Regarding my post last night about a leftist website promising to name a closeted gay Republican senator for the crime of voting for cloture on the Alito nomination, an e-mailer went to the trouble of looking up the D.C. criminal code. His finding:

The post on BlogActive may constitute blackmail under the criminal law of Washington, D.C. As set forth on Lexis – Nexis, <a href=”http://198.187.128.12/dc/lpext.dll/Infobase/120d0/120d6/120e1/1287d/12b64/12b70?f=templates&fn=document-frame.htm&2.0#JD_22-3252
“>section 22-3252 of the District Columbia Code provides:
(a) A person commits the offense of blackmail, if, with intent to obtain property of another or to cause another to do or refrain from doing any act, that person threatens:
(1) To accuse any person of a crime;
(2) To expose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule; or
(3) To impair the reputation of any person, including a deceased person.
(b) Any person convicted of blackmail shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both.
It appears the author of the BlogActive post has threatened, with “intent to . . . cause another to do or refrain from doing any act,” to “expose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule.”
I’m assuming the D.C. Code applies because the BlogActive website lists a D.C. post office box for contributions.

I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know if threatening an unnamed person constitutes blackmail. But it could….