Just a Few More Minutes

Investigations: For a week or two now, Talkleft and other liberal blogs have been trying to track down an attendee at the Republican National Convention allegedly caught on tape kicking a female protestor while she was held down by three secret service agents. Julain Sanchez at libertarian magazine Reason's blog IDed the guy when he saw his photo at the National Taxpayer's Union's website.

The original photo showed four of the NTU's summer interns, but the JPEG was quickly cropped to remove him from the shot. Someone managed to save a cached copy of the original photo, though, and it's now posted to Atrios's Eschaton.

Good detective work, and if it leads to a proper law enforcement action, so much the better. It helps that the pictures in question look like they're not faked. But there's still a potential dark side to this kind of public investigation.

Google Stimulus-Response: My friend, News and Record editor Lex Alexander, blogged about this story of democratic demagogy, the case of a Miami professor who has been confused with one of CBS's experts who reviewed the probably-forged Bush National Guard memos. Someone Googled the expert's name, found a link to this professor, and the rabid emails started pouring in.

What happens when the RNC guy is publicly identified, with name and address and phone number posted for all to see? Will there be a proper police investigation? Or something uglier?

("Pajamahadeen" being a phrase coined by National Review's Kerry reporter Jim Geraghty.)