Assault on free speech in UK repelled for now

A week or so ago, the House of Commons caved to Blair and voted to approve a bill making it a criminal offense to "glorify terror." This would have made it illegal, for example, to opine that because the Palestinians have been offered no alternative means of achieving their legitimate objectives, their suicide attacks against innocent civilians are regretable, but necessary. I don't agree with that, but it's certainly a position that can be debated with some legitimacy, particularly if the targets are military and police targets instead of civilians. Yet, debating it would have potentially led to jail time in the new UK for glorifying terrorism.

Luckily, the House of Lords overturned the legislation for the second time. What happens now, who knows?

The government was tonight defeated in the Lords over its controversial terror bill as peers voted to reject a clause creating a new offence of "glorifying" terrorism.

The bill will now go back to the House of Commons in a battle of wills between the two houses which is referred to as "parliamentary pingpong".

Charles Clarke, the home secretary, immediately hit back, saying: "I am disappointed that the Lords have chosen to ignore the clear and repeated signal from the Commons that glorification of terrorism is unacceptable.

Interesting, isn't it, that I haven't seen any of our pro-free speech, pro anti-Muslim cartoon crowd complaining about this bill?