UPDATE - Jason Cherniak disagrees with me. The horror! Someone track this man down and harass his employer! Wait, I'm not Warren Kinsella. Scratch that. Anyway, I understand his point, although I'm sticking to my opinion, but I do want to note that I think it was equally wrong - and bullyish -  for Jason Kenney to drag someone's employer into the dispute. I'd  forgotten about that little escapade, or I would have mentioned it in my original post.  I am, at least, consistent in my views.

As for Kinsella's comments about me, my colleague Chris Selley and Maclean's; well, that's what happens when you disagree with Warren Kinsella. He implies that you're a neo-Nazi sympathizer. Oh, and one more thing. What makes anyone think that this is someone employed in a "senior position" in the highest office in the land? Last time I checked, there are lots of low- to mid-level staffers at PCO - many of whom are entirely non-political. All we know is that he uses the PCO gateway to send email. That hardly proves that he is a high level politico with influence over government policy on hate laws.  (Note to Warren Kinsella: Please don't take this as an invitation to post his full name and/or title.)

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Believe me, no one is more surprised than I am to find this blog defending an anonymous PMO staffer. But here I am, doing just that, in regards to this post from Warren Kinsella, in which the Great Defender of the Voiceless and Vulnerable gleefully semi-outs someone with the temerity -- the absolute cheek! - not only to disagree with Warren's disagreement with the National Post's Jonathan Kay, but sent him a perfectly civil email explaining why. The nerve!

Clearly, the only recourse that Kinsella had was to publicly reveal the IP address from which the email was sent, and link it, in as public a manner as possible, to the individual's employer - in this case, either the Prime Minister or the Privy Council Office. He then went on to ask, in typical Kinsella fashion whether this was the "official PCO position on Neo-Naziism," and predicted that the individual in question was about to have a "complicated afternoon."

Now, I may be old-fashioned, at least in terms of netiquette. But as I've always understood it, private email is just that -- private -- unless both parties agree to make it public. The one exception to the rule is when the email includes a credible, serious threat. The way I see it, by soliciting the opinions of his readers - not just those in support of his view, but both for and against his position - Kinsella was absolutely wrong to then use one of the emails he received to embarrass the sender - or perhaps even cause him problems at work.

Really, what did this "James" person do to deserve that sort of treatment? Is Kinsella's skin so thin that he can't abide the notion that someone can disagree with him without automatically being classified a supporter of neo-Nazis? And by attacking a reader who makes it clear, in the very email for which he is being publicly pilloried, that he finds such views to be the purview of "knuckle-dragging racists" does he not risk trivializing the issue entirely?