Free speech

'There Is No More Molly'

Does Obama believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?

By JAMES TARANTO

"There is no more Molly," reports Seattle Weekly. Molly Norris, formerly a cartoonist for the alternative paper, has gone into hiding. At the suggestion of the FBI, "she is, as they put it, 'going ghost': moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity."

Why? Because, as the New York Times reports, imam Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Islamic supremacist who is himself in hiding in Yemen, issued a fatwa in July declaring that Norris "should be taken as a prime target of assassination" because of a cartoon she drew two months earlier titled "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day."

In October 2001, by the way, the New York Times described al-Awlaki, who then ran a mosque in Virginia, as someone who "is held up as a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West." How's that working out?

Podcast

James Taranto on Molly Norris.

Here's another question: Where is President Obama? Last month, speaking to a mostly Muslim audience at the White House, the president strongly defended the right of another imam held up as a moderate to build a mosque adjacent to Ground Zero. The next day, and again at a press conference last week, Obama said he was merely standing up for the First Amendment. As far as we recall, it's the only time Barack Obama has ever stood up for anybody's First Amendment rights.

Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?