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Blogger Brian Beutler Shot, Expected to Make Full Recovery

Sad news, folks. Brian Beutler, the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium and a frequent contributer to this site and this blog, was shot three times yesterday in a failed mugging in Northwest Washington DC. Brian is in the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. Brian's editor, Adele Stan, wrote this after visiting Brian in the hospital:

Funny thing about being a journalist: your job is to write about people and mayhem and trauma, but let any of those touch you directly, and it becomes a different game. With that caveat, allow me to recount my brief visit today with my colleague, Brian Beutler, whose sign-off is a familiar one on this site, and has come to define the reporting of The Media Consortium's syndicated reporting project.

I was just about to leave the house this morning to meet with Brian when I got word this morning, through a mutual colleague of ours, that he had been shot last night in Washington, D.C., in an aborted mugging.

I found him at Washington Hospital Center, where his good friend, Matt Franklin, sat vigil through the night, as Brian underwent major surgery. By the time I got there, Brian was in recovery, and Matt and I were shown to his bedside.

Perhaps foremost among the topics about which Brian writes in his coverage of national security and civil liberties issues is FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the Bush administration's circumvention of the original 1978 legislation, and subsequent legislative attempts to widen the powers of the executive branch to spy on U.S. citizens. The entity of choice for such spying by the Bush administration has been the National Security Agency.

This morning, Brian and I had planned to go over the story he had just delivered about efforts by Sen. Russell Feingold to stop the latest version of FISA legislation from getting through the Senate. As his editor, I had promised our members that we would deliver the piece today.

When I stepped up to Brian's hospital bed, he smiled through the clear, plastic mask covering his mouth, and said in a quite, hoarse voice, "Sorry. I left you high and dry."

What could I do but laugh?

After some housekeeping conversation about his level of comfort (not great, as you might imagine), he piped up, "I have a theory about the shooting." He smiled, impishly.

"Oh, yeah?" I said.

"It was the NSA," he said, with a deadpan look.

(Actually, it was two teenage boys who thought they wanted Brian's phone.)

Matt laughed.

The good word is that Brian is expected to make a full recovery. Please be patient as we await his return to his beat. Nobody covers FISA and the rest of his beat quite like Brian Beutler. I know that his passion for his work will bring him back to the Hill in good time.

--Adele M. Stan

Brian and Adele work in the same office as the members of Mother Jones' DC bureau, so it was a somber day around here after we got news of Brian's incident. David Corn, our bureau chief, and Dan Schulman, our associate editor, visited Brian in the hospital this afternoon. He was in high enough spirits to joke that his shooting was a result of undercover reporting on the DC hand gun ban.

Nick Baumann, assistant editor, and I want to know when Brian's rap album is dropping.

Comments

A Speedy Recovery!

Posted by: RTMAN on 07/02/08 at 5:34 PM Respond

I wish him the best and speedy recovery. That last line was funny :)

Posted by: Guav on 07/02/08 at 6:29 PM Respond

Well,it was a "lone nut". What else it could have been?
You're paranoid if you think "moSSad" is behind this

Posted by: Boris on 07/02/08 at 7:24 PM Respond

Good thing Brian obeyed the law in DC and didn't have a gun. Those boys might have gotten hurt! To us, that's a joke; to my friends in Sweden, it's actually what they believe. To a socialist, the victim and the criminal are both equally valuable state property. For the victim to injure or kill his attacker is an unacceptable loss to the state. Better for the victim to hand over his money or take his beating.

Posted by: Richard on 07/03/08 at 6:01 AM Respond

In the US, handgun deaths are at least 15 per 100,000. In Sweden, they are 1.5 per 100,000. Only in America would people look down their willfully ignorant noses at a country for a social policy that so obviously kept a LOT more people alive. Although I'm sure people of any country could make so ridiculous an analogy. Or so easily remotely assess the value of a life. Maybe one day your energy can be put to use working towards lowering the rate of handgun deaths and injury, making this entire exercise antiquated. Get well soon Brian.

Posted by: Justin on 07/03/08 at 8:05 AM Respond

Wow. The police should work overtime and find those two guys and get those guns away from them before the Supreme Courts recent overturning of the handgun ban goes into effect and the new law allows them to legally have those guns they already had illegally.

If that happens, why, who knows what might happen. They might actually shoot somebody.

Posted by: The Pagan Temple on 07/03/08 at 8:30 AM Respond

MUGGERS DO NOT SHOOT THEIR VICTIMS THREE TIMES; WHICH SUGGESTS THAT THE REAL MOTIVE WAS OTHER THAN MUGGING.

Posted by: Jeugenen on 07/03/08 at 10:06 AM Respond

This was no accident or random mugging.

I carry MACE Triple Action and I've used it on anti-bloggers pretending to be muggers.

Posted by: Barbara Diamond on 07/03/08 at 10:47 AM Respond

It is the rights of millions that are mugged these days in DC, every day, all day.

Does Kevlar come in pin-stripes?

-T

Posted by: TomHodges on 07/03/08 at 11:16 AM Respond

I wish Brian a speedy and full recovery. All the best.

Posted by: Dave on 07/03/08 at 1:18 PM Respond

Jeugenen shouts: MUGGERS DO NOT SHOOT THEIR VICTIMS THREE TIMES; WHICH SUGGESTS THAT THE REAL MOTIVE WAS OTHER THAN MUGGING.

You would know this from your years of experience as a mugger?
You only shot your victims once each?

Maybe you've done extensive and careful research into victims of violent robberies, and the "normal" level of unnecessary violence inflicted on them?

Or maybe you just pulled that opinion from somewhere that the sun don't shine, and have no data to support the opinion's formation?

And Brian: Get Better, Dude!

Posted by: Mr. Shouts-A-Lot on 07/03/08 at 5:27 PM Respond

Maybe if the person ASSAULTED was known to POSSIBLY be Armed it would NOT have transpired...Gun Bans give criminals Courage! Yea for the Supreme Court!

Posted by: Mark S on 07/03/08 at 6:21 PM Respond

Can we get an update on Brian?

Pretty Please?

Posted by: Update?? on 07/08/08 at 1:52 PM Respond

Um, about that Update..?!?

Posted by: Update?? on 07/09/08 at 4:03 PM Respond