Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit is so outraged by the use of police in the middle of the night to take in for questioning the man, Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, who made the movie that has allegedly triggered the violence in the Middle East that he believes President Obama should resign.
This is not just an empty rant. If we now live in a country where the government uses police to intimidate and threaten those who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights then we're dangerously close to becoming a police state.
The president takes an oath when he's inaugurated to uphold the Constitution. Where is his Attorney General who should be protecting this man's liberty? Where are the civil libertarians who profess to care about the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights? Some of them are actually calling for Nakoula's arrest!
Radical Muslims demand that we punish the filmmaker, and American liberals agree. Our police truckle to the Islamists' demands under the pretense that they want to question Nakoula about possible parole violations. Right. They want to question him about possible parole violations at 1:00 in the morning. This is intimidation, pure and simple. It's an attempt to appease those who seek to repress through violence and the threat of violence the freedom of speech many Americans have fought and died to preserve.
Meanwhile the administration and its surrogates are apologizing for something done by a private citizen and letting it be known that in the view of the government he's a despicable person whom they really would arrest if they could. This administration would do better to show more sympathy for the Bill of Rights and more backbone with the Islamists than it heretofore has or we're likely to see many more embassies on fire and many more diplomats returning to Dover Air Force base in coffins.
The proper response of the President of the United States and his representatives would have been to make it known that though there are very few things of which one can be certain in this life, one thing that any foreign thug can be pretty sure of is that if he harms an American citizen he won't die of old age.
