Representative Thomas Caltagirone, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, took action today through his subordinate, John Ryan, to shut down my local blog Berks Democrats because I wrote an article critical of his using his campaign committee as his personal piggy bank and for exposing a contribution he made to Republican Tom Corbett.

Ironically we had a conversation about the article prior to this morning's Berks County Democratic Committee meeting and I was prepared to come home afterwards and add his comments and rebuttal to what I wrote. Had he left well enough alone I would have done so. He related to me the funds he's generously given over the years supporting Democrats and I would have been happy to mention that, as I am here. The point of the article, however, was that if you use subordinates to plant stories about your opponent's campaign reports yours had better be spotless and Tom's are anything but.

So this morning he first attacked me for writing on my local blog about how our Committee does not seem to have any checks and balances over our fiinancial affairs, no expenditures seem to be authorized as per the by laws, and no record of any such authorizations are ever provided to the members, even today. No Auditing Committee, required by the by laws, exists to even oversee the financial affairs as is required by our by laws.

Then Mr. Ryan, who works for Caltagirone, made an extremely hostile motion to demand that I stop using the name Berks Democrats for one of my blogs. He maintains it is confusing because people will think it's connected to the Berks County Democratic Party. If you go to the blog and look directly under the name of the blog you'll find a disclaimer that clearly spells out that it isn't.

I don't understand how I can make that clearer. The County Committee neglected to buy all possible permutations of their domain names and I bought that one. I bought the name ending in (.com) and that is the one I use. It is internet protocol for non profit groups to use the domain (.org) and that is the name BerksDems.org uses, the Committee website. Anyone regularly using the internet understands the difference between domain name extensions. The reason for these different extensions (com, gov, edu, org) is to accomplish exactly what Mr. Ryan carelessly attempted to force upon me today: differentiation between websites.

My blog is not affiliated with a group (other than the three Berks Democrats who do actually write for the blog, thus the name) which is non profit, thus it is appropriately, and legally, designated dot com. That is the proper and legal internet protocol. If the County Committee is threatening legal action against me (and they are) if I refuse to change the name of that website I have considerable counterclaims against them.

Let's be clear what this is actually all about. That blog has been in existence since last fall and no one has objected to the use of the name. Even today's resolution presented to the County Committee was in error because John Ryan stated I must stop using the name "Berks Dems." I don't use that name so his entire effort was wasted and was a worthless waste of time. See, I don't use the name "Berks Dems."

This was a power play by Representative Tom Caltagirone, the same man who prevented Pennsylvania Democrats from electing a Democratic Speaker of the House last January. He doesn't like what I write about him so he's trying to shut me down.

Let me give you an example of the sort of men Reading Democrats have to pick from next spring. Two weeks ago one of Caltagirone's staffers was murdered, shot with a gun. Caltagirone staunchly supports the NRA in spite of representing a District rife with gun violence. His opponent Mike Morrill was scheduled to canvass that Saturday with a flier questioning Caltagirone's NRA membership and opposition to common sense gun safety laws with the epidemic of gun violence in the District. Morrill suspended that canvassing on the gun issue after the tragedy in deference to the tragedy. Would Caltagirone have done the same thing? Looking at today's conduct by him I say not.

People are getting gunned down constantly in the 127th House District and it's partly because their State Representative opposes all laws restricting handgun sales to one per month, child trigger locks, reporting of lost or stolen weapons, etc. Tragically his Reading office Chief of Staff was murdered by her estranged husband, with a handgun, two weeks ago. Instead of mourning her he then launched an attack upon his opponent, who did nothing wrong, through a surrogate.

I responded because I'm supporting his opponent. I spent four hours sifting through his campaign finance reports online and wrote the article below. The result: Caltagirone hardball tactics against me through his employee John Ryan. You may be successful shutting down the local blog Tom but you cannot shut down this one and this one has state, national, and international readership. Be careful what you wish for.

Update: Help us defeat Rep. Caltagirone and go to Act Blue and help us elect a true liberal Democrat to this seat.