Let me start off by saying Tim Hardaway is an idiot. Never answer a question that will explode on you like that. I am not a homophobe. I don't care who you sleep with or how you orgasm. I am, however, not gay, and find the idea of two men having sex repellent. I assume gay men have the same feelings about me and a woman having sex. I know most women do, but that's another story for another time.

But I do admire Hardaway for answering a question honestly. He was asked how he would feel with a gay teammate and said he wouldn't like it. At the chastising from the interviewer he said he was a homophobe. Hardaway exercised his right to Free Speech, offended some folks and then surrendered his right to Free Speech by apologizing.

So today, I ask you to join with me and mourn the death of Free Speech. You can no longer say what you believe in.

Sure, you can still say you hate Republicans. You can interrupt the speeches of right wing pundits by asking if they do anal. You can still say you hate the American army that kills and murders and rapes. Heck, you can say people in the army were too stupid not to join the army and that's why they are in Iraq. You can say you hate white Europeans for their collective crimes against the world. And you can even say you hate Jesus. Even though those statements will offend a great number of people, the Left will defend your right to say them, and will, quite often join you in saying them.

Hint that you hate a Democrat, and your view is belittled. Interrupt the speech of a Left wing pundit and no one complains when you are arrested. Merely suggest that you distrust Muslims for their collective crimes against the world and CAIR will be knocking on your door. Say that you are uncomfortable around gay people, and Holy Hell!, does the Shit Rain fall! The Left will find your speech so offensive that it should never be allowed to be hearad, and they will shout it down, and drown you in a din of their vitriol.

Free Speech allows you and me, and Tim Hardaway, the right to say what we want without fear of prosecution. You apparently do not have protection from persecution, however, and therefore, your right to Free Speech is curtailed. When I hear the anti-war protesters talk about how their Free Speech is being trampled, I want them to remember Tim Hardaway. When they discover that the "Free Speech zone" at the party conventions is at the back of the building, not the front door, remember that when someone's Free Speech is shouted down and hounded into silence, your Free Speech ain't so far behind.

Here's how you respond to Tim Hardaway:

After I wrote yesterday's post, I got this mental image in my head, and couldn't shake it. So I propose we require all persons running for public office to wear the name and/or logo of anyone who donated more than $5 to their campaign.

I think it would have been nice to have seen the Merck logo on Rick Perry's lapel when he announced every school girl in Texas would have to get the HPV vaccine at $325 a pop. That's a pretty nice return on Merck's $6000 investment in his campaign, don't you think?

At least this way we would know that we have the finest elected officials that money can buy.

Drowned out by the constant drone of Anna Nicole and Paris stories, this story is being ignored by the Left: Hillary has a consulting contract with a supporter. Well, technically the contract hasn't been signed, but it is raising some questions. Did Hillary pay someone to endorse her? Is that illegal? I don't know that it is, nor do I know if it should be illegal. She's not buying his vote. She's buying his influence to get black votes. As long as it's above board, that's fine.

Hey, Hillary, Pay me and I'll endorse you. I have this cool logo you can put on your clothes, like a NASCAR driver does.

Oh noes! America isn't the main culprit in Global Warming (Praise Gaia and her anointed prophet Al Gore! Hah-men!)!

"The large increases in release rates are definitely in the Asian economies," led by China, [Kim Holmen] said. China is opening coal-fired power plants at the rate of almost one a week.

Buh, buh, but if China is doing it, America can't be at fault. And that would be in violation of our Sacred Scripture, "An Inconvenient Truth." Does this mean truth just got more inconvenient?

When did Paris Hilton's mood become news? Here's the actual headline from an AP story: "Paris Hilton Looks Bored at Vienna Ball."

Who cares if she "stifled yawns?" Maybe she was up late filming a new sex tape.

And I am sick of hearing about Anna Nicole Smith. I was sick of her before she died. Now every newscast and every news website has a lead story in the ongoing circus that is her demise. I am not the father of her baby (a shorter list to be on, I imagine), so I don't care who is. If real life were like TV, Stern the lawyer would have killed her son (They found methadone in the house in the Bahamas. One of the drugs "accidentally combined" in the son's system.), and somehow killed Anna Nicole so he could get the Marshall inheritance through his infant daughter.

And why are we watching Britney's meltdown with such glee? If the neighbor was doing that we'd have social services take the kids!

Let's let ET have the Anna Nicole news, and ABC can cover the important stuff, okay? NBC and CBS can continue to make up their news stories.

The Violence on TV people are rumbling up on Capitol Hill again. It seems that Bill Clinton (the bestest President ever, with the Internet inventing Veep) didn't fix anything with the V-chip. That's the device that censors what you see so you don't have to pay attention to your kids. Set the chip, park 'em in front of the tube,and live your life! Their fragile little minds are protected! Well, apparently not.

Apparently, even your fragile little mind is vulnerable. I mean the V-chip protects kids, so they shouldn't be seeing anything harmful. So why else would the FCC want Congress to pass a law to ban violent programming at an hour when children could be watching?

There are some concerns, though. Will this violence ban cover sports? When a fight breaks out at a hockey game, will the network have to go to black? Will the ban on violence apply to daytime dramas, which have storylines about rapes, beatings, and murder? Will the government finally get the news coverage of the war in Iraq off the air?

I don't want the government deciding what I can and can't watch. I don't want them deciding what is best for me. I pay the cable bill. I want to watch what I want to watch. Now, if they're going to pay the cable bill. . .