18 foreign tourists plummet to their deaths as a hot air balloon explodes over the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor.

Terrible. Apparently, there was a gust of wind and the gas pipe broke. This attention-grabbing incident is an occasion for looking at the more general question of traveling to Egypt. The attractions are obvious, but the downside is so bad:

Tourism revenues in Egypt dropped 30 percent to $8.8 billion in 2011, following the uprising in January and February. Government officials reported a slight resurgence in those numbers in 2012....

Across the country, anger at Egypt’s newly elected Islamist government and its failure to bring economic and political stability to the country has fueled a rising tide of violent protests and clashes, which further threaten the tourism sector. 

So here's a country where people who are supposedly upset about instability take to the streets and make things even more unstable. Noted. I would never go there. But it's not just the violent protests and the occasional popping balloon:

Fatal road and train accidents are common in Egypt, due to badly maintained infrastructure and poor law enforcement....

[And] an increase in sexual harassment and assault on Egypt’s streets has added to the fears of women travelers.

Terrible. Why does anyone go there? But they do. And they let some local company send them up a thousand feet in the air in a balloon.

Black man in a KKK outfit on a street corner in Philadelphia...

... holds a sign saying that black-on-black murder today exceeds — every 6 months — the total number of murders the KKK inflicted on black people over a period of 86 years. 

The man, Sixx King, is a filmmaker. A lot of people are angry at him.

Anti-abortion man, who yelled from a tree at the Inauguration, is charged with a crime.

Rives Miller Grogan was charged "with violating a previous order to stay away from the U.S. Capitol, and with violating laws that require authorities to 'preserve the peace and secure the Capitol from defacement,' and with 'preventing any portion of the Capitol Grounds and terraces to used [sic] as playgrounds ... to protect the public property, turf and grass from destruction.'

He had just been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct last week, after police said he shouted from the gallery of the U.S. Senate. He’s been convicted five times in the District since 2009, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct and disobeying police....

Police said Grogan once dropped to the ground in the Capitol Rotunda while clutching a doll and screamed in front of 60 visitors. Another time, police said, he paced the Capitol steps holding a bible and shouting, “Stop killing the babies.”....

Officer Shennell S. Antrobus, a U.S. Capitol Police spokesman, said officials decided to leave Grogan in the tree until after the swearing in to avoid disruptions. Police said he came down on his own after five hours.

Some of this reminds me of our tenacious Wisconsin protesters, whose deep convictions and emotive righteousness have led them to specialize in loud annoyingness and innumerable petty violations. Grogan is different from them too. He's driven by religious fervor, and he's not on the left.

What are the limits of protest?

ADDED: This story reminds me of an old Sunday School song:



I remember singing that as a child and feeling embarrassed by how cute the adults found it whenever a child did the spoken-word part, "Zacchaeus, you come down." Are children's songs written to amuse children or to lure children into performances that will amuse adults? If the latter, is it wrong?

Here's the Bible story, in chapter 19 of Luke:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Jesus looked with favor on the tax collector, it was his method to conspicuously reach out to those who seemed conspicuously to be sinners when there was a more subtle point that all are sinners and he is reaching out to all of us.

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Lefties and righties can argue about what (if anything) Jesus meant to say about taxation. One might say, as I suggested above, that Zacchaeus was chosen because the people had a stereotype equating tax collection with sin, so he easily became The Sinner, for Jesus to bounce his lesson off of. But you might say that Zacchaeus's conversion shows the importance of taxation when it is used to take accumulated wealth from the rich and to distribute it to the poor. That's not the way the taxation of the time was used, and Zacchaeus had become wealthy through his tax collection work. So he's more like a typical rich man, and he is declared saved because he instantly gave half his possessions to the poor, without regard to whether that wealth was ill-gotten. Zacchaeus makes a second promise, to give quadruple restitution of any ill-gotten gains.

What is the proper tax rate for the rich? The Bible implies that it's 50% and that the spending should go toward alleviating poverty. And that's not a 50% income tax, by the way, Mr. Buffet. That's a wealth tax. You should cough up about $15 billion to get right with God.

"I need over 7 rounds (rapists are harder to kill than deer)."

Sign at a "Guns Across America" rally.

Video from the "Guns Across America" rally here in Madison, Wisconsin today.

Here's some edited video showing the crowd and the signs.



In the middle there is a prayer, and at the end is the national anthem. Once you get to the national anthem, it's all national anthem from there on. I decided not to edit that part down because you get a good view of the people who attended the rally and their attitude.

The prayer is quite interesting, including some discussion of what Jesus said to Peter after he cut off a man's ear. (Jesus didn't tell Peter to surrender his sword. He told him to "put it back in the holster." My Bible says "sheath," but Jesus wasn't speaking English.)

At 2:07, you see a sign that says "Political Power Grows Out of the Barrel of a Gun. Mao," held next to a second, matching sign that says — in between 2 peace signs — "Support and Defend the Constitution."

At 2:15, I'm talking to this man about his nice-looking but hard-to-stop-and-read sign:



He asks me if I recognize the face and (despite knowing I'm wrong) I guess Michael J. Fox. He lets me know it's Ayn Rand and I say I'll read it later (knowing I've got the still). It says: "The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology."

At 2:35, I talk to a counter-protester with a sign that says "Ban High Capacity Magazine Clips" and ask "What's a magazine clip?" She knew there was some question about that term, but she'd researched it on the internet and decided that was the term she wanted to use. Perhaps saying "magazine clip" is a way to signal which side you're on. A shibboleth.

ADDED: Other stills from the rally here.

Meade drove me up to the Capitol Square to catch the "Guns Across America" rally.

I jumped out of the car almost before it stopped moving to catch up with this sign: "The Experts Agree/Gun Control Works":



"Rights Don't END Where Feelings Begin" — note the rifle-handle for the sign:



Not sure whether the Anonymous crowd is for gun rights, but the masked man's sign, not fully visible in the photo, said "The Only Criminals That Care About the Gun Laws Are the Ones in Office":






A gun-shaped staff for the the American flag along with a dramatic "Come And Take IT" flag:







These two are focusing on the mental illness problem:





This sign had 2 sides. Side 1:



Side 2:



"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it" is a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but according to the Monticello website, there is no evidence that he ever said or wrote that (or the variation ""The people will not understand the importance of the Second Amendment until it is too late").





Out in front of the Hans Christian Heg statue, there were a couple of anti-gun-rights sign-holders. "Keep Your Guns AWAY From Our Children":



This last photo is by Meade, with me posing:



ADDED: Here's the "Wisconsin Guns Across America" Facebook page.

AND: Here's some video I did.

"FBI Investigated 'Occupy' As Possible 'Terrorism' Threat..."

According to documents obtained by a FOIA request by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.

At the Michigan protests: "I was sucker-punched 4 times on camera, without retaliation, choked..."

"... and the AFP tent is torn to the ground with women and children inside of it. Extremely violent footage."

Union thugs... in broad daylight, on camera. Are they stupid... or do they know something about the willingness of the authorities to enforce the law?

"The Republican-led Michigan legislature approved a pair of right-to-work bills..."

"... sending them on for the governor's expected signature, as thousands of union activists continued protesting outside the state capitol."

Passing a right-to-work law in Michigan comes as a deep blow to unions, especially in a state the United Auto Workers union calls home. They see right-to-work as political payback for unions' traditional support for Democrats.

Check out the slide-show at the link, especially the view of the Capitol Rotunda at slide 4. Skimpy compared to the Wisconsin protests of 2011.

"Large numbers of out-of-state protesters are expected to join those from Michigan."

"Plates bearing Florida, Indiana and Ohio license plates were among those in the parking lot of the Michigan AFL-CIO in Lansing this morning."

We covered the pro-union protests here in Madison in 2011. They were just down the street. It's a bit of a drive over to Lansing. 6 hours. Meade could do it. What do you think? You'll have to instigate and incite him.

"[P]rotestors once again gathered on the steps of San Francisco City Hall to hang out with their wangs out in a good, old-fashioned love fest...."

"In reaction to yesterday's 6-5 vote to ban public nudity.... Our photographer was on the scene to bring you more than an eyeful."

I love the first pic at the link, both before and after clicking the sanitized-for-your-protection-rectangle-of-propriety or whatever you call that thing. Not that thing. That thing. We've already established that you call that thing a "wang."

Russell Means "styled himself a throwback to ancestors who resisted the westward expansion of the American frontier..."

"... and, with theatrical protests that brought national attention to poverty and discrimination suffered by his people, became arguably the nation’s best-known Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse."

Russell Means, dead from esophageal cancer at the age of 72.

He rose to national attention as a leader of the American Indian Movement in 1970 by directing a band of Indian protesters who seized the Mayflower II ship replica at Plymouth, Mass., on Thanksgiving Day. The boisterous confrontation between Indians and costumed “Pilgrims” attracted network television coverage and made Mr. Means an overnight hero to dissident Indians and sympathetic whites.

Later, he orchestrated an Indian prayer vigil atop the federal monument of sculptured presidential heads at Mount Rushmore....

Theatrical protests...

VP debate substance: "Biden contradicts State Department on Benghazi security."

Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy:

"We weren't told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there," Biden said.

In fact, two security officials who worked for the State Department in Libya at the time testified Thursday that they repeatedly requested more security and two State Department officials admitted they had denied those requests.

"All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources," the top regional security officer in Libya over the summer, Eric Nordstrom, testified. "In those conversations, I was specifically told [by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb] ‘You cannot request an SST extension.' I determined I was told that because there would be too much political cost. We went ahead and requested it anyway."

Nordstrom was so critical of the State Department's reluctance to respond to his calls for more security that he said, "For me, the Taliban is on the inside of the building."

"We felt great frustration that those requests were ignored or just never met," testified Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, a Utah National Guardsman who was leading a security team in Libya until August.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) released the unclassified cables containing those requests.

Was Biden ignorant of all this, was he lying at the debate, or did he mean to assert that the State Department officials were lying?

The Libya question opened the debate. Let's look at the transcript:

RADDATZ: I would like to begin with Libya. On a rather somber note, one month ago tonight, on the anniversary of 9/11, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans were killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi. The State Department has now made clear, there were no protesters there. It was a pre-planned assault by heavily armed men. Wasn't this a massive intelligence failure, Vice President Biden?

BIDEN: What is was, it was a tragedy, Martha. It -- Chris Stevens was one of our best. We lost three other brave Americans. I can make absolutely two commitments to you and all the American people tonight. One, we will find and bring to justice the men who did this. And secondly, we will get to the bottom of it, and whatever — wherever the facts lead us, wherever they lead us, we will make clear to the American public, because whatever mistakes were made will not be made again....

Biden avoids the question. On a question that he could have predicted and should have prepared for, he makes the lame move of labeling what happened "a tragedy," which really translates to: We don't want any responsibility. Something just happened. Who could have predicted? But we'll investigate and "get to the bottom" of it. If there were any mistakes — whatever mistakes — we won't make them again. I guess there's an implicit denial that there was an "intelligence failure," which is what Raddatz asked about. If his point was it was all a big surprise — who could have known?/next time we'll do better — then what explains all the talk about the video and the (nonexistent) protests, about which Obama, et al. talked as if they had information. It's not enough to say we will get to the bottom of it when you were acting — as long as you could get away with it — as if you had gotten to the bottom of it.

Biden proceeds to run out his 2 minute clock by talking generically about national security — did you know it's the President's "most important responsibility"? — and specifically — though it's beyond the scope of the question — about Iraq and Afghanistan, about the killing of bin Laden, and the President's "steady hand and clear vision."

It's Ryan's turn, and after "We mourn the loss of these four Americans who were murdered," he focuses on the video-protests story that — based on the State Department reports — we now know is completely wrong:

RYAN: When you take a look at what has happened just in the last few weeks, they sent the U.N. ambassador out to say that this was because of a protest and a YouTube video. It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack.

He went to the U.N. and in his speech at the U.N. he said six times — he talked about the YouTube video.

Look, if we’re hit by terrorists we’re going to call it for what it is, a terrorist attack. Our ambassador in Paris has a Marine detachment guarding him. Shouldn’t we have a Marine detachment guarding our ambassador in Benghazi, a place where we knew that there was an Al Qaida cell with arms?

This is becoming more troubling by the day. They first blamed the YouTube video. Now they’re trying to blame the Romney-Ryan ticket for making this an issue.

He then uses some of his time to respond to the nonresponsive material Biden threw in (about Iraq and Afghanistan), but he ties it back to Libya by ending with:

RYAN: This Benghazi issue would be a tragedy in and of itself, but unfortunately it’s indicative of a broader problem. And that is what we are watching on our TV screens is the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy, which is making the (inaudible) more chaotic us less safe.

Raddatz follows up with Ryan, prodding him with what was the Obama administration's main talking point immediately after the attack:

RADDATZ: I just want to you about right in the middle of the crisis [sic]. Governor Romney, and you’re talking about this again tonight, talked about the weakness; talked about apologies from the Obama administration. Was that really appropriate right in the middle of the crisis?

RYAN: On that same day, the Obama administration had the exact same position. Let’s recall that they disavowed their own statement that they had put out earlier in the day in Cairo. So we had the same position, but we will — it’s never too early to speak out for our values.

"Our values" seems to be one of his planned big themes, and he shifts away from that one thing Romney said to broader issues:

We should have spoken out right away when the green revolution was up and starting; when the mullahs in Iran were attacking their people. We should not have called Bashar Assad a reformer when he was turning his Russian-provided guns on his own people. We should always stand up for peace, for democracy, for individual rights.

And we should not be imposing these devastating defense cuts, because what that does when we equivocate on our values, when we show that we’re cutting down on defense, it makes us more weak. It projects weakness. And when we look weak, our adversaries are much more willing to test us. They’re more brazen in their attacks, and are allies are less willing to…

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey.

That was Biden's first interruption (and first euphemism for "bullshit"). Raddatz rewards the interruption, presumably started to do what she said at the outset she'd do: "encourage a discussion between the candidates with follow-up questions." Better to encourage the crosstalk then to let the candidates get by plugging in prepared speeches.

RADDATZ: And why is that so?

BIDEN: Because not a single thing he said is accurate. First of all…

Not a single thing? Even the part where he accused you guys of lying about the video?

RADDATZ: Be specific.

BIDEN: I will be very specific. Number one, the — this lecture on embassy security — the congressman here cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for, number one. So much for the embassy security piece.

No, not "so much." All you've done is accuse Ryan of hypocrisy, for budget cutting. That does not address the failure to provide more security in Libya where it was most needed.

Number two, Governor Romney, before he knew the facts, before he even knew that our ambassador was killed, he was out making a political statement which was panned by the media around the world. And this talk about this — this weakness. I — I don’t understand what my friend’s talking about here.

Ryan defended Romney's making the statement, and Biden responds that it wasn't a good idea. That doesn't establish that something's "inaccurate." The factual deficiency is Biden's, and Biden is trying to distract us from that by disagreeing with opinions of Ryan's and portraying those differences of opinion as lies.

BIDEN: We — this is a president who’s gone out and done everything he has said he was going to do. This is a guy who’s repaired our alliances so the rest of the world follows us again. This is the guy who brought the entire world, including Russia and China, to bring about the most devastating — most devastating — the most devastating efforts on Iran to make sure that they in fact stop (inaudible). Look, I — I just — I mean, these guys bet against America all the time.

Raddatz directs the conversation "back to Libya" and the issue she raised at the outset that Biden has been avoiding:

RADDATZ: What were you first told about the attack? Why — why were people talking about protests? When people in the consulate first saw armed men attacking with guns, there were no protesters. Why did that go on (inaudible)?

Great intervention by Raddatz!

BIDEN: Because that was exactly what we were told by the intelligence community. The intelligence community told us that. 

That is, he denies that the administration made up the video story. He blames the intelligence community. How did the intelligence community make up something so bizarre? Public protests that didn't take place?

BIDEN: As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment. 

But why would they make an assessment that included the report of vivid public events that didn't happen? That's unbelievable on its face. Malarkey!

BIDEN:  That’s why there’s also an investigation headed by Tom Pickering, a leading diplomat from the Reagan years, who is doing an investigation as to whether or not there are any lapses, what the lapses were, so that they will never happen again.

RADDATZ: And they wanted more security there.

Another great Raddatz intervention, this one calling attention to the very point highlighted by Foreign Policy.

BIDEN: Well, we weren’t told they wanted more security there. We did not know they wanted more security again. And by the way, at the time we were told exactly — we said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew. That was the assessment. And as the intelligence community changed their view, we made it clear they changed their view.

And that is the lie of the evening! How can that not be a lie?

BIDEN: That’s why I said we will get to the bottom of this. You know, usually when there’s a crisis, we pull together. We pull together as a nation. 

He's begging us not to look any further into the lie he just told. Don't fault us for the egregious fault we just committed.

BIDEN: But as I said, even before we knew what happened to the ambassador, the governor was holding a press conference — was holding a press conference. That’s not presidential leadership.

Please, he's begging us, look at that one thing Romney said. He criticized us, at a time when there should be no criticizing. Raddatz — really nicely! — picks up the theme of Romney's remark, which was about how the United States should not apologize:

RADDATZ: Mr. Ryan, I want to ask you about — the Romney campaign talks a lot about no apologies. He has a book called called “No Apologies.” Should the U.S. have apologized for Americans burning Korans in Afghanistan? Should the U.S. apologize for U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban corpses?

RYAN: Oh, gosh, yes. Urinating on Taliban corpses? What we should not apologize for…

RADDATZ: Burning Korans, immediately?

RYAN: What — what we should not be apologizing for are standing up for our values. 

See? "Our values" — that's a planned theme.

RYAN: What we should not be doing is saying to the Egyptian people, while Mubarak is cracking down on them, that he’s a good guy and, in the next week, say he ought to go.

What we should not be doing is rejecting claims for — for calls for more security in our barracks, in our Marine — we need Marines in Benghazi when the commander on the ground says we need more forces for security. There were requests for extra security; those requests were not honored.

Ryan should have hit Biden hard on his denial that there were requests for more security. Biden just lied, and he's already accused you of lying. 

RYAN: Look, this was the anniversary of 9/11. It was Libya, a country we knew we had Al Qaida cells there, as we know Al Qaida and its affiliates are on the rise in Northern Africa. And we did not give our ambassador in Benghazi a Marine detachment?

Of course there’s an investigation, so we can make sure that this never happens again, but when it comes to speaking up for our values, we should not apologize for those.

"Our values...." I think he's made a strategic decision to be positive, to resonate with the people's desire for optimism. He's not going to stoop to you're a liar/no, you're a liar ugliness. He'll keep calling us to a higher ground.

Here’s the problem. Look at all the various issues out there, and it’s unraveling before our eyes. The vice president talks about sanctions on Iran. They got — we’ve had four…

At that, Raddatz declares an end to the Libya segment. Ryan didn't take advantage of many openings he had. Biden provided the material Ryan could have used to crush him. He chose not to. And Biden, who was thrown horribly off balance by a very damaging opening question by the moderator, stayed on his feet to fight the next round. And boy, was he itching to fight.

UPDATE: A White House spokesman attempts to clear things up.

Only 23% of likely voters think the killing of Christopher Stevens was a "spontaneous reactions to an anti-Islamic video."

57% say it was "planned in advance." And 85% "believe it is likely that terrorists were involved."

Younger voters are far less convinced than their elders that the protests at U.S. embassies in the Middle East have been planned in advance. Female voters are not as sure of that as male voters are.

I'm guessing that the more you like President Obama, the more you've been influenced by the administration's propaganda about the "Innocence of Muslims" video.

The government last week spent $70,000 in Pakistan to run a television ad featuring President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the video in hopes of limiting protests there.

They don't have to run that ad in the United States, where the mainstream media carries their message free of charge. Here's what they showed in Pakistan:



What's that red flag with the pentagram behind her? It seems kind of Satanic. Is it this:



What's going on there? And, more importantly, should we fly into a rage and take to the streets?

"They should allow us to demolish the American embassy because they have blasphemed against our holy Prophet."

"They" = the police in Islamabad, Pakistan. The line is spoken by a student protester, who also says:

"Our policemen are not any better than the Americans because they are trying to stop us. They are in the same league as them, they are heretics like them...

"The police are also becoming an accomplice of blasphemers.... "

According to an al Jazeera article linked by Drudge (who uses the headline "US Embassy in Pakistan Under Seige"). More from al Jazeera:

In Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, over two hundred protesters set fire to an effigy of Barack Obama, the US president.

"We will make known it by burning the effigy of Obama and his allies that a blasphemer deserves to be burnt to death," said Maulana Mehmood ul Hassan Ashraf, secretary general of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam.

"France to close embassies in fear of cartoon backlash."

In 20 Muslim countries. The cartoons, published today in a satirical French publication called Charlie Hebdo, "show the Prophet Mohammed naked and refer to the incendiary US-made film which has been fueling deadly unrest among Muslim communities for over a week."

ADDED: This post and the earlier post today about David Letterman saying "You haven't seen me naked" to Barack Obama make me want to quote this verse from an old Bob Dylan song:

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

Hundred dollar plates? Man, that really is an old song. After the Letterman interview, Obama attended a $40,000-per-plate dinner!

"We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?"

Asked a man holding a "Shut Up America" sign outside the American embassy in Cairo.

"Obama is the president, so he should have to apologize!"...

“We don’t think that depictions of the prophets are freedom of expression. We think it is an offense against our rights,” [said Ismail Mohamed, a religious scholar.] “The West has to understand the ideology of the people.”

Even during the protests, some stone throwers stressed that the clash was not Muslim against Christian. Instead, they suggested that the traditionalism of people of both faiths in the region conflicted with Western individualism and secularism....

Some commentators said they regretted that the violence here and around the region had overshadowed the underlying argument against the offensive video.

ADDED: We're not that far from criminalizing blasphemy in the United States, though it seems obvious to educated Americans today that these laws are unconstitutional. Here's a quick summary of the history of blasphemy law in the U.S. And here's the 1952 case Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson where the Supreme Court struck down a New York law that banned showing "sacrilegious" movies. New York's highest court had interpreted the statute to mean "that no religion, as that word is understood by the ordinary, reasonable person, shall be treated with contempt, mockery, scorn and ridicule." The U.S. Supreme Court said:

[T]he state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them which is sufficient to justify prior restraints upon the expression of those views. It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches, or motion pictures.

My point is: it took a Supreme Court case as recently as 1952, to establish that principle in our country, with its rich free-speech tradition. Lawyers even saw fit at that time to argue that movies shouldn't get free-speech protection at all because "their production, distribution, and exhibition is a large-scale business conducted for private profit."

Oh, wait, the President of the United States today argues that corporations don't have free-speech rights, and many Americans, including highly educated lawyers, are saying the Constitution should be amended to delete those rights.

Let's not be so quick to assume the man with the "Shut Up America" sign is thoroughly alien. The threats to free speech lie within. They always have.

"Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Manhattan's financial district early Monday to mark the 1-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement..."

"... choking traffic and crowding the area around the New York Stock Exchange but being met at most turns by walls of police who stopped them from occupying anything."

It's not so cute this time around, but it was at first, last time, to some people. Remember?

"Emanuel is a bully, stop Rahmunism!"

There's you teacher, kiddies. The one with the sign...

"Hey hey. Ho ho. Rahm Emanuel has got to go"

"Hey Rahmald Reagan, don't privatize public ed"

"Rahm Walker, go back to Wisconsin"

Etc. etc. The headline at the link — to the Chicago Tribune — is "Teachers get creative with signs targeting mayor." Do they actually mean to compliment the teachers creativity? I'd prefer to think they're mocking moronic teacherspeak: That's very creative.

Just tell me if it's good or bad, lady. I don't need you boosting my self esteem over nothing.

And teachers, you look awful with your crappy signs. Why, when I was in school, and we didn't even have foam board for signs, and we had to use oak tag, we knew how to measure the space, count the letters, use a ruler to pencil in straight lines properly spaced, pencil in the letters, go over the letters in marker, and then erase the pencil with ArtGum. You wouldn't think of doing a project without following the basic requirements of lettering. You people are supposed to be teachers. Letter your damned signs properly... and then we can talk about whether you're creative.

And could you comb your hair before you go out in public? You need to set an example for the younger children. What's the right way to ask for more more more? Not with a sloppy sign, messy hair, and your angry face. Let's see your please may I face.

"Dead Ambassador dragged through streets, MSM furious at Romney criticism of Obama."

The media strains "to shift the focus from the Obama administration’s failure to protect our embassies and for its apologies (both before and after the attack on the Cairo Embassy) to whether Mitt Romney was wrong to criticize Obama last night."

ADDED: Ridiculous NYT headline: "Many Republicans Join Democrats in Denouncing Attack in Libya." Everyone denounces it! What's this notion that the Dems are all one and some but not all Republicans "join" them? I think they're trying to separate Mitt Romney as the one who isn't joining. The item ends:

As those statements [from various Republicans] came out, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, stood by his criticism that a statement from the American Embassy in Cairo condemning the intolerance of an anti-Muslim Internet video was tantamount to “an apology for American values.”

As if that means Romney doesn't denounce the attack! That's a way of flipping the problem, which is the Obama administration's insufficient denouncement, as if the murderers had some justification... which reminded me, on 9/11, of lefty chatter I heard on 9/11/01 that the terrorist attacks were provoked by racism in the United States.