On 08JAN10, Rob Russell threatened Bob S. with grievous bodily harm, and possibly even death, simply because Bob disagreed with Rob’s wife, SouthernFemaleLawyer. His exact words were, and I quote:
You, however, have demonstrated considerable irresponsibility in your arguments and in your personal attacks on this blogger, who also happens to be my wife. Send me your home address and I’ll come to your house and punch your fucking face in. Unless you are a pussy who can’t fight without a gun in his hand.
That same day, Rob went on to clarify:
Ok, a boxing match, then. I’m not immature, I just like hitting conservative assholes.
Threatening unlawful violence against another individual over the internet may be in violation of Tennessee State Code 39-17-308:
(a) A person commits an offense who intentionally:
(1) Threatens, by telephone, in writing or by electronic communication, including, but not limited to, text messaging, facsimile transmissions, electronic mail or Internet services, to take action known to be unlawful against any person and by this action knowingly annoys or alarms the recipient;
[...]
(c) A violation of subsection (a) is a Class A misdemeanor.
On 09JAN10, Rob Russell defended, rationalized, explained, and excused his violent threat against Bob S., saying:
In several of my comments, I made derogatory remarks directed at the trolls. I said some nasty stuff. Some colorful language was used. I stand by that language. I also stand by my offer to face them one on one and punch these idiots in their faces. That’s how I roll.
On 11JAN10, Rob Russell and SouthernFemaleLawyer deleted all of their recent weblog posts pertaining to firearms, civilians carrying firearms, and Rob’s threats against Bob S.
Today, 12JAN10, Rob Russell deleted his weblog in its entirety. Feel free to check for yourself – “The Coolest Generation” no longer exists on WordPress.com. For those of you interested, Google maintains a cache of The Coolest Generation, and both Sarah and I retained screenshots of the most eggregious comments of Rob’s, but the original webpage is gone. “Memory hole” indeed.
Back on Saturday, Rob said he stood by his language, and stood by his offer to assault, batter, and possibly even kill people who disagreed with SFL. Today, Tuesday, he has removed any trace of that language, and that offer, that he has control over.
Unfortunately, Rob does not control the entire internet, and the internet never forgets.
Rob Russell is a coward who makes potentially illegal threats he cannot back up (threats of actions that would be illegal if he were to follow through with them), and then attempts to destroy evidence of his abusive demeanor when people call him on it. And this scoundrel wanted to represent a portion of Tennessee at the federal level? No wonder our government is in such sad shambles.
12JAN10 2330 Update: Hello again, Rob and SouthernFemaleLawyer – saw you stopped by, yet again. Have you no statement concerning your failed attmepts at sweeping this despicable incident under the rug? No apology? No official retraction? How not very surprised I am…
14JAN10 Update: Rob Russell apologized for his behavior after two separate threats of violence, two separate defenses/rationalizations of those threats, and attempting to sweep the entire incident under the rug.
I think a charge of making terroristic threats would stand.
asshat
What did he expect to accomplish with that?
I imagine he knows we have all we need for any legal or political action we might want to take.
His wife deleted everything (and has listed us a Persona non-grata)
What does this do?
Odd people.
Looks like it got some play on Gun Nuts Radio tonight.
Seems that Rob Russell is getting famous for all the wrong reasons!
kinda reminds of of that woman who shat her pants on MTV’s Flava of Love.
Never watched the show, don’t even know the woman’s name….but even somebody like me who doesn’t watch the show knows some woman shit her pants on the show.
She’s a lot like Rob Russell.
What did you expect?
That’s how he rolls, after all.
I was expecting some giant left tackle looking dude, I mean the man “split skulls!”
After seeing his myspace pics …
internet > real life.
David: I/we tried convincing Bob S. of that, but he does not seem to want to chase the charges down. His call, but I definitely agree (with you, that is).
.
Weer’d: I honestly have no idea what he expected to gain by deleting his weblog entirely – he has visited this webpage more than a few times in the past week, and knows we have screencaptures and copies of everything that transpired. But deletion as opposed to apologies? Yeah, that just spanks of cowardice.
Shame I missed GNR, but that is about as close to nation-wide infamy as you can get in our circles
hsoi: *giggle*
foo.c: Underwhelming, neh? Caleb has a pretty good shot of him in his political-best… seems like your average bottom dwelling “better” of the people.
Google cache isn’t working. Neither is the internet archive.
The cache for the main page at the above link seems to be working just fine for me on IE8 and Vista, but the subsidiary pages may or may not be there. Hard to say. Rob’s weblog probably was not overly checked by Google’s spyders.