Seems like we need an organization that might protect speech.

These idiots are...well...idiots. It is far more useful to have them self-identify than to hit them over the head with clubs and have them learn not to publicly self-identify and thereby teach the real dangerous psychos to plot their craziness where no one can spot them.

For heaven's sake, the one idiot was venting on Facebook.  Yes, she's a hypocrite, but where is a person supposed to flirt with politically incorrect ideas.  Call her out; call her a hypocrite; argue with her; ventilate her noxious statement with facts.

Ditto the other loon: talk to her; do a background check; monitor her; but to arrest her for an unhinged phone call is not the way to get intelligence on potential threats.

//A board member for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has resigned after urging people to kill supporters of presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Loring Wirbel’s Facebook post was captured by The Daily Caller – a right-leaning online newspaper.

The post states, “The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, ‘This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before Election Day.’ They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force…”

“It’s almost like, you will think the way we think, you will do what we want you to do, or we eliminate you?” says Steve House, chair of the Colorado Republican Party.

It’s the second threat against Republicans in Colorado in one week.

Fern Delise, 54, of Fountain was arrested after police say she called Planned Parenthood saying, “It’s tempting to walk into a republican party meeting with my dead husband’s gun and just start shooting people.”//

Dr. Frankenstein beholds his monster.

To be fair, Dershowitz has always been a civil libertarian, part of the great tradition of liberal First Amendment defenders.

On the other hand, the current fascist mindset didn't appear on the left by accident.

Shut up, he explained.

This would be funny....

...if it weren't so scary and pathetic as an example of (a) the cognitive dissonance of American liberalism and (b) didn't reek of succumbing to the totalitarian temptation.

Bill Nye says:

//The single most important thing we can do now, however, is talk about climate change. My claim is that if we were talking about climate change the way we’re talking about Ferguson, Missouri, or Baltimore or other important issues, we would be getting these things done. We would be solving this problem together. And, look, it’s hard. You’re going to meet people who don’t want to talk about it. //

And:


//Yeah, you’re leading to my next point. Part of the solution to this problem or this set of problems associated with climate change is getting the deniers out of our discourse. You know, we can’t have these people – they’re absolutely toxic. And so part of the message in this book is to get the deniers out of the picture...//


This is a very Stalinist approach, one might say, to the traditional American virtue of encouraging speech and debate.

Salon, though, thinks it's terrific.

Hope and change in the Age of Obama.

A US Attorney goes after a libertarian magazine because its commenters practice this strange thing called "free speech."

I'm old enough to remember when liberals cared about "Free Speech."

Secularism works!

Europe boldly marches forward into the 17th Century.

//I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to tell you that freedom of speech no longer exists in Europe.

In almost every European country in 2015, there are individuals who are in prison or doing some kind of community service or paying off a fine simply for something that they said, simply for expressing themselves.

In Scotland, birthplace of so much of the Enlightenment, a man is currently in jail for the crime of singing an offensive song.

The man is a 24-year-old fan of the largely Protestant football team Rangers. And he was recently found guilty of singing a song called “The Billy Boys”, which is an anti-Catholic song that Rangers fans have been singing for years.

Under Scotland’s Orwellian Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, he was sentenced to four months in jail for songcrimes. We’ve had thoughtcrime and speechcrime — now we have songcrime.

In Sweden, which many view as the Mecca of liberalism, the happiest, fairest nation in Europe, a man was recently released from a six-month prison sentence for producing offensive art.

His name is Dan Parks. He’s a painter. He does paintings which he says are designed to challenge political correctness and to rattle the authorities. And they can certainly be described as offensive and racist works. For this, he was sent to jail for six months at the end of last year and his artworks were destroyed by the Swedish state.//

The lesson of the last couple of weeks is that Religion is a good thing to mock, but not...

..something worthy of free speech protection.

//Things heated up when The New York Times editorial board set about discrediting Chief Cochran in particular and religious liberty in general. As they write:

 It should not matter that the investigation found no evidence that Mr. Cochran had mistreated gays or lesbians. His position as a high-level public servant makes his remarks especially problematic, and requires that he be held to a different standard. . . . If he wants to work as a public official, however, he may not foist his religious views on other city employees who have the right to a boss who does not speak of them as second-class citizens.

The argument suggests that even The New York Times believes Cochran’s firing was warranted based on views he holds, which would seem to contradict Mayor Reed’s claim that Cochran was removed “for failing to get approval for the book’s publication, for commenting publicly on his suspension after being told not to, and for exposing the city to possible discrimination lawsuits.” Either way, The New York Times has sought to nationalize the issue and make Cochran the poster child for publicly holding unacceptable beliefs.//