Keith Devens .com

That sucks, and it's not justifiable. But I read you blog shortly after reading this post and the contrast is poignant.

I don't get your "contrast".

Both you and Mike are telling a story of a little girl suffering an undeniable injustice. Both of you are telling the story with an understandable sympathy to the victim. Both of you were using the story consistently with and supportive of one of your weblog's bigger stories - you of the unreasonableness of John Kerry and his supporters, Mike of the unreasonableness of the current war.

The contrast is that in your story the girl ends up in tears, while in Mike's story the little girl ends up in a coffin. Having your daughter interact with the child's property taken away and coping with the trauma vs having your daughter killed and coping with the trauma.

I'm not trying to make any point here, beyond that I couldn't respond emotionally to both stories at the same time.

The incident is fake, see this

After reading that post it seems a little extreme to call the incident "fake" which would imply that the whole thing was staged, he tore up his own sign, made his little girl cry, etc. Though, he may be someone who tends to look for trouble and does a good job of finding it. However, I would be surprised if he actively tried to provoke the anger of the crowd given that he has his family there. Plus, this type of behavior seems fairly common among the left to me. I'll have to read a little more before I come to a conclusion about the guy.

Here's another article on this I just came across on Drudge:
http://www.herald-dispatch.com/2004/September/18/LNtop1.htm

In the online world, this man would be considered a troll. As we all know, it is a bad idea to feed trolls, and poor judgement on the part of whoever took his sign. But he's still a troll, and that certainly isn't diminished by the fact he brought his daughter along with him.

Of course, there's leftist trolls too, and libertarians, and Christian, and so on. I'm not even sure that it's wrong to be a troll, in the abstract -- but we have to recognize it for what it is.