A libertarian blogger "against violent Islamism"

A liberal media icon is giving credit to a pro-defense libertarian blogger for breaking open the case of Collen LaRose, known as "Jihad Jane." LaRose the "Pennsylvania housewife," who allegedly organized Jihadists in Yemen and the UK to attack Western targets. ABC News reporter Eamon McNiff, took the unusual step of acknowleding that the mainstream media had been late to the story and that "for a group of 'Net vigilantes it was old news."

From ABC News:

In fact, at least one of the Web sleuths claims to have alerted the feds to Colleen LaRose's alleged efforts to raise money and recruit fighters for Islamic terrorists and to carry out her own jihad.

Groups like JawaReport, Quoth the Raven and the YouTube Smackdown Corps claim they had been monitoring LaRose's growing militancy for three years, and watched as the Internet -- particularly YouTube -- fed her fervor.

They also said "Jihad Jane" is not the only one on the Internet that the groups are monitoring.

"There are certainly many others out there who are more eloquent and appear to be more dangerous from the way they talk," a man calling himself Rusty Shackleford told ABC News.

Shackleford, a pen name, says he is a libertarian college professor who created the blog JawaReport in 2004 after he was enraged that Iraqi Islamists had beheaded an American named Nick Berg.

"It was my way of venting. But mostly it was about countering violent Islamist propaganda, specifically the videos that were being produced by al Qaeda in Iraq and other Salaafist jihadists fighting our troops," he said.

Shackleford said his goal from the beginning was combating violent Islamist material and support on the Web.

"I'm a blogger, but also an activist against violent Islamism.

Jawa Editor explains AntiIslamist activism

Continuing:

One of the things we do is try and pressure Webhosts to remove Websites that belong to terrorist organizations. An example of this would be the dozen or so times we've successfully had the Taliban's website removed. The websites sometimes pop back up, sometimes not," Shackleford said.

Shackleford and other contributors to JawaReport and sites like it noticed YouTube had become a hub for videos and comments in support of violent extremism and attacks against the West and its allies, leading to the creation of the YouTube Smackdown.

The Jawa Report is among a growing number of anti-IslamoFascist blogs that in the past have been incorrectly identified as "Conservative," but are now openly stating that they're anti-Islamist views come from an explicitly "libertarian" perspective. The list also includes Pamela Geller's (Ayn Randian) Atlas Shrugs, and Gates of Vienna.