> I find those things obnoxious and I'm glad they're protected speech, they're of no threat to me or the President. I'll take that over prison for insulting the

> I find those things obnoxious and I'm glad they're protected speech, they're of no threat to me or the President. I'll take that over prison for insulting the king every day of the week. I think you're talking about something different than I'm talking about. I was talking about saying hateful or insulting things about other people in society, not politicians and public figures. Even to me it's clear that public figures in the US should have to bear a lot of criticism and ridicule in the name of preserving a free and open debate about political topics. But, OTOH, even democracies like France make certain kinds of offensive, bigoted or anti-Muslim speech prosecutable crimes. That was the difference I was trying to focus on. As an American, it's clear to me that the freedom to criticize, ridicule, condemn the government, politicians and other public figures is critical to maintaining a democratic process. But, at the same time, it's not necessarily as clear to me that being able to insult my fellow citizen's religion or ethnicity is. In other words, I'm not prepared to say that France is not a true democracy because of that.