"Brooklyn thieves chop down sizeable shade tree to steal $50 bike."

That's the headline in the Daily News, for a story about a viral security-cam video. "Steal" should have been in quotes, because they don't even want the bike. One of them rides it for a 5 seconds then leaves it next to the chopped down ginkgo tree.

The sorry saga was captured on security camera video then posted on YouTube, where viewers from coast to coast posted unkind things about the Brooklyn boobs.

I clicked through to see what people had written, but comments have been disabled, and all the old comments are all deleted.

"Apparently I made an horrific horror-film, but shouldn't a good horror film be horrific?"

"My dear people it is a f****cking MOVIE. It is all fictional. Not real. It is all make-belief. It is art. Give people their own choice to watch it or not. If people can't handle or like my movies they just don't watch them."

Director Tom Six responds to the British Board of Film Classification's ban on "The Human Centipede Part 2 (Full Sequence)."

IN THE COMMENTS: Chip Ahoy said:

You know what else is horrific. This has me completely terrified. I just now looked at photos of Palin's new home in Scottsdale and the whole place is empty except for one exceedingly macabre bit of taxidermy.

"In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth." — The NYT deletes that quote!

Whoa! That quote was the centerpiece of my blog post linking to the NYT story about Jill Abramson taking over as the new executive editor of the New York Times. I thought it was rich material for contemplation. The new editor grew up idealizing the newspaper, and now she's in control of it. What will happen? Will we get more truth?

I didn't expect such a sharp slap in the face! The first thing that happens is the quote about truth disappears down the memory hole! Not a word about the excision appears at the site.

I wasn't the only one who called attention to the now-missing quote. James Taranto did:

It may be the most revealing quote ever published in the New York Times.... The Times has of late acted a great deal like a corrupt religious institution. This column has chronicled its often vicious and dishonest attempts--both on the editorial page and in the news sections, which Abramson will head--to shore up its own authority by trying to tear down its competitors....

Instapundit did:

SO IF READING THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A RELIGION, then does that make Jill Abramson pope?

Jay Nordlinger at the National Review did:

I was just writing a column for tomorrow. I was going to say something — not worth getting into the context right now — about not belonging to “the Church of the New York Times.”... 

Wanting to take a break from writing... I checked the news. I was reading about Jill Abramson, just tabbed to be the new chief editor of the New York Times. I read this: “In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”

Deleting the quote is so pathetic. Abramson held the newspaper in such high esteem, then takes over, and behaves as if the story announcing her ascent is some sort of accidental tweet to be taken down before anybody sees it. But everybody already saw it! We're in the middle of talking about it! How about contributing to the dialogue? But no, we get coverup. As if the lesson hadn't be learned long ago: It's the coverup that gets you.

The instinct to delete... is that what Abramson would like us to think of as the mark of her leadership?

The Church of the New York Times seems to be one of those shame-based religions.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade said:

The NYT was hacked!

Maybe it was a prank. Can't say with certitude.

ADDED: In Politco, Burgess Everett carries water for the NYT"

Of the quote’s removal... Taranto wrote that the editing process was the likely culprit for the quote’s removal, but added: “It's obvious that an editorial decision was made to ‘rectify’ a quote that made the Times look foolish.”

Not so, Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told POLITICO. “Space was clearly a consideration,” as the story was used in the newspaper, Murphy said, adding that because the original version of the story was online all day, it needed to be freshened for the paper edition, which did not contain the quote.

“The entire story was rewritten after Jill, [publisher] Arthur Sulzberger [and editors] Bill Keller and Dean Baquet addressed the newsroom, swapping out nearly all of their old quotes for fresh quotes that came from their speeches. Everyone’s quotes in the second version of the story differed considerably from their quotes in the first version of the story,” Murphy said.

Murphy said the “religion” quote was on the Times’s webpage for nearly 12 hours before being replaced by the newspaper version. “This is just the revising, updating and condensing for space that happens every day at The Times,” she said.

But if that were true, wouldn't the version with the quote still exist in the archive? I searched for the quote, using the NYT's archive search function, and what came up was:

IHTPressEngine v. 1.3.12 2011-06-02T12:49:18-0400 A legal fight ...
"In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth." ...

Click on the link for a page full of code gibberish, not the original version of the article with the quote.

Raising money for Bloggingheads by auctioning the censorship of Ann Althouse.

In the words of the Marx Brothers...



... tomorrow, I leave! That's worth about... a million dollars!

"Civility' is the new word for 'censorship.'"/"'Civility' is the new word for 'shut the heck up.'"

If government officials use their speech to try to persuade us not to criticize what they are doing, is that censorship? No. It's not. There's no coercion. If you shut up, it's because they persuaded you. (And maybe you shouldn't be so gullible.)

The 2 quotes in my post title are from today's Rush Limbaugh show. The first quote was a caller who was freaked out by last night's memorial in Tucson. The second is the way Rush reframed it. Rush is right, but the caller was not.

People tell each other to shut up all the time. You have to learn not to accept the pushback. Censorship is when the government coerces you. I'm not hearing a proposal for censorship. Ironically, it would be the least persuasive way to try to get us to shut up. We'd yell and scream. And we'd sue. And win.

95.83% of NPR website readers think it's wrong to publish an edition of "Huckleberry Finn" with the n-word removed.

Of NPR readers.

Althouse is censored by the IRS.

A reader who works at the IRS and has, in the past, read my blog from his computer there — on lunch break, of course — couldn't get through to my blog today. This message came up instead:

The Internal Revenue Service has restricted access to the requested URL.

Reason: The Internal Revenue Service's category "Phishing and Other Frauds" is filtered.

URL: http://althouse.blogspot.com/

By what process and what standard was my blog identified as a "fraud"?

The too-easy satire of The Onion's "Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling."

Everyone's linking to this thing, and it is pretty funny, but see what my problem is with it:

"It is the opinion of this court that the right to speak without censorship or fear of intimidation is fundamental to a healthy democracy," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority.... "In short, freedom of speech means the freedom of fucking speech, you ignorant cocksuckers."

The decision came Monday in response to the case of a Charleston, WV theater troupe that had been sued by city officials for staging a sexually explicit play with public funds. Reversing the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the theater, an outcome free-speech advocates are calling a victory and Justice Ginsburg called "a bitch-slap in the face of all those uptight limp-dicks."...

The Onion goes after social conservatives clamping down on sexually explicit speech.

"I'm beginning to wonder if you really understand what 'abridging the freedom of speech' means at all," said Stevens, a 34-year veteran of the court known for his often-nuanced interpretations of the First Amendment. "I'm also wondering whether you and your fat-faced plaintiffs over there need to have some respect for constitutionally protected expression fucked into your empty hick skulls."

Hicks.

Are hicks the threat to free speech? Maybe 20 or 30 years ago.

The Onion quotes Justice Breyer:

It likewise bears noting that, even if everyone on this court got brain damage and ruled against protected speech, we're sure as fuck not starting on some harmless bullshit play. We'd start on that ignorant-ass, Bible-thumping, Fred Phelps homophobe shit. How would those Jesus-blowing backwoods cracker motherfuckers like that?

See? The liberal urge — which is what motivates The Onion's writers — is to repress the speech it disapproves of. And that is the real threat to free speech that we experience today. At first glance this satire appears to be vigorously pro-free-speech, but I suspect that it's only pro-liberal speech. Maybe my suspicion is wrong, but I'd find The Onion a lot funnier if its satire caused its readers a little pain, instead of nudging them to laugh at people they already hold in contempt.

To test your commitment to free speech rights, think of some expression you hate and imagine protecting that. Don't think of something you love and imagine someone else repressing it. That's the test of whether you support free speech rights. The Onion doesn't test itself or its readers. And that makes The Onion's speech too bland. Come on, it's The Onion. Onion. Bland isn't true to that name.

Comedy Central cowers in the face of a murder threat/warning against "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

The NYT reports:

An episode of “South Park” that continued a story line involving the Prophet Muhammad was shown Wednesday night on Comedy Central with audio bleeps and image blocks reading “CENSORED” after a Muslim group warned the show’s creators they could face violence for depicting that holy Islamic prophet. Revolution Muslim, a group based in New York, wrote on its Web site that the “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh” for an episode shown last week in which a character said to be the Prophet Muhammad was seen wearing a bear costume. Mr. Van Gogh was slain in Amsterdam in 2004 after making a film that discussed the abuse of Muslim women in some Islamic societies.

A new episode of “South Park” on Wednesday night attempted to revisit this character, but with the name and depiction of the character blocked out. It was unclear how much of the bleeping was Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker’s decision. In a message posted on their Web site, SouthParkStudios.com, they wrote that they could not immediately stream the new episode on the site because:

After we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode. We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show.

On Thursday morning, a spokesman for Comedy Central confirmed that the network had added more bleeps to the episode than were in the cut delivered by South Park Studios, and that it was not giving permission for the episode to run on the studio’s Web site.

Did Revolution Muslim truly threaten Stone and Parker or was it merely warning them? That is, were they indicating that they would commit and act of violence or were they only opining based on their prediction of what others, more extreme than they, would do? Revolution Muslim says it's just a warning:

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Younus Abdullah Muhammad, a member of Revolution Muslim, repeated the group’s assertion that the post was a prediction rather than a threat. He said that the post on the group’s blog “was intended in a principle that’s deeply rooted in the Islamic religion, which is called commanding the good and forbidding the evil,” tying the group’s complaints about “South Park” to larger frustrations about U.S. support for Israel and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They have freedom of speech too, so the question is whether it's a true threat.

ADDED: I have no end of respect for Stone and Parker. What brilliant artists! What political heroes!

"We call on the local radio stations to stop broadcasting the songs and all music as well."

"We give them a 10-day deadline and any radio station found not complying with the orders... will face sharia action.... We also issue orders banning the local media from using the word 'foreigners' to refer to our Muslim brothers coming from outside the country to help us fight against the enemy of Allah.... Every Muslim fighter can come to Somalia to fight the enemy of Allah and we would also invite Osama bin Laden to the country if the we get the opportunity."

It's springtime in Mogadishu.

"Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy Forcibly Guest-Edits High School Newspaper Article About His Own Visit."

But now wasn't it so nice of him to stop by and teach the children about law... with a whole counter-example object lesson?

"The case against inviting the BNP to appear on Question Time is a case for censorship..."

"... the case, in other words, that (in the opinion of those who make it) the BNP's policies are so abhorrent and so liable to sow hatred and division that they should be excluded from this form of public discourse altogether.... [I]t is unreasonable and inconsistent to take the position that a party like the BNP is acceptable enough for the public to vote for, but not acceptable enough to appear on democratic platforms such as Question Time. If there is a case for censorship, it should be debated and decided in parliament."

A hot debate in the UK. 

More here.

Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant testify about the completely out-of-control pursuit of hate speech in Canada.

I won't attempt to summarize. Listen to the testimony before Parliament's Justice and Human Rights Committee. What has gone on in Canada is truly revolting. The procedural abuses are astounding, and to think that it was all done for a goal that is itself illegitimate — crushing offensive speech.

ADDED: Steyn:

Why is this relevant to Americans? Because the superficial fluffily benign language of multiculturalism that comes so naturally to our rulers provides a lot of cover for the shriveling of free speech....

As Canadians have discovered, liberty is lost very quietly and quickly. And trying to get it back is slow and painful — particularly at a time when artists, universities, publishers, and others who congratulate themselves incessantly on their truth-telling courage find increasingly pre-emptive self-censorship the better part of valor.

"Yes, it was fun this week to watch the teabaggers complain how the media underestimated the size of their march..."

"... 'How can you say there were only 60,000 of us? We filled the entire mall!' Yes, because you're fat. One whale fills the tank at Sea World, that doesn't make it a crowd."

Bill Maher is trying to be funny as he propounds a "New Rule" and says: "You can't complain about health care reform if you're not willing to reform your own health." Note that he's not saying that liberals aren't fat too — and I think they are — just: You can't complain about health care reform if you're not willing to reform your own health.

Yale.

Fail.

Janet Jackson's breast!

Back in the news, thanks to the Supreme Court.

"I want [snuggle] you like a [kitty-cat]!"

Apple nixes the Nine Inch Nails iPhone app — after approving it.

Trent Reznor tweets: "The objectionable content referenced is 'The Downward Spiral."

What might have been:



Tame!

"Aboriginal pawns in nanny state's porn game."

There's a headline. The underlying story is not funny, involving racially discriminatory censorship in Australia.

ADDED: There is no porn at the link, though I do find what's there highly objectionable: The government banned pornography not for everyone, but for Aborigines, for their own good.

"We're not entitled under the law the way it's structured to plead truth, fair comment, qualified privilege or intent or standards of journalism."

Canada's shame.

ADDED: Is this post too short? Sorry, the free speech issue is too blatantly obvious for me to have anything more to say. The substance of Steyn's opinion is irrelevant. Canada should be ashamed that its laws do not protect free speech and that it permits judicial proceedings like this.

"The exhibition is supposed to be about character assassination. It's philosophical and metaphorical."

Performance artist Yazmany Arboleda set up a show called "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama" in the storefront across the street from the NYT offices. Police and the Secret Service shut it down.

Elsewhere in performance art:

A Buffalo artist cleared of fraud charges after a four-year battle with the government is planning a new exhibit based on works and items removed from his home by law enforcement agents....

[Steven] Kurtz was charged in 2004 with federal mail and wire fraud charges after being accused of illegally obtaining bacteria for an art project intended to address issues surrounding germ warfare. A judge threw out the indictment in April.

SEIZED will not only display Kurtz's art, but trash left at his home by investigators who converged there amid worries the bacteria represented a bioterror threat.