"FREE SPEECH? WHAT'S THAT? British blogger to be arrested for inciting racial hatred. What, are they channeling the Saudis in Britain? If you're interested in supporting free speech rights, the British Embassy's contact page is here. As with the Saudi case I don't know much about the blogger, but I don't need to — people shouldn't be arrested merely for blogging things that the powers-that-be don't like.

But since the British government disagrees, they should be forced to live with their position, and the one-sided nature of it should be brought out. As with the Steyn-persecuting Canadian government, British citizens who value free speech should be flooding the authorities with complaints about hate speech aimed at Jews, Christians and, for fun, even Americans, and then documenting the action, or lack thereof, that results.

UPDATE: Brian Micklethwait comments: "If Lionheart's claim that he faces arrest just for blogging his mind are correct, then of course it is everything-and-the-kitchen-sink time. Let battle be joined. But for now, I would like just a little more reconnaissance."

We already knew about Mark Steyn's dilemna with Canada, are we in America next?

"So, is that “flagrant Islamophobia” or a tragically prescient summation of the predicament in which Steyn now finds himself (sooner than “in a few years” I may add)? In fact, this case is more than a potential misstep for Canadian lawmakers; it’s also an example of “tolerant” Europe’s ability to team up with “tolerant” Canada and “tolerantly” force Canadians to be more “tolerant.” The London Free Press reports that London lawyer Faisal Joseph is leading the complaint against Maclean's. If nothing else, one begins to see why Steyn titled his book America Alone.

But, ultimately, this kind of legal leveling of opinion spells disaster for the U.S. too. In a recent response to the CIC charges, Steyn praises America for its First Amendment. It’s true, legislated speech codes may be hard to pass here, but then again they may not be necessary. A few years ago, in another life, I was involved in the writing of a social studies book for South Carolingian third graders. The text was to start with the native tribes of the region and go all the way to the present day. This covered, obviously, slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. One day, after we were well into the creation of the book I received, straight from the local education board, an alarming directive that would require us to go back and revisit a good deal of the work we’d already done. It turned out the word slave was not to be used anywhere in the text. "

We aren't terribly far behind, as one soon-to-be-jobless man in Washington D. C. can tell you!

"Bill Gertz, Washington Times national security columnist, reports (1/4/08) that the Pentagon has fired Stephen Coughlin, its most knowledgeable specialist on Islamic Law, and jihad terrorism. As Gertz observed aptly, the Pentagon thus ended the career of its most effective analyst attempting to prepare the military to wage ideological war against jihadism. "

Why, you may ask?  Don't we need more of these guys, not less? 

That Coughlin’s analyses would even be considered “controversial,” or worse still lead eventually to his firing—perhaps, as Gertz strongly suggests, at the behest of a Muslim aide, Hesham Islam, within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England—is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global jihadism.