A State Rep. in Pennsylvania named Brian Sims has decided to go on the attack (verbally) against anyone who shows up near his local Planned Parenthood. A few days ago Sims berated an elderly woman who was standing outside the center (video below). But this wasn’t the first time he’d done this. In a video posted on his Facebook page three weeks ago, Sims approached one adult and three young girls who looked like they were in high school and asked his viewers to dox them in exchange for donations of $100 to Planned Parenthood.

“I’ve got a hundred dollars to anybody who will identify any of these three,” Sims said, panning his camera phone over the teens. “So, look, a bunch of white people standing out in front of Planned Parenthood,” Sims said.

“I’m not white,” one of the girls responded. “I’m pretty far from white,” the girl added as she and her friends walked away from the nut with the camera. Sims doesn’t care that he’s wrong, he’s on a roll.

[Note added 5/8/19: Brian Sims deleted or restricted access to his video. I’ve replaced it with a copy from YouTube.]

I guess Brian missed that whole Covington Catholic story where a bunch of worked-up left-wingers attempted to dox and shame a high school student because they didn’t like the look on his face. Some of the people involved in spreading that have apologized. Brian must have thought that was more of an inspiration for future action. What he’s doing here is basically a repeat, i.e. using social media to call out random kids who were doing nothing but peacefully praying on a public sidewalk.

Sims is, of course, free to express himself using the same rights as these Planned Parenthood protesters but doxing teen girls for excercising their constitutional rights crosses a line and makes him look like a grade-A jerk.

What’s sad is that it seems Sims wasn’t always this way. In an opinion piece for the Philly Inquirer, author Christine Flowers says that when she interviewed Sims in the past he was interested in bipartisanship and empathy for those who had a different point of view:

Shortly after Sims won his election in 2012, I interviewed him for an article in the Daily News. I came away impressed with his interest in bipartisanship. At the time, I wrote that we disagreed on many issues but that, “Sims is one of the more principled and collaborative public servants I’ve encountered in my half-century on earth, most of it spent in this beloved cesspool known as Philadelphia.” I also noted: “As Sims once put it, he’s trying to find empathy for people who disagree with him.” In that interview, Sims told me that “The idea of not even changing a mind, but being able to work with a mind that is unchanging or work with a mind that is opposed to yours, you need to understand it. It sounds very elementary, and it’s something that we talk a lot about around here, the idea that nothing should be revolutionary about the idea that you have to understand the people that you work with. But somehow that seems revolutionary of late in this sort of modern discussion of American politics.”

I’m trying to figure out how that statement fits with what I saw on Sims’ own video — and with the 3-week-old video I found on his Facebook page in which he offers $100 to “anyone who can identify” the people whom he calls “pseudo-Christian protesters.”

So much for empathy. Here’s Sims berating an elderly woman in front of the same Planned Parenthood last week. Once again, he asks viewers of his live stream to dox her so he can protest “in front of her home.” Is Planned Parenthood someone’s private residence? I don’t think so. But nevermind, Sims is rolling for nearly nine-minutes of verbal attacks on a complete stranger.