Leonard Pitts on the sometimes uncomfortable confrontation of two First Amendment rights.
A few words on the limits to freedom of expression:
For what it’s worth, there are a few that are acceptable. You don’t threaten or incite violence. You don’t defame. You don’t produce child pornography. And you don’t falsely shout “Fire!” in the proverbial crowded theater.
To these restrictions, Pope Francis wants to add another: You may not say anything that insults religious beliefs. “You cannot provoke,” he told reporters Thursday. “You cannot insult the faith of others.”
As you might have guessed, he was referring to the act of terror by extremist Muslims against Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine known for provocative, scathing and even vulgar attacks on Islam — along with other religions, institutions and entities. The magazine was notorious for running cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, even though many Muslims consider any representation of Mohammed to be deeply offensive. Twelve people died in the attack; one was a Muslim police officer.
So one can understand the pontiff’s concerns. But he could not be more wrong.
Go read. I can almost promise you that some parts of Pitt's piece will leave you uncomfortable. Large parts of Pope Francis' statements should also make you uncomfortable.
I'm not usually a believer that the best source of wisdom is on a second grade playground, but in this case an old turn of phrase comes to mind.
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will never hurt me.
People may get offended by words, or cartoons. They have every right to be offended. They have every right to respond with their own words, their own cartoons, their own leaflets, articles, broadcasts, and street-corner tirades. They don't have a right to resort to sticks, stones, fists, guns, or airplanes loaded with innocent passengers.
War may be the continuation of policy by other means, but violence is not a continuation of an argument. It's a termination of the argument, and the beginning of a crime.
Now come on in, let's talk about other stuff...
Frank Bruni is one of many pundits worrying that the 2016 race is going to be as exciting as watching old episodes of The Mentalist.
“Romney Recycled” was the headline atop a Wall Street Journal editorial this week lamenting Mitt Romney’s intimations that he will make a third run at the presidency in 2016.
The conservative editorialists were right to dread another election about Romneycare and the 47 percent. But why pick on Romney? Overall, 2016 is shaping up to be the year of the retreads: the reduce, reuse and recycle election.
This will be the seventh presidential campaign I’ve covered in some form, starting with a bit role in 1992. If the field develops the way it appears to be going, this will be my fourth Clinton campaign, fourth Bush campaign, third Romney campaign, third Paul campaign, second Huckabee campaign and second Santorum campaign. This isn’t an election — it’s a rerun.
Hey, I still believe that the American people are capable of surprising the press. Get these candidates past a few small, insular, non-representative, state primaries dominated by some single slip up or turn of phrase and the results... can be much, much worse than expected.
Frank Bruni doesn't think that Mark Wahlberg should get his record cleaned.
While there’s not yet been any decision about his pardon application, which was filed late last year, it has drawn no small measure of extra attention to him, much of it rightly negative.
What I wish it would do is amplify and broaden a conversation in America about the contradictions in the way we treat people who’ve done their time.
Generally, we send them back out into the world with the exhortation that they build or rebuild productive lives, which we’re invested in having them do. But we simultaneously saddle them with a dizzying range of restrictions, varying from state to state, that make that significantly more difficult.
We deny them kinds of government assistance available to others. We prevent them from engaging in all sorts of business transactions and jobs, and some of these prohibitions make little or no sense.
“We have people with real talents who aren’t able to employ those talents,” Mark Osler, a law professor who is an expert on pardons, told me. If our goal is to prevent recidivism, this isn’t a smart way to go about it.
For many people, a single slip-up, even in a nonviolent crime–even especially in a non-violent crime–means that their lives are derailed, permanently, and both state and federal legislation keeps making it hard for them ever to get back on track. But hey, how else are we going to run all those "tough on crime" commercials?
Ross Douthat on the most rerunny of rerunners.
The idea of yet a third Mitt Romney campaign for the presidency, once the idle dream of a few Romney bundlers and now apparently something embraced by the Man From Bain Capital himself, has been greeted by most Republicans with a mixture of horror, exhaustion and embarrassment. The polite ones sound like a girl before the senior prom who can’t believe that the stumblebum date who ruined her last school dance is in line first to ask her again: No, please, not this time. The rest sound like the characters in the third act of a horror movie, confronting a shambling revenant that just keeps coming: How do we kill this thing?
Douthat's biggest concern is that a Romney campaign might keep funds away from viable candidates, as it did in 2012, when Romney starved Genuinely Viable Candidates... like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. And Herman Cain. And Michele Bachmann. And T-Paw. You can't forget T-Paw. Wait... does anyone remember T-Paw?
Nicholas Kristof on the very dumb politics that keeps killing smart guns.
Just after Christmas, Veronica Rutledge of Blackfoot, Idaho, took her 2-year-old son to a Walmart store to spend holiday gift cards. As they strolled by the electronics section, according to news reports, the toddler reached into his mom’s purse and pulled out a handgun that she legally carried. He pulled the trigger once and killed her.
The previous month, a 3-year-old boy in Washington State was shot in the face by a 4-year-old. Earlier, a 2-year-old boy in Pennsylvania shot and killed his 11-year-old sister.
...
This toll is utterly unnecessary, for the technology to make childproof guns goes back more than a century. Beginning in the 1880s, Smith & Wesson (whose gun was used in the Walmart killing) actually sold childproof handguns that required a lever to be depressed as the trigger was pulled.
“No ordinary child under 8 years of age can possibly discharge it,” Smith & Wesson boasted at the time, and it sold half-a-million of these guns, but, today, it no longer offers that childproof option.
Why? It's not complicated. The NRA is against them. The NRA is against them because the NRA isn't there to help gun owners or their children, the NRA is there to help gun manufacturers move the maximum number of firearms, and smart guns might–you know, possibly–dent manufacturer's profits. So those 3-year-olds are just going to have to die.
The New York Times is vexed about attacks on the IRS.
The obsession among House conservatives to hobble the Internal Revenue Service is about to pay off this tax season in foolhardy budget cuts to the agency that will cost the government an estimated $2 billion in lost revenue.
That works out to about $6 in lost taxes for every $1 in cuts Congress made in reducing the I.R.S. budget another 3 percent this year, according to the Treasury Department.
The slashed budget is a victory for penny-wise-and-pound-foolish politicians. It amounts to payback demanded by House Republicans to penalize the I.R.S. for daring to scrutinize Tea Party operations that tried to claim exemptions under the tax code for nonpolitical groups. Democratic groups trying the same thing were also scrutinized.
Well, it's not just that. Any excuse for destroying the IRS is okay, and any excuse that starves the government of funds is even better. After all, destroying both the IRS and the government are the goal.