Caught a live one!

Finally!

Now I think I can catch who's been behind those harassing phone calls I was getting from 000-000-0000 a few weeks ago. I got another harassing call today at 1 PM, but this one was from a live number that I traced right to the culprit's doorstep.

The one today happened to have a 202 area code - which I knew was Washington, D.C. And nope, it ain't the Decider who's making these calls. I looked up the number online, and it turns out an outfit called Faith & Family owns a whole block of about 13 numbers in the 552 exchange in the 202 area code. And wouldn't ya know it, it just happens to include the number that called me today.

I checked my personal log, and it turns out other numbers in this block had been making similar calls to my old number back in 2006 and 2007.

So what is Faith & Family? It turns out its full name is National Committee for Faith & Family, a project of something called Citizens United. Citizens United is a dominionist right-wing hate group based in Washington, D.C. The founder of CU is the man behind the demonstrably false William Horton ads from Mad Dog Bush's '88 campaign.

Besides Faith & Family, other CU projects include Citizens United for the Bush Agenda. I swear I am not making this up. Another CU project is known as Boycott France. (Many suspect that this project killed off MP3.com, depriving indie musicians of their livelihoods. If that's the case, CU is guilty of racketeering for that alone.)

One of Faith & Family's causes is its petition against hate crimes legislation. (They claim committing hate crimes is a constitutional right.)

Now (to paraphrase a popular song from before my time), why is CU pickin' on me? A better question is, who from my area who I attended school with has gone to Washington to work for this hate group?

It's obvious why an outfit like CU would object to my stances, for I'm a progressive populist. I founded The Last Word in 1993, and that alone put me in the crosshairs of the extreme right wing. I was somewhat well-known in my area at the time because of this endeavor.

It's only fitting that someone who harassed me when we were in school would go to work for an extremist group like this. All of the attackers from school who I can name offhand are conservative. Every damn one of them.

You know something? It's been almost 20 years since we were in school together. Get over it already. It's a sad state of affairs when spoiled brats who you went to school with get to be 35 and continue making harassing phone calls.

Another question: How did they end up with my number after I had it changed? It doesn't help when at least one online phone book lists it despite it being supposedly unlisted.

At least now I've caught the organization that's behind much of this harassment campaign. It seems almost beyond belief that a national organization would employ someone who makes long-distance harassing calls to someone they haven't seen in decades - thereby confirming what the victim of this campaign had already said. This is like when I predicted they'd post bad reviews of 'The Fight That Never Ends' without even reading it - then they proved me right by posting bad reviews.

I also wonder if the employee behind this didn't also volunteer for John Spencer's Senate campaign in New York in 2006 - for I also got a harassing call from the Spencer campaign at the time.

I'm going to make sure people know what Citizens United has been up to.

(More info: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Citizens_United)