Libeler Ridgeway's dishonest Nixonian non-retraction retraction.

No, that's not a relief map of the Bitterroot Range, that's the face of Jim Ridgeway, although the confusion is understandable.

In a post below, I noted that the blood had not yet dried on the pavement outside of the Safeway in Arizona before, before I was being libeled by lefty "journalist" Jim Ridgeway of Mother Jones -- "Giffords's Office Was Vandalized by Followers of Former Militia Leader." This was somewhat surprising to me because we've known each other since the mid-90s when Ridgeway was on my John Doe Times newsletter mailing list and me and my constitutional militia friends had just embarrassed the FBI by means of a poster campaign into finally arresting Michael Brescia, Aryan Republican Army bankrobber and bomber. Ridgeway wrote a story about it for George magazine, which even dispatched a photographer to Birmingham to take a photo of me talking to a source on a payphone. (Yeah, they still had payphones back then.)

Militia poster authored by me that, after being put up all over Philadelphia and covered by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Telegraph, finally embarrassed the FBI into arresting Michael Brescia.

Ridgeway, suspicious of the FBI since the COINTELPRO days, struck me as an honest lefty. Obviously somewhere along the way, whatever honesty he had drained out on the collectivist ideological carpet.

After his original libelous story, I sent him this email. I copied it to Judy Thomas, a Kansas City Star reporter who knows us both:

From: "georgemason1776@aol.com"
To: jridgew@yahoo.com
Cc: jthomas
Sent: Sat, January 8, 2011 9:55:40 PM
Subject: re: Your libelous post.

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/01/giffordss-office-was-vandalized-followers-former-militia-leader

Mike Vanderboegh, a former 1990s militia leader from Alabama, enouraged (sic) readers of his blog to throw bricks through the doors of members of Congress who had supported President Obama's health care bill last spring. One of the doors broken was that of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot at a rally in a Tuscon supermarket earlier today.

Kindly go over my call to break the windows of LOCAL DEMOCRAT PARTY HEADQUARTERS and find just once where I called for anybody to break the windows of Congresscritters.

My original post is here: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-all-modern-sons-of-liberty-this-is.html

When you don't, as you won't, fix your libelous post to correctly reflect the facts.

Jeez, Jim, you were smarter than that in the 90s.

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters
("As denounced by Bill Clinton on CNN!")

The response I got was this:

-----Original Message-----
From: james ridgeway
To: georgemason1776
Sent: Sun, Jan 9, 2011 12:13 am
Subject: Re: Your libelous post.

Mike--thanks for your note. I have made an addendum to my post quoting from yr email and your blog.It's on the Mother Jones web site.

I would very much like to talk to you about all this if you will give me a phone number.You can always phone me at (New York phone number redacted). If there is no answer,just leave a message and i'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Again, I appreciate your sending me the email.jim

THIS is what his addendum said:

ADDENDUM, 11:55 p.m.: In an email to me this evening, Mike Vanderboegh, the former militia leader discussed above, wrote the following:

Kindly go over my call to break the windows of LOCAL DEMOCRAT PARTY HEADQUARTERS and find just once where I called for anybody to break the windows of Congresscritters.

Readers can make up their own minds about Vanderboegh's call to action by reading his original blog post, here -- http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-all-modern-sons-of-liberty-this-is.html -- where he writes, among other things:

So, if you wish to send a message that Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows.

Break them NOW.

Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break them and await arrest in willful, principled civil disobedience. Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats.

Now, when I read that, I admit, I got pissed. What Nixonian "non-denial denial" was this? This was the result, copied to both Judy Thomas and LTC Roger Charles, (USMC, Retired), who also knew and cooperated with Ridgeway on the OKC bombing cover-up story --

-----Original Message-----
From: georgemason1776
To: jridgew
Cc: jthomas; rogcharles
Sent: Sun, Jan 9, 2011 1:29 am
Subject: Re: Your libelous post and your Nixonian non-retraction retraction.

What part of THIS:

"These windows are not far away from where you are reading this right now. In virtually every city and county in this land, there is a local headquarters of Pelosi's party -- the Democrat party. These headquarters invariably have windows. . . .

And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary."

Don't you understand?

Screw your Nixonian non-retraction retraction and the libelous horse you rode in on. You sure have gotten dishonest in your old age. As far as allowing you to interview me, why would I willingly open myself up to more falsehoods and distortions from the same lying, conflationary sack of excrement who defends himself with weasel logic and selective quotes? If you're not honest enough to fix an error pointed out to you and plain as day, why should I gratuitously give you a second shot at libeling me? How truly stupid do you think I am?

Fix the lie. Or are you content to let your political prejudices override simple truth? And does Mother Jones agree with you?

-- Vanderboegh

I await his reply, but I ain't holding my breath.

Mike
III