Cruel and Unusual Punishment? It's a Small World After All.....

On the face of it, it makes us laugh - Sesame Street used for torture?  But it isn't as funny as it might seem.  A friend of mine some years ago had an elementary age daughter; her grandmother gave her a toilet role holder from Disneyworld that played "It's a Small World" every time someone removed a sheet of TP.  I suspect it might have been intended as a device to help parents potty training toddlers.

But the darned thing wouldn't shut off.  It would go on playing, and playing and playing.  The smallest vibrations from someone walking through the hallway outside the bathroom could set it off, resulting in adults tip toeing around in their own home, for fear of triggering "It's a small world after aaaaaaaalll" for an hour.  It has been more than a decade since I babysat the child who dearly loved the gift from her grandparents, and I still cringe any time I hear this piece of drivel.  It has come to represent for me every nightmarishly garish gimcrack piece of cheap plastic garbage mind-numbingly mass produced to dumb down minds, eliminate critical thinking and genuine creativity, play to the lowest possible denominator of taste, and to cause us to contract diabetes through our ears.  When hearing this tune, for even the briefest moments, the least intense physical response I have it to throw objects, up to and including my shoes, at the source of the sound.  The random relentlessness of the tune, which was doubly loud when echoing off hard shiny bathroom tile, was what made the experience so insidious.  It gave a different dimension to the term 'domestic' terrorism.  If Disney tuneless doesn't do it for you, remember for just a moment what it was like the last time some slacker pulled up next to you with an over-amplified vehicle vibrating the ground with the sound of something stupid.  Yeah, like that.  Or think of the worst neighbor you've ever had, in terms of intrusive and inconsiderate, or ill timed sounds.

image from tmz

Volume was also part of the torture process using Sesame Street and other music at Guantanamo.  Volume can be painful, and even damaging, going way beyond simply being aggravating.

You can watch the full Al Jazeera documentary and other video of audio torture here.

The Huff Po covers it:
Torture By Sesame Street At Guantanamo Bay: Al Jazeera Reports
In 2008, reports surfaced that detainees at Guantanamo Bay had been tortured by songs such as Metallica's "Enter Sandman" and Drowning Pool's "Bodies."
Now, a new documentary from Al Jazeera shows that detainees may also have been subjected to musical torture of a softer variety.
According to the report, prisoners at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were forced to wear headphones blasting music from Sesame Street on repeat for hours or days on end.
Christopher Cerf, the award-winning composer of Sesame Street, was stunned to learn how his music was being exploited.
"My first reaction was this just can't possibly be true," he told Al Jazeera. "...Of course I didn't really like the idea that I was helping break down prisoners, but it was much worse when I heard later that they were actually using the music in Guantanamo to actually do deep, long-term interrogations and obviously to inflict enough pain on prisoners so they would talk."
This isn't the first time that music from Sesame Street has been used to break the will of prisoners. In 2003, the U.S. reportedly used the soundtrack to soften up Iraqi POWs.
Sesame Street, an educational children's television series, has been on the air since 1969.
Watch the full report from Al Jazeera in the video above. Below, check out some of the tunes reportedly used at Gitmo.

Defense of Marriage Act found Unconstitutional!

And another unexpected cause for celebration on an ordinary Thursday!

From Yahoo News / the  Lookout

Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, federal appeals court rules

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins
 at a May demonstration in favor of DOMA.
(J. Scott Applewhite/A …

On Thursday, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled that the government's ban on gay marriage, called the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), violates the Constitution and should be struck down.

If the Supreme Court hears the case and upholds this ruling, it means that the federal Family Research Council President Tony Perkins at a May demonstration in favor of DOMA. (J. Scott Applewhite/A …government would most likely have to recognize the marriages of gay couples who were wed and reside in the six states that allow same-sex unions.

The First Circuit Court found that the federal government does not have a right to interfere in states' definition of marriage, but stopped short of arguing that gay people have a constitutionally protected right to legal marriage. The First Circuit court is the first federal appeals court to strike down the law, and the case is likely to be taken up by the Supreme Court next year.
A section of DOMA, which was passed under President Bill Clinton, says that gay married couples are ineligible for federal benefits afforded to straight married people, such as tax breaks and Social Security survivor checks. DOMA encompasses about 1,000 federal laws tangentially related to marriage and affects 100,000 couples in the country, according to the decision. A group of gay couples in Massachusetts sued the government over the law, and the state of Massachusetts filed its own suit, saying DOMA makes its Medicaid program illegal because the state combines gay married couples' incomes in calculating eligibility. (Gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts.)

The Justice Department under President Barack Obama initially defended DOMA against this lawsuit, but last year announced that it found DOMA unconstitutional and would no longer back it. House Republicans then appointed outside attorneys to argue for the federal law.The judges admitted that the decision rested on navigating difficult and thorny precedents. "Only the Supreme Court can finally decide this unique case," they wrote.
But in its decision, the First Circuit argued that the federal government has no interest in rejecting states' definition of marriage, and that the singling out of a minority group—gays and lesbians—was troubling.

"Many Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today," the First Circuit wrote. "One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress' denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest."If the case makes it to the Supreme Court, all eyes will (as usual) be on Justice Anthony Kennedy, who moved to strike down laws banning anal sex in 2003 and a Colorado law that banned anti-discrimination rules that included gay people. So far, the Supreme Court has never held that sexual orientation can put people in a protected class, as it has with race and a few other things.

"I think this really does set up the issue for the Supreme Court to take this up next year," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a liberal constitutional law professor at UC Irvine.

The decision marks the latest court victory for gay rights proponents after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down California's ban on gay marriage in February. After North Carolina voters inserted a ban on gay marriage and civil unions into their Constitution in May, Obama announced that he personally thinks gay people should allowed to be married. But he stopped short of saying that the federal government should guarantee that right, indicating that states should decide.

WalMart Leaves ALEC!!!!!!

Five minutes of fireworks give or take celebrates this unexpected development appropriately. And after the fireworks the serious article from the Daily Finance about this new move by Wal Mart gives the details.   I knew they sold a lot of guns; I didn't know they were the biggest seller of guns in the entire United States.  That's gonna bite for the NRA. 

Play on, then read on!

Looks to me like that conservative / culture war agenda is significantly unpopular!

Walmart Ending Membership in Conservative Group

By Reuters

Posted 10:15AM 05/31/12 Posted under: Company News, Coca-Cola Company, Kraft Foods, Wal-Mart Stores, McDonald's, Procter & Gamble

By Jessica Wohl

ROGERS, Ark. -- Walmart Stores (WMT), the world's No. 1 retailer and the biggest seller of firearms in the United States, is dropping out of a U.S. conservative advocacy group that has been a lightning rod over voting and gun laws.
Walmart said late Wednesday it is suspending membership in the American Legislative Council (ALEC), which the retailer joined in 1993.
ALEC sparked controversy recently because of its involvement in voting laws and in "stand your ground" gun laws, including the one under scrutiny in the Florida killing of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February.
A coalition of liberal advocates targeted the group for its support of the self-defense laws.
ALEC, which serves as a forum for corporations and mostly Republican state lawmakers and lobbyists to discuss model legislation, has been criticized by liberals for promoting laws that require photo identification to vote.
ColorOfChange, a liberal advocacy group for black Americans, has said the voting laws put the poor and minorities at a disadvantage.
In April, ALEC said it was abandoning the committee that worked on "public safety and elections" to focus on the economy. Despite the change, Walmart decided it was no longer focused on the same issues as the council.

Arrrrrrrrrrrghh!

********************

With even the biggest corp-o-rats abandoning the ship, how long will Koch Industries, the evil Pirate Murdoch and his minions, and the NRA gun industry stooges cling to the decks?  How many more of the legislators will see the writing on the wall, flashing in neon, punctuated by alarm bells and sirens, leading them to bail on ALEC as well?

Corrupt Media Mogul linked to both ALEC and blackmail of British Members of Parliament

Rupert Murdoch in his pirate persona

It should come as no surprise that right wing propaganda mogul Rupert Murdoch corporate interests are part of equally crooked ALEC, an entity that engages in widespread right wing corruption of our legislators at all levels, but especially at the state levels, while also waging right wing culture warfare and actively disinforming right wingers to control their minds.

To illustrate the scope of the carrot / stick behavior of Rupert Murdoch and his corruption, was this latest story from the UK, about how Murdoch media tried to gather dirt to pressure, even blackmail, members of parliament in the UK:

From the Independent:
According to Mr Thurlbeck, reporters were told by those in "deepcarpetland" to obtain evidence of affairs or gay relationships. The aim, he claimed, was to "to find as much embarrassing sleaze on as many members as possible in order to blackmail them into backing off from its highly forensic inquiry into phone hacking". In a letter – a copy of which has been obtained by The Independent – to the Deputy Assistant Commissioner leading the Met's inquiries into News International, Sue Akers, Mr Watson wrote: "If these allegations are found to be true, it suggests there was a conspiracy to blackmail."

Rupert Murdoch is at the top of a huge national scandal in the UK, one that appears to have spilled over to the United States -- it cannot fairly be said that Murdoch contains his corruption outside the U.S.  One can argue that Murdoch corrupts not only our government and business, but causes deterioration of your mind,  Not only is ALEC corrupt, but trying to get your news from Faux News will only dumb you down anyway, so you can get twice the benefits by boycotting Fox News - you can push back against corruption, and you can get smarter at the same time.  Actually, you're smarter if you have NO sources of news, than if you rely on Fakes News.  That is the result of multiple polls and studies, most recently this one:

Yet Another Survey: Fox News Viewers Worst-Informed, NPR Listeners Best-Informed

by Andrew Kirell | 10:29 am, May 23rd, 2012

» 264 comments
A new survey from Farleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind finds that people who watch no news at all can answer more questions about international current events than people who watch cable news outlets like Fox News and MSNBC. The survey also finds that Fox News viewers are the worst-informed on domestic and international current events, while NPR listeners are the best-informed.
The poll report claims that “NPR and Sunday morning political talk shows are the most informative news outlets, while exposure to partisan sources, such as Fox News and MSNBC, has a negative impact on people’s current events knowledge.”

Minnesota's Own Medtronic QUITS ALEC!!!!

This has been a great week for ALEC news!  We have the corp-o-rats leaving the Pirate ship of ALEC.
I couldn't be happier to see this particular home-grown Medical Technology company getting out of the corrupt entity that is ALEC!
ALEC corporations write the legislation, IN SECRET not transparently in public forums, which is crafted so that it
benefits them, and pays both directly and indirectly to have conservative majority legislatures pass the legislation which benefits their special interests rather than the public interest.  We elect these legislators to serve US, not to serve a corp-o-rat master, often out of state. 
I for one do not want to see a company like Medtronic funding the social culture wars as part of getting preferential treatment for their business in this underhanded, corrupt manner.  Corruption has been defined, as the best working definition I have seen, of use of public office for private gain --- and these ALEC corporations are buying public government for their gains - and they DO make unfair gains at public expense.

'swinging' corp-o-rat pirates

We need to be supportive of innovative industries like Medtronic in Minnesota, but we need to do so in the full light of day, not by buying off legislators to make dirty secret deals.  Personal disclosure, my family has old, profitable deep ties to the  Medtronic corporation, going all the way back to the earliest days of the corporate founders.  So I am especially happy to see the corporation leave the dark side of dirty conservative 'pirate' politics as the public pressure for ALEC disclosure and abandonment continues.  In the interim, there is an almost unlimited number of images available of rats as pirates for me to play with for these stories of ALEC diminishing.
'
As was noted in a recent op ed rebuttal posted in the Star Tribune, "Bribery equals corruption -- from any angle" about business ethics (or lack of them) generally, and WalMart core corporate member of ALEC specifically, good business can act legally and ethically, and still be very successful.  This is not ONLY about bribery in Mexico; the WalMart executives who did so are now sitting smugly in the corporate boardroom of WalMart, having earned big corporate rewards in terms of personal compensation for doing so, and having apparently violated U.S. law not once, but twice in a cover up effort.  They should be fired, not promoted, if any corporation is serious about their ethics.  And if WalMart were serious about not bribing American politicans and authorities, they would quit ALEC, and not simply move their shady practices to the cover of other entities instead -- as is allegedly the case with ALEC as more and more businesses end their support for it.  The right wing is not about government reform, it is about private greed, and only the most blindly ideologically ignorant continue to support it believing otherwise. In opposing the looting and pillaging and bribery and other forms of corporate corruption on the right, conservative voters are hurting themselves, and they are hurting the rest of us -- INCLUDING honest Minnesota businesses.   The author of this op ed piece is NOT 'anti-business', the usual label that the right tries to paste on their critics to distract from their corruption, and he is quite famliar with both good honest capitalism thriving in Minnesota - and with Mexico.

And in Related Content to Blog Harassment part 3... continues

It is worth noting that there is increasingly cooperation in the investigation and prosecution of cyber crime, which mostly involves porn and fraud, but can also involve cyber stalking and cyber harassment, like that which has targeted our blog.

Here is another example of the serious recognition by law enforcement of the various kinds of cyber crimes, and how they are attempting to cooperate to address these problems.  From the STrib:

High tech crime calls for high-tech crimefighting

• Article by: PAUL LEVY , Star Tribune
• Updated: May 29, 2012 - 4:44 PM

Anoka County law enforcement hosted two-day conference to teach others how to track crooks by following cyber trails.

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Craig Schmidt was talking about botnets, almost matter-of-factly.

A botnet is a collection of compromised computers connected to the Internet. Schmidt is the senior manager of investigation of Microsoft's digital crimes unit. And, besides the fact that Schmidt grew up in Spring Lake Park, what do botnets have to do with Anoka County?
Quite a bit, actually.
Members of the Anoka County attorney and sheriff's offices -- considered local pioneers in the investigation of cyber crime and the use of computer forensics -- met recently with investigative and crime specialists from Microsoft. The two-day closed conference at Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids offered strategies in fighting modern crimes with modern technology.
Topics included e-mail header analysis, social networking, instant messaging, steganography (writing hidden messages), basic encryption, anonymization techniques, Internet service providers and domain name systems. These are topics that many law enforcement officials might never have approached 10 years ago. But for a video-game-playing, text-messaging generation that has grown up wearing ear buds and considers a cellphone to be the modern-day pocket watch, using all this technology is as natural as breathing.

(read more here)

In revisiting the problem communication in our harassment problem, it was surprising how far back it went, and how much of it we have.  The volume as well as the quality of the communication was a shock when we revisited it, and we have yet to get through it all.  We are fortunate to be assisted by trained law enforcement specialists who in turn have access to other specialized help. 

I am a cyber-luddite of sorts, in that I only tend to learn the techno-tricks that I need.  I have been fortunate to have someone teaching me much more during the course of our battles with the harassment problems.  If we were on our own, if we had to rely on our own very limited techno-expertise this would be going much more slowly, if at all.  For what I am learning, I am very grateful.

But apart from that leap forward that I'm sure must seem obvious to those who do a better job of staying current with techno-developments, (go ahead, roll your eyes here), there is the element that I suspect we have in common with other victims of this kind of abuse.  You argue with yourselves about acting, about doing something that will escalate the problem.  You worry about not wanting to cause difficulty to others, the 'turn the other cheek' conundrum.

In looking through past communication, I realized that I had passed that point where I was willing to try to negotiate or reason, I was at the point where I no longer was willing to put up with the crap that harassment entails in order to protect the harasser from the consequences of their bad behavior.

I had reached a tipping point, and in consultation with my blogging partners, WE had reached a tipping point, a point where we would no longer go back to just trying to cope with it, or ignore it, or try to tolerate it.  We just really no longer care why someone does this kind of thing, but we care very much about stopping it from going through another cycle.  We are determined to stop it permanently, not temporarily.  It is an important stage to reach for anyone who has to deal with these kinds of harassers, the point where you will learn how to do what you need to do, acquire the techno-expertise, and the determination to stay on the phone or make as many contacts as necessary with those who are in control, either law enforcement or the technical community such as the companies who handle the IP end of things.  You have to reach the point where you are willing to take the lead to see that what needs doing gets done, even when it is dull and time consuming, and when you might get put on hold a lot or transferred six times to the wrong people before you get the right people.

Because when you get the right people, finally, it all starts to turn around.  And when it begins to turn around, then life is better for you, and it is going to be better for every other person who has been harassed that won't be harassed again in the future,  THAT makes the effort worthwhile.  The Tech stuff? that turns out to be a blast, the whipped cream with hot fudge and sprinkles on the whole gooey good Sundae with a cherry on top.  I actually LIKE it!

Update on blog harassment part 3

The crazy lady in White Bear Lake Minnesota had her day in court this morning in Ramsey County, and the verdict has hit the news media; there was no delay, it was prompt and it sent a clear message.  Thanks to my blogging friend J-Pete for catching that the news was out, and kindly alerting me.

I'm not sure which is the more serious part of this sentence - the 90 days behind bars, or debarring her from ever returning to her home for the next 4 1/2 years.  This woman appears to be the single mother of a daughter; she has a pet.  Will her boss hold her job while she does another 90 days on top of the 30 she just did?  How does her stuff get moved out, etc.?  Will she sell her house - and what poor unsuspecting neighbors will get her next?  She has to live somewhere.  More to the point --- will THIS be enough to stop her behavior from continuing? OR will she do this again?  The hard core harassers despite incarceration, have been known to continue their illegal conduct even while in the clink.

It will be interesting to see how stalking charges play out in this case.  It is an aspect of the harassment that interests me particularly.  I'll have to keep an eye on this kind of local news to see when those charges are heard in court, and what happens.

I feel badly for the harassed neighbors, especially their children.  I feel very badly for this woman's daughter; living with someone who behaves like this must be a matter of perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop, for some new unacceptable behavior to be expressed, some new disruption to occur to upend home stability.

The people, like this woman going off to jail for harassment, I would bet don't see themselves as bad parents, bad spouses, or bad neighbors.  But despite how they see themselves, I can't imagine these people who engage in this kind of behavior are very nice to those around them.  There seems to be something off, or missing or misfiring, something internal that gets jazzed about trying to make others feel badly, including in this case particularly going after making children miserable.  There is some compassion connection, some empathy capacity that may work intermittently, but that doesn't seem to quite function normally in these people who harass others in comparison to other people.  This behavior seems to be about bullying other people because it builds up some weird sense of power in the harasser.  That sense of power, in my opinion, is an illusion; it really only isolates and alienates the harasser from everyone else, not just their target for that most recent bad act.  Maybe that is what drives them to do the irrational things they do; I don't know, making sense of the nonsensical is beyond me.  But here is the update today on the scandalous crazy lady from White Bear Lake, MN.

The STrib covered it here:

Lori E. Christensen, who is accused of the serial harassment of her neighbors, was sentenced to serve 90 days in the Ramsey County workhouse after she admitted Wednesday that she had violated terms of her probation.
She is to report to jail Monday.
Ramsey County District Judge George Stephenson also told Christensen, 49, that she could not be within a mile of her house at Homewood Place in White Bear Lake, an order that is expected to last at least for the remainder of her probation of about 4 1/2 years.
Her attorney, Gary Wolf, told the judge that Christensen had no intentions of returning to her house.
Last week, Christensen was charged with two counts of aggravated stalking in connection with the recent videotaping and phone calls regarding neighbors Kim and Greg Hoffman. Those charges have not yet been dealt with.
The incidents occurred after Christensen previously served time in the county correctional facility for violating a harassment restraining order obtained two years ago by the Hoffmans.
The two have accused Christensen of repeatedly taunting Kim Hoffman, a recovering alcoholic, with numerous signs that included a handwritten statement, "I saw mommy kissing a Breathalyzer."
Christensen's behavior has generated at least 80 calls to police in the past three years, Police Chief Lynne Bankes said last week.
[by]Anthony Lonetree

What Minnesota harassment looks like in the national media - blog harassment part 3

This is the national  television coverage of the woman harassing her neighbors in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.  I am hoping that our harasser won't be this hard core, but we won't find out how bad it will ultimately be until we get further into the process of dealing with it.  As someone documenting past harassment, I found the documentation of THIS harassment both inspirational and instructional.
Harassment, as I understand it has several components; it is intrusive, it is  unwelcome, it is persistentently recurring or obsessive, it is offensive and/or abusive, it obstructs normal activity. 
While it can be focused on only one person or group of people, as with this woman, who is documented as having harassed other neighbors as well, it is often part of a larger pattern of conduct that is inflicted on multiple targets. 

In the case of this woman who harassed her neighbors, the solution for some was to leave.  In the case of blog harassment the solution is sometimes for bloggers to stop writing, at least for awhile, to escape the hassle of persistent unpleasantness.  In the case of neighbors, it was a person who ruined people's enjoyment of their home; in the case of bloggers, it was no longer fun to write, and it interfered with other people reading the blog for pleasure, and suppressed comments from those people.

As I watch the video of this woman taunting her neighbors, over and over, it strikes me that there is something in taunting behavior which seems to be an addictive reward to the harasser.  It seems to feed a need or a desire, to provide some kind of psychological boost that at least some harassers crave that is different from how most people would experience those actions.  There has to be something going on inside these people who behave this way that is drives them to expend so much time and energy in being unpleasant to others.  For most of us, that is not something we go out of our way to do, but rather is something we go out of our way to avoid.  Given the pattern of persistence and frequency, I think some functional identification of what happens might be important.  One cannot stop someone else who is acting irrationally with solutions that would work with rational people.  If that worked, police visits, restraining orders, and previously having served jail time would have stopped this woman.
Significantly for our purposes here in writing about harassment, it is illegal; this crazy lady has already done jail time for her conduct, but did not change her evil ways.  Either she chose not to do so, or she was unable to change.  This woman had her current court date moved up to this morning, in Ramsey County.  It also seems part of the pattern of harassment that the harasser tries to claim they are the person who is victimized by other people protesting or complaining about their behavior, because no matter how badly they act, they are angered at anyone stopping them from abusing others. As is the case with this woman, the abusers, the harassers, the stalkers like to inflate their accomplishments and importance; it speaks to an inherent arrogance, and a false self-image.   As a matter of observation, I am intrigued with how differently other people objectively see this woman compared to how she subjectively sees herself.  It is as if she has her own alternate reality that overlaps the objective reality the rest of us inhabit, but which is in some ways, important ways, an alternative reality without the facts the harasser chooses to ignore or disregard.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Oh, DEER Me!

REAL Sportsmanship doesn't involve using grenade launchers against Bambi. Although it wouldn't surprise me to see NRA stooge and hunting criminal Ted Nugent do it.

Right wingers want to privatize EVERYTHING for profit, to rip off the public, and in Koch-land next door, aka Wisconsin, where Walker has hire or appointed a lot of crooks under investigation for serious criminal activity, including current investigations of his circle for embezzlement and child 'enticement' - ie pedophilia, 

Where is the conservative family values outrage???????????  (How sincere can such outrage be if it is selectively (and factually inaccurately) outage that is only ever directed against perceived liberals?) 

These aren't the only Walker scandals; these are just the latest - and the guy has only been in office a year!  Why do conservatives love crooks like this?  Where is the conservative valuing of honesty?

Walker wants to ruin deer hunting. How many of our deer hunting conservatives are going to be supporting this guy? How many will stupidly follow ideology THIS TIME against their own interests?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Blogging and Harassment Part 2

When I opened my e-copy of the STrib this morning, I was surprised to read the front page story:Recurring nightmare on Mean Street.  The story charts the course of a five year series of events, including court appearances and convictions, and restraining orders where one person inexplicably harasses others.  The primary focus of the story is one single family, but as in the case I am writing about of blog harassment, other people were also harassed by the same person.

I do not begin to understand what prompts a person to engage in the harassment of another.  I don't understand what drives a person to the nastiness, I don't understand what drives a person to the frequency, the persistence of the behavior in the face of requests to go away, to stop, to behave like a considerate and civilized human being.  I don't understand what drives a person to ignore the golden rule that should guide our conduct towards other people, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I am learning as I go about technical aspects of this problem as I go; I am not generally a techno-savvy individual.  I don't think I should have to be.  I shouldn't have to take the time with either law enforcement or internet entities to make and resolve harassment complaints.  If you do decide you're no longer going to tolerate harassment, expect it to be time consuming, and budget your resources for it accordingly.  It is annoying but necessary, and  I believe ultimately it will be worthwhile.

At some point you may need to seek the help of an attorney; who may need to pursue subpoenas on your behalf.  That too may be a necessary allocation of your resources, both in terms of time and expenditure; it too is necessary and well worth it.  Subpoenas are necessary because of confidentiality issues, both legal and procedural.

There are aspects of my own personal journey through this experience that I have been directed NOT to share until it is concluded.  I will comply with that request.  There are a variety of choices in ascending level of severity available to bloggers who are seeking to end harassment that proceed through a variety of civil remedies to criminal actions.  As is evident in the STrib story, when people who harass others continue in spite of legal efforts to prevent their abusive behavior, they can ultimately serve time behind bars and have a criminal record as a result of their refusal or inability to stop.

I am hoping that will not be the case with our own harassment problem, but I am not holding my breath.  How far we need to go, how far I personally have to go to stop this is not entirely in my control.  It won't be entirely in your control if you begin this process either; you are in a reactive rather than entirely proactive role.

I have learned that the 1st Amendment Freedom of Speech does not apply to blogs; no one else has a right to post or comment on your blog if you do not choose to grant them access.  The content is yours, and within the terms of service the rights are on your side.  In conversations with other bloggers, it is amazing to me -- and disappointing -- how many ignorant would-be commenters believe they are entitled to have their thoughts and beliefs appear on your blog.  They do not.

I encourage you to re-read the terms of service of your blogging platform, whether blogger, or word press or other.  I encourage you to re-read the terms of service of your email provider as well, in case anything has changed.  Whatever response you make, be sure you are consistent with those terms of sevice.

I have learned in the course of this 'adventure' in red tape that it appears possible to get a restraining order on behalf of a blog, not only on behalf of individuals.  (Who knew?)  I have learned that merely annoying and persistent relatively polite behavior tends to fall into the civil sphere, but not always.  I have learned that when someone uses abusive language, like cunt, bitch, cocksucker, the f-bomb, and other derogatory or demeaning wording, that you are more likely to rise to the level of criminal harassment.  Whichever you are receiving, you don't have to tolerate it.

Whether people reading this post are politically right, left, center, or some outlier that doesn't fit easily into a category, it is my hope in writing about this unpleasant experience that you too will put an end to any harassment you experience.  There is a good chance you aren't the only person having the experience.  If there is one thing over which we can unite, it should be to stop this kind of conduct.
There are a lot of bad apples in the blogosphere; we don't have to roll over and accept it.  We can do something about it, each one of us. 

It isn't 'someone else's responsibility' ; it is ours, yours and mine.  It is like stopping bullying; someone has to stand up, and speak up, and to take the lead to make it stop.