I was talking to my friend Mandy Nagy (aka Liberty Chick) about this whole Kimberlin / SWATing / Rauhauser / Friedman story the other day. We were both tired. The summer sun had long set and we were both in full information overload mode because this is what our days are like lately; filled to the point of choking with information.

You, dear reader, see some of the output about the Team Kimberlin story in the form of blog posts or videos but you don’t see the behind the scenes process. Only our friends and family see all of that. It’s a dizzying blur of constant messages, phone calls, emails, texts and tweets that give us clues or tips or pieces of the puzzle.

Honestly, it’s like drinking water with a garden hose aimed at your face.

That’s just the fun part, too. That’s leaving out the constant, 24/7 attacks that the people working this story have to endure from the anonymous nobodies who I suspect are on the payroll of Team Kimberlin. These attacks are an attempt designed to make anyone and everyone want to just leave the story alone. They want to show you, dear reader, that if you get involved they will go after any and every aspect of your life without rest, reason or mercy. This is why they attack people who even TALK to me on Twitter. This is why they stalk us and those around us.

My family is apparently a justifiable target. And other people have faced worse than I have on this. Mandy’s been attacked for being raped. Literally. These attacks get ugly because The Ugly is actually the whole point. Nothing (and I mean No Thing) is off limits to the cowardly anonymous attack dogs because the whole goal is to create an atmosphere of crazy scattershot gunfire designed to make sane people want to run and hide.

So, Mandy and I and the other people writing about the story get tired sometimes. The entire process is flat out exhausting. Ask Patterico or Aaron Walker or Stacy McCain or Erick Erickson or Ali Akbar or Seth Allen or Mike Stack or Ace of Spades or Michelle Malkin or Brandon Darby or Dana Loesch or anyone else targeted by Team Kimberlin. Those bastards want to wear us down to shut us up.

So, Mandy and I were tired and comparing war wounds the other day and I asked The Big Question.

“Mandy — if you had it to do all over again, knowing what you know today…would you get involved in this story?”

We batted that around for a while and ultimately Mandy and I came to the same conclusion.

Damn right we would.

We’d have to. It’s who we are. It’s like that for a bunch of us on this story.

Some people LIVE for a Big Story. For better or worse, people like Mandy and I are part of that clique of the crazy that skips the easy, safe stories. Andrew Breitbart was our leader and friend and kindred spirit there, literally working on the Big Story of Kimberlin and his minions until Andrew’s big brave loving heart burst in his chest. Andrew went out like a warrior and the fight didn’t end with his passing.

But YOU can make the fight worthwhile.

If you’re a reader trying to follow this saga, please stick with us and this story.

It’s so easy to lose the big picture. This story can get as confusing as watching a soap opera performed in a language you don’t speak, but at root, there’s a battle here with real Good Guys and Bad Guys. There’s a reason that the attack dogs are anonymous; it makes them impervious to the examination. The Good Guys may be fraught with imperfections but the Bad Guys are very, very bad.

Don’t lose that thread in all of this. The Bad Guys are very, very bad.

The Big Story here is that the Bad Guys want to throttle the voices that would expose them, so they can continute their awful, ugly work under the cover of darkness. It can’t happen and that’s why some of us continue to fight and write. And as long as you’re with us, we’ll keep doing it.