By the way, I should stress — especially given the criticism that I’ve seen of the ACLU from some commenters — that ACLU chapters deserve praise for defending the anti-Islam speech in the two incidents I blogged about today: The blocking of Terry Jones’ planned demonstration outside a Dearborn, Michigan mosque, and the firing of a New Jersey Transit worker for burning a Koran.

There’s much that I disagree with the ACLU about, and I’m sure we all can find things on which most organizations — including the ACLU — have been inconsistent under our definition of consistency. But I’ve seen quite a lot of excessive criticism of the ACLU as supposedly being unwilling to protect speech by Christians, anti-Islam speech, speech that’s generally labeled as “politically incorrect,” and the like. Yet cases such as this (and these aren’t the only two) show that a good chunk of the legal defense of free speech, including of the freedom to engage in anti-Islam speech, is being fought by ACLU chapters. They deserve credit for that.