Which brings me back to my contempt for anonymity/pseudonymity. If BVBL were an honorable man/woman, he/she wouldn’t have hidden under the cloak of anonymity/pseudonymity. If the charges made here were meritorious, he/she has little fear of liability. If he/she feared the political consequences of having made them is simply dishonorable. But disappearing (maybe) and erasing prior posts suggests that he/she has much to fear.

I have frequently said that I haven’t the foggiest idea whether the charges (many peurile and sophomoric) made here and elsewhere against Chapman were true or false. Nevertheless, the fact that someone was unwilling to associate his/her name with most of them, as well as the despicable and belittling tone in which they were made, renders them immediately suspect.

As for the later posts on this thread, who knows? Getting back to my rule about blogosphere legal analysis, none of us (save perhaps Greg) has complete information, and certainly, none of us is an expert on this area of the law. I have to say that I truly hope that the lawsuit has merit, because the campaign being run against Chapman on the prior incarnation of this site was vile and despicable, and has all of the hallmarks of an organized opposition-research campaign. And if Chapman’s suit can bring to light all of the individuals behind it, then he will do no less a service to the GOP than (some have suggested) he did by getting out of the race, and will have done perhaps more.

Then why didn’t he, when he had ample opportunity to do so? Where’s your proof? Better brush up on the case-law here. Gill has nothing.

BVBL, and to a lesser extent myself, have posted factual information about the qualifications, behavior and experience of a candidate for public office. No one has provided any evidence to contradict the information we provided. If posting factual information, or at least information that we reasonably believed to be factual and offered to correct if provided evidence, is a violation of law every political pundit out there is equally guilty.

Truth is the ultimate defense. Bite me.

You have failed to respond on point to the previous post. Apparently it seems that you are afraid to respond to the specific slander charge. Unfortunately, you seem intent on focusing on fax numbers and letterhead. Don’t you have a defense for your dispicable accusations against Chapman? In case you forgot, the specific response I am looking for is your defense to the High School Drop out charge and the Arlington business accusation. I will hopefully see a reply instead of the distraction tactic you have employed.

What BVBL has done, and I try to continue, is to present factual information that is relevant to the discussions related to our political process. If the information is not correct, I will do my very best to correct it in a timely fashion.

It is a huge stretch to construe this as defamation if the facts happen to be inconvenient to those whom they relate. When the truth can be tarred as “personal, vindictive attacks”, and “character assasination”, our political process is at risk.

Who is afraid of the truth?

And, of course, Charles makes a good point; Faisal is of course permitted to act as an attorney in litigation in Virginia, so long as he associates local counsel, as I have done on numerous occasions in the past.

It is truly funny that there are those who seem to be scoring Faisal for using his legal credentials to bludgeon others in the service of his political agenda, particularly since they are doing precisely the same thing in their attacks upon his ethics. If they believe that he has committed a violation, file a charge. When it is resolved, we can speak intelligently about whether he has committed a violation. Of course, to do so, these anonymous/pseudonymous legal commentators would have to overturn the rocks under which they hide and actually put their names to something, rather than lobbing anonymous smears at Faisal.

It seems there are good reasons why so many of these distinguished practictioners of the legal profession in the blogosphere post under pseudonyms.

It is not illegal to threaten someone with a lawsuit, that much is correct. What is illegal is to engage in the unauthorized practice of law. This is drilled into the head of any good lawyer, even one who graduated from American (just a joke, y’all). Repeat after me: you must be a member of the bar before practicing law in a given jurisdiction. There are loads of other potential violations here, but I don’t write as well as Jaded JD so I’ll leave it to him.

You never cease to amaze me. You would try to defend the Devil himself, saying he must have a good reason for wanting our souls.

I could threaten you with a lawsuit right now — and if I followed through, I’d hire a lawyer who has a license to practice in Virginia.

I didn’t know Faisal when the DHS stuff came out, but I know him a bit now, and it it one of those “defining moments” which showed how easy it is for people who don’t know someone personally to try to destroy their lives by playing up the mistakes that all of us make.

Every day I read some blogger or some commenter calling for another person to lose their job over some perceived error.

And it dawns on me that, if we all got our way, most of america would be unemployed. You have to know someone who has been attacked, I guess, before you can really understand how these attacks take a personal toll, tear down people, can ruin their lives.

I try, but often fail, to keep my attacks for what people believe, or what they say, rather than on the person. My response to a policy argument isn’t to point out someone’s criminal past, or question their living arrangements, or any of hundreds of other things people do to tear down their opponent when they don’t have an argument.

Oddly, it’s often people who have taken offense at an attack on a friend’s positions, who turn around and make personal, vindictive attacks on thier opponents. They should know better.

I lose a lot of respect for people who are so eager to tear down their fellow human beings, over politics.

I’d say some people should be ashamed of themselves, but I find by the time people have sunk to character assassination, they are immune to public calls for shame — and often come back from the brink only in their quiet places where they confront their God and receive his reprimand.

Sorry, sometimes I slip into a bit of a moralistic funk.