $51,000.00 in 2009 from the Tides Foundation, which also gave Media Matters for America $75,000.00 the same year.

Robert Stacy McCain, forced to move his family to flee the vicious harassment and threats posed by Brett Kimberlin and associates, says he is thankful. He now has a great chance to leave the socialist state of Maryland, presumably for a place without so much inept and overreaching government.

Follow their response to the day on twitter, if any, here.

Update: Fixed embarrassing spelling error.

Transcript and more below the fold:

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Illinois Republican Party officials will vote May 19 replace the retiring Congressman Tim Johnson on the November ballot in Illinois’ 13th District. Four candidates competing for the nomination gathered at a forum Saturday.  Party Chairmen in the district will have to choose between two candidates who focus on what the country needs and two others who focus on winning, no matter what they have to say.

The field (in order left to right in accompanying photo):

Kathy Wassink – 9/12 activist and businesswoman.

Erika Harold – Chicago lawyer and former Miss America

Rodney Davis – Congressional staffer and state party insider.

Jerry Clarke – Congressional aide, Army Reserve Officer, and unsuccessful campaign manager

Grassroots activists would support enthusiastically either Wassink or Harold. Wassink is more outspoken and sure of her positions on issues, while Harold is more eloquent and prepared. Neither Davis nor Clarke would attract grassroots support outside their immediate circles.

Clarke, coming out for Project Labor Agreements for government contracts, has no business being in any legislature.

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If this is the kind of dishonest political ad we can expect from the President, and it is, we bloggers are going to have a fun election season.

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No, I’m not talking about the rush to anoint Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee.  I’m talking about a mistake I’ve made, in my lack of vision. I’m talking about how we treat each other in a critical phase of the political process.

To lay my cards on the table: I’m a Rick Santorum delegate to the Republican National Convention, having been elected in the Illinois primary March 20. I’ll see you in Tampa, and intend to live tweet the convention both from the floor and from any smoke-filled rooms I find there.

We at Redstate have been saying for years that we need to grow the conservative movement. We have come a long way here, starting from a smallish group of dedicated navel gazers to become a much larger group of real-world activists.

And we’ve done that with the leadership of Erick Erickson, Coldwarrior, Steven Foley, and many others who have stepped up to the plate to enter the Republican Party as Precinct Committeemen, launch other web sites or become active in paid media, and run for office ourselves.

But now we come to crunch time, and we’re losing sight of the big picture. This site’s mission is to grow the conservative movement within the Republican Party, and what are we doing? We’re missing the single best opportunity to do so that we’ve had during its entire existence.

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In the final hours before the Illinois primary on Tuesday, two delegate candidates pledged to Newt Gingrich announced their support for Rick Santorum. Their decision should be the 95 Theses for any Congressman who would care to read the church door.

Effingham City Councilman Brian Milleville and Crawford County Republican Party Chairman Earl Deckerd announced their switch together. Both expressed their overriding desire for a conservative candidate to defeat Mitt Romney and go on to depose Barack Obama. Both had come to realize that unfortunately, Newt Gingrich would be unable to play that role.

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I was asked to speak to a candidate forum in chiburban Will County, Illinois on Saturday, March 10. I had to leave early, so only spoke to the candidates themselves and a handful of early arrivals. I didn’t record the talk, so this is from my notes and speech outline.

Hi, I’m Loren Heal, a Precinct Committeeman from Cumberland County in downstate Illinois, and Congressional District 15 delegate for Rick Santorum. I’m here to tell you how we can defeat the left permanently and completely.

We have to learn to think and operate like Andrew Breitbart, and we have to rebuild our Party.

Below the fold is Part 2, rebuilding the Republican Party as a Get Out The Vote machine.

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I was asked to speak to a candidate forum in Will County, Illinois on Saturday, March 10. I had to leave early, so only spoke to the candidates themselves and a handful of early arrivals. I didn’t record the talk, so this is from my notes and speech outline.

Hi, I’m Loren Heal, a Precinct Committeeman from downstate Illinois, Cumberland County, and Congressional District 15 delegate and District Director for Rick Santorum. I’m here to tell you how we can defeat the left permanently and completely.

We have to learn to think and operate like Andrew Breitbart, and we have to rebuild our Party.

Below the fold is Part 1, learning to think and operate as Andrew did.

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US Senate candidate from Texas Ted Cruz has an opponent that’s hard to find. For over two weeks, Cruz has been asking his meek opponent, Lt. Gov David Dewhurst, for a debate. At issue is whether Dewhurst called for an income tax. Why is Dewhurst ducking a debate?

In 2006, David Dewhurst publicly supported a business income tax, as an alternative to Rick Perry’s Gross Receipts Tax, but then stepped back from that the next day to support the GRT being favored by several business groups. The Texas Constitution forbids a personal income tax, and the business tax was perilously close to that. Dewhurst had to back away from the statement. Many conservatives pushed for spending cuts, rather than tax increases.

A Gross Receipts Tax is far worse than an income tax, however. A GRT punishes businesses with high sales volume but low profit margin, also punishing with higher prices the customers of those businesses. The end result of a GRT is a series of market dislocations and disruptions.

Short-sighted business leaders supported a GRT because it would have lowered their immediate tax burden, given the other tax changes the state was about to make. The savings would have quickly disappeared, however, as revenue-hungry spenders in the legislature found new ways to dispose of the money they already received through the GRT.

But as early as 2005, Dewhurst had supported a “wage tax”, which would have taxed employers based on the wages they paid. The Wall Street Journal called that an income tax, which again is unconstitutional in Texas..

Fast forward to 2012, and Ted Cruz wants Dewhurst to explain the difference between a wage tax and in income tax.

I wonder when David Dewhurst will debate Ted Cruz. Senators should be willing and able to debate anyone.

According to economist former Majority Leader Dick Armey, “This is an interesting concept. Now, of course in my life I approach everything from the point of view of economics, especially when it’s about taxes.”

“When you start looking at taxes, and the nature of the tax,” Armey said, “you have to look beyond the manner in which the tax is levied. You look at the incident of the tax. What has been levied, What is the impact, and what is the behavioral response to the ‘wage tax’ is the same as to an income tax.”

Though employers can’t do what they’d like to do, which is cut wages to make their overall labor costs stay the same, without alienating their workforce, “The employer will pass it on in future pay,” he said.

Whether state government taxes an employer before the worker gets the money or the worker afterward, it’s all money the employer would rather give to his people. “When the cost of labor goes up,” Armey said, “it means less labor.”

But now Ted Cruz has been asking, these last two weeks, for a debate with Dewhurst over whether the “wage tax” is actually an income tax.

Q: How do you get David Dewhurst to ignore you and hide in fear? A: Point out that he supported an income tax, and ask for a debate. #txsen

In the debate over whether Catholic institutions should be forced to pay for insurance that covers contraceptives and abortions, the real question is actually shrouded by the discussion of birth control, an emotional issue. The controversy was apparently manufactured (or at least seized on serendipitously) by the Obama campaign.The real issue is not whether Catholics should be forced to buy the same kind of insurance as everyone else, but whether anyone should be forced to buy insurance. Not only is health insurance not the answer to every health purchase, it makes everyone’s costs go up the more insurers are required to cover.

Once more: contraceptives are irrelevant. We’re talking about how people pay for something, not whether they should do so.

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Michael Barone has been watching and influencing politics for decades, and seems to be the rare pundit who is not in love with his own opinion. Barone talks today about the ways in which the 2012 campaign is different than those of the last 40 years. He is more or less correct in the three key differences that he finds, but more notable to me are the things that are the same.

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When did Jonathan Martin of Politico stop beating his wife? Frankly, it hasn’t been established that Jonathan Martin of Politico has ever completely stopped beating his wife.

If Jonathan Martin of Politico ever stops beating his wife, I think the public has a right to know about it.

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Followers of Occupy Wall Street and the larger Occupy movement claim to represent 99% of the people, justifying their claim with a false dichotomy between the richest 1% and the poorest 99%.

One percent of 300 million give us 3 million people. So somewhere, scattered throughout the US, there are 3 million people whose money and property the Occupiers want for themselves.

But in America there is considerable mobility between those groups.  We are not members of classes or groups, but individuals who happen temporarily to share income levels. Our “class interests” may coincide for a time, but it is patently foolish to push for laws that take from the rich and give to the poor while making mobility more difficult.

It is exceedingly easy to become part of a group of 3 million that is the 1% most of something. Let’s take a look.

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The Tea Parties and Occupy movements demonstrate two competing world views.

In one, America is a shining city on a hill, a market-powered engine built on great ideas, the first of which enshrines for us the freedom to do with our lives what we will and to do as we wish with the property we accumulate as a result of doing it.

In another view, America oppresses unwilling wage slaves into toiling in a dark wasteland, suffering the humiliation of knowing that someone else has it better than they do.

Below the fold you will discover that it was not always so.

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Promoted from diaries.

The legacy media have paid undue attention to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) over the last month, as compared with the early tea parties. New media, on the other hand, have gone nuts over the relatively small, union-led anti-business protests. Unsurprisingly, many analyses of the two groups have tried to find commonality between them.

Except for superficial mimicry, despite politicians claiming otherwise the two groups are almost nothing alike, and the Occupy movement is doomed to failure.

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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, having ended speculation that he would not seek the Presidency himself, endorsed Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination today. The Republican nominee is likely to win the general election, according to polls.

But in endorsing Romney, Christie attacked as “intellectually dishonest” those who compare Romney’s mandatory health insurance law in Massachusetts with ObamaCare, despite reports coming out just today that Massachusetts officials were consulted in crafting the federal law.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

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The Fourth Circuit threw out the Commonwealth of Virginia’s suit challenging the constitutionality ObamaCare’s individual mandate, but it appears to have done so with a basic error in the facts of the case. Governor Bob McDonnell signed the Virginia law on which the suit is based days before ObamaCare went into effect, not afterward as the Fourth Circuit had it.

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I am a Republican. Our party was formed in 1854 to abolish slavery. 10 years later, it was gone.

I am a Republican. We believe in equal rights so strongly that we formed in 1854 to stop Democrats from treating blacks as pets.

I am a Republican. In 1860 we nominated a man who hated slavery, and Democrats went to war rather than give up their “pets”.

I am a Republican. For the last 200 years, Democrats have fought to keep blacks on the plantation, not wanting them to be free.

I am a Republican. My party has always pushed America to be color blind.

I am a Republican. I don’t care what color your skin is. My party has been the party of abolition, desegregation, and equality since 1854.

I am a Republican. Did you hear me? I said I don’t care what color your skin is. Now that’s cleared up, let’s talk.

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Mark Fitzgibbons over at The American Thinker puts the Great Radtkestate Dustup in proper perspective. Why are we fighting amongst ourselves, when our foe is in the field?

All of this would be on the level of a family feud, but of course the left-wing media wants to blow it out of proportion.  Given how they need to deflect attention from what’s really going on in Washington, like corruption and overspending, an otherwise unremarkable skirmish among conservatives is just what they need.

Now that the dust has settled somewhat, I hope to provide a post mortem on a fight that never should have happened. In short, Radtke should have kept silent or noncommittal on Redstate’s involvement in the Virginia Senate race. Redstate on the other hand, should have stayed that way.

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This is a bit of advice from an old hand at Redstate. Go to the Gathering, if you can manage it, to have your own Nikki Haley moment.

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