Well, I accidentally revealed info about an Alabama government employee named "Scott" - namely, that he was harassing me and calling for the assassination of Assange from a government computer - and someone objected so I offered to resign from the League and Erik accepted (pretty readily, too). http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2010/12/17/all-apologies/
In terms of PR that might have an effect on myself and us, things look surprisingly good. A lot of people seem to disapprove of Erik's handling of this; one of his co-bloggers just wrote what amounts to a defense of me and a criticism of Erik for having accepted my resignation over something that was not only unintentional, but didn't reveal the person's identity.
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2010/12/17/all-apologies/
As I note in a comment at the first link, Erik didn't even bother to completely remove the exact information I'd released, which is kind of odd if that information is supposedly so important. I'll forward you the correspondence I had last night and this morning with Erik, who seems kind of defensive.
Meanwhile, I've entirely broken off with Charles Johnson, to put it mildly. You know some of the background already, Clark. Scott, Kilgore Trout was claiming that I engage in illegal activities and that I am potentially funded by the Russian mafia. Seriously. Johnson did not object at all to this despite the fact that I got him the paying gig at True/Slant and more importantly despite the fact that this was extraordinarily unethical. Yesterday he linked to the Gawker release of Assange's old love letters. He also banned someone for pointing out that he linked to Reason the other day while deleting any user diaries that link to Reason. That person then wrote to Johnson and apologized, after which Johnson noted that "he has been reinstated after apologizing for being such a jerk." I saw some other things which really disturbed me as well. Suffice to say that I was entirely wrong in pointing to Johnson as some paragon of modern commentary. I posted a comment to that effect and it was deleted. I'm not sure if/how to proceed. I will have to note at some point that I no longer consider him to be the swell blogger that have claimed him to be; thank God the book didn't come out yet. I was fine with Johnson et al opposing Wikileaks and even being kind of intellectually dishonest about it in our arguments, as of course I could always be wrong myself. But I was truly astonished - and I am rarely astonished - at the way things go at that blog after finally having had occasion to really spend time there.
Anyway, this will allow me to spend my time on my actual paying/important projects, although I'm satisfied with the defense and explanation I've provided regarding Wikileaks over the past week. I'm not entirely satisfied with having outed that fellow as a government employee, even though I didn't give out any actual identifying info when I could have, but thinking about it today and reading through the reactions, I'm not particularly down on having done so, either, for the reasons I gave yesterday.
In other news, we've brought on what would appear to be our best scientist thus far, the apparently excitable Sascha something-or-other at some Chinese university that a Chinese friend tells me is among the best. He really, really wanted in, so perhaps he will be useful to our regular weekly crew.
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302