Written By : John Hawkins

I was talking to some liberal bloggers at the foot at the escalators on RightOnline, when things started getting a little exciting.

First off, 20 women in hijabs walked upstairs. I noticed it, but had no clue who they were, what they were doing, or if they were part of some event. It turns out they were a liberal flash mob.

They were supposedly protesting a blogger “connected to Breitbart” who harassed some Muslim women on the street to the point where he got arrested. Someone mentioned a blog name, but it sounded like a local Minnesota blog and I had never heard of it before. How true was this story? Was this person even attending the conference? No idea.

While this was happening, Dan Choi, who was discharged because of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, started doing interviews right in front of the escalators. He was asked to move. He refused. He was asked to move again and he refused. At that point, they were supposedly going to call the cops to move him out of the way.

After a few minutes, nothing had happened, and another staffer came downstairs to ask him what he was doing. Then, and perhaps this is breaking the “reporters shouldn’t be part of the story rule,” I told them that he was trying to get arrested and that they should ignore him. Last I saw, before I headed upstairs to file this story, they were taking my advice.

Since there weren’t going to be any arrest photos (hopefully), I figured I’d get a photo with Dan to go with the story.

PS: I walked around at Netroots Nation a little earlier. Most interesting fact? The crowd was 90%-95% white.

Update #1: Here’s a liberal blog repeating the story (with details) that I was hearing from liberal bloggers at the conference.

The story started the night before when two women ventured into the streets of Minneapolis wearing the traditional Hijab (headscarf.) They were approached by John Hugh Gilmore, a 52 year attorney and self described Conservative who blogs for “Minnesota Conservatives.” According to police, he asked the women what they thought of Ayaan Hersi Ali, a Somali who is a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who decries Muslims. The women told him they weren’t exactly fans. The inebriated Gilmore then became upset and started harassing the pair, asking what right they had to be in this country, until 60 onlookers intervened. Police were called and arrested Gilmore, but not until Gilmore tried to reach Andrew Breitbart on his phone.

This is the story. How much of that story is true? Does this guy know Breitbart? Was he even at RightOnline? No idea. There don’t appear to be any Google connections between the two before this and Gilmore’s local Minnesota blog has exactly two posts up in the last two months.

Hat tip to @breitbartfan77 for the story.

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