Note: This post—a response to Reddit's free speech argument in the wake of Gawker's Violentacrez story—was originally published on writer John Scalzi's personal blog, and is republished here with permission. You can find the original here.

Gary Stein is a 26 year-old nine-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, meaning he's been in there since he got out of high school. He's served in Iraq. He does not like our President and Commander-in-chief, Barack Obama. He made his displeasure known in the following ways:

Joe Gordon is a 55-year-old retired car salesman from Colorado. On Thursday, Gordon was sentenced by a Thai court to 2.5 years in prison. His crime was astonishingly non-existent.

John Sieglinger, age 21, streaked at University of Southern Mississippi football game last weekend, and the worst thing that can happen during a streaking event occurred: He fell down. On his penis.

The Casa Monica Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida flies a big American flag out front so that people will regard it as a patriot-friendly lodging establishment. Sadly, that fluttering piece of fabric will probably disappear soon, because the hotel's new management hates American flags. Hates!

Community college student Marc Bechtol says he was pulled out of class and then banned from campus all because he disparaged his school's stupid branded debit cards on his Facebook. Marc Bechtol deserves a failing grade in Campus Brand Ambassadorship 101, otherwise known as An Introduction to Selling Out.

Last year, when Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren announced his intention to speak at the University of California at Irvine, some members of the school's Muslim Students Union plotted to inform Oren of their feelings about some of Israel's policies. They used their voices to do so. This is illegal!

Having decided that the only embarrassing failure he wants to deal with right now is his football team, Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder announced that he's dropping his baseless lawsuit against the Washington City Paper. The Redskins still suck. [WaPo]

Ad hominem adultery harassment site Cheaterville.com is incensed. They wanted to run the above advertisement in the Toronto Sun during the Toronto Film Festival, but the Sun rejected them. Why ever would a newspaper reject a crude doodle of a stick-man butt-fucking a startled stick-lady atop a rectangular void with his giant club-shaped dick?

It's official: High school girls have a constitutionally protected right to post to Facebook pictures of themselves in lingerie toying with phallic lollipops. America is not Saudi Arabia, you know! We are not under Sharia law (yet).

A judge has thrown out a defamation lawsuit filed by "Brooklyn-born and bred" coffee shop Gorilla Coffee against the New York Times—upholding the paper's right to report on mean things that people say about each other during disputes. Kind of an important part of a newspaper's job, if you think about it.

In the Real-American stronghold of South Carolina, of all places, a 65-year-old woman has been accused of violating the state obscenity law by hanging a pair of Truck Nutz plastic testicles from the back of her pickup truck. What's next, a ban on the American flag?

The Supreme Court has just struck down a California law that would have outlawed the sale of violent video games to minors. Yee haw: Free speech covers busting open aliens' heads with a chainsaw!

Our ongoing story arc in Libya has been really tough on Republicans, who hate black presidents but love bombing Muslims, so we're glad to see Senator/tease Lindsey Graham (R - S.C.) back in his element, wondering if maybe this whole "constitution" thing has kind of run its course:

Terence Brown is a British man who sells The Anarchist's Cookbook—not the original one, but an updated version with information from all the latest terror movements—for $35 on CD-ROM. He was just convicted of violating England's Terrorism Act, and the judge warned him that he will almost certainly go to prison.

In a lopsided 8-to-1 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Westboro Baptist Church can't be sued for disrupting a soldier's funeral with vile and stupid protests.

Girls Gone Wild founder and certified douchebag Joe Francis is currently being sued by four women who say Francis coerced them into appearing in his X-rated films when they were underage. Well, that's now a free speech battle. How respectable!

Craigslist: home of the worst people in America. Like you and all your neighbors. Who are either prostitutes, or people trying to sell their kids. Joking! They wouldn't sell their kids. Unless the price was right.

South Park made jokes about the Prophet Muhammad. An Islamic group, Revolution Muslim, retorted with thinly veiled threats, and the show was censored. Fans were outraged — and they seem to have fought back by mocking the group's website.

Cryptome, the secret-destroying web site that was shuttered by a copyright complaint from Microsoft after it published the company's confidential guide for law enforcement agencies who want to spy on its customers, is back up after Microsoft withdrew its complaint.