Paul Deignan.

This little pimple rather pompously trolled Bitch Ph.D., and one commenter ("Wally") sent an email to his advisors, and Dr B chopped out some of his comments and banned him. His response? He's trying to puzzle out Dr B's identity so he can reveal it and use it in his lawsuit against Wally.

That's right. Lawsuit. Over blogging.

The story is pretty damned stupid already, and Mr Deignan is looking like a whiny little wanker with an elevated sense of entitlement, but what really blows the story into a major league example of assholishness and hypocrisy are his dimbulb rationalizations for doing this:

1. To make an example out of miscreants. The internet should be a place where free speech is respected.

Whaaa…? Who is trying to silence his critics with a nuisance lawsuit and an attempt to intimidate by exposing a pseudonym here? He is no friend of free speech, obviously.

2. Because, I am a nice guy. I am allowing Wally one more opportunity to save himself and his friend a lot of grief. Ever been sued Wally? It goes on forever and it is no fun at all (except for me). And I'm going to enjoy spending a lot of money in attorney fees because I like lawyers.

He's also trying to extort Wally by threatening to sue Dr B:

Remember, if I sue you, I sue your friend. It's a twofer.

Nice guy, huh? I think a declaration that he enjoys harrassing people with lawsuits, and is also willing to lash out at people's friends to get them to obey his demands, pretty much closes the book on that claim. Oh, and one more example of Deignan's hypocrisy:

Apparently, this professor has nothing better to do with his time than to go on a witch hunt (and not a very smart one at that).

That's in the middle of a long post with sitemeter screenshots and obsessive nitpicking over comments…by Deignan. I guess Ph.D. candidates in Indiana have even more free time.

You know, for such a self-declared smart guy, you might think he'd realize that this kind of outrageous excess is going to attract links to his behavior, and Google is going to remember who Paul Deignan is. What's going to hurt his reputation isn't an email to an advisor or an edited comment on a weblog…it's his own ugly, petty response.