"With All Due Respect, an Apology Is Not in Order"

"Free speech is the linchpin of our republic. All other freedoms flow from it. After all, we don't need a First Amendment to allow us to run boring, inoffensive cartoons. We need constitutional protection for our right to express unpopular views. If we can't discuss the great issues of the day on the pages of our newspapers fearlessly, and without apology, where can we discuss them? In the streets with guns? In cafés with strapped-on bombs?"
--As I have said before, political cartoonists are the last bastion of a truly free press. Doug Marlette, who died yesterday, should have been a household name. Instead, it will be his cartoons like the one above that will last in posterity. After he did "What Would Mohammed Drive?", which was meant to lampoon religious rigidity, he got death threats and other ridiculousness and still believed in what we do.

Let's hope the rest of us can live up to his standard of courage.

(I have decided to leave this up all day in honor of Marlette. I'll see you tomorrow.)