[UPDATED] On McBerry’s Latest Insane Rambling

Over the weekend, Ray McBerry sent out yet another rambling, paranoid missive about how “they’re coming to get me!”.

There has been quite a bit of discussion on this, and you can read the email over at PeachPundit or Jim Galloway’s site, which also has another piece about the issue today.

Today’s Galloway post in particular had something that drew my attention. He linked to this page at an organization called Talking Points Memo (TPM), which has an email purporting to be from McBerry’s exwife that has at least some of the allegations McBerry was responding to (and which FEW people knew about before the email blast from him).

Now, I’m going to gloss over what others have already said – that McBerry broke the first rule of campaign denials (“NEVER repeat the allegation”) among them. Seriously, go read those other sites for that, they have some good stuff – particularly Galloway.

But I do want to bring out something from the email TPM claims is from McBerry’s ex-wife. In it, she says: (emphasis mine)

A woman from our church came to me and expressed concern about Ray’s actions while in the presence of a young girl in our church. I had already seen this, and begged daily for him to reassure me that this was nothing. He told me I was being foolish and should not speak this way to him. Shortly after, the girls parents took Ray to court for disorderly conduct around a minor. At this time he was teaching at an alternative high school. Because his father was the Assistant DA, all charges were dropped. But, not before he was ordered to resign from his teaching position, and never to pursue the career again.

I emphasize these two points for one reason: They are fairly easy to prove or disprove objectively. IF that lawsuit was indeed filed – even as a civil suit in a magistrate court- , the allegations and disposition of the case SHOULD be public record, and the only way I can think of this not being the case is if Ray was a minor when it happened (which doesn’t seem to be the case) and the record was sealed.

Also, whether or not McBerry’s father was an ADA should be EXTREMELY easy to find out (also public record).

Either of these being true does not necessarily mean that Ray did anything wrong. After all, the best lies contain a grain of truth, and typically the bigger the grain the more believable the lie.

I simply point these out here in the hopes that someone who knows more about the jurisdictions in question could potentially file the appropriate Freedom of Information Act request and get the documentation to settle at least those two facts in particular either way, independent of any campaign.

[UPDATE] I just received word from someone in the professional media (I won’t give any indication of who or who they work for) that they ARE actively seeking the record of the complaint in question. So far, they have had no luck finding it.