Reporter challenges State Department official to explain how the U.S. Constitution gives Jay Leno the right to make fun of religion.

State Dept. spokesperson Victoria Nuland is grilled about a Jay Leno joke that has offended Sikhs. Here's the joke, which targets Mitt Romney:



The joke-writers probably did a Google image search for something like "fancy palace" without realizing that the glorious image they retrieved depicted a site revered to the exclusion humor.

I love the way Nuland keeps a fully dignified straight face as she encounters the challenge from the Indian reporter:

VIDEO.

As I conlawprof, I find this line the most amusing:

"As India celebrates tomorrow the Constitution Day of India, I have the copy of the U.S. Constitution, and it doesn't say anywhere anything that anybody can say anything or abuse or accuse anybody's religion."

Much funnier than a Jay Leno joke.

I also think it's interesting that CNSNews — which conceives of itself as an antidote to liberal news bias — seems to fault Nuland for citing, in her response to the reporter's question about the U.S. Constitution, the "freedom of religion and tolerance for all religions" but not the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Obviously, Jay Leno has a free-speech right to mock religion and to label the Golden Temple Mitt Romney's summer home. (Maybe Nuland fretted about whether Leno had violated the photographer's copyright.)

Should Nuland have boldly celebrated the American free-speech tradition or was it appropriately diplomatic to murmur assurances about respect for religion?