Via LGF and PJM, news that protesters are being removed from the area around ground zero: Andrew Marcus – on video assignment for PJM – reports that the Port Authority evicted protesters from Ground Zero this morning. Group – including family members of 9/11 victims – was in front of the PATH station protesting possible appearance at Ground Zero by Ahmadinejad. I can’t say that I blame the Port Authority.

Which is just crazy. I mean, don’t these wizened ingrates understand that the ban is for their own good? From the AP: It was just another morning at the senior center: Women were sewing, men were playing pool – and seven demonstrators, average age 76, were picketing outside, demanding doughnuts. They wore sandwich boards proclaiming, “Give Us Our Just Desserts” and “They’re Carbs, Not Contraband.” At issue is a decision

Evidently Columbia University, champion of free speech and the free exchange of ideas (idea 1. Genocide is bad; idea 2. In theory, yes. Unless Jews are involved), is taking certain precautions to make sure that their ostentatious commitment to “free speech” and the “free exchange of ideas” remains untroubled by the kind of annoying dissent that can turn such a signature moment of academic “tolerance” into a potential hate crime.

Or will John Cole come up with yet another dismissive rationale for the New York Times’ ideological bias in which he once again denigrates those who found the Times‘ “standby rate” argument for a specifically-timed attack ad just a bit too pat…? — Particularly when what those “nutters” raising such a fuss should have been doing is concentrating on the mess that is Iraq. (h/t STACLU)

So says the Dean of Columbia. Sadly, no follow-up question asking how he might react should der Fuhrer get a little tipsy at the post-speech cocktail party and order his band of traveling storm troopers to stuff a dozen or so gypsies, a gay couple, and 6 million Jews into one of the caterer’s mobile convection ovens. Which is a shame, really, because I think there’s half a chance we’d

Oh, how we do so love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning…

Ed Driscoll offers an inadvertent, libertarian counterpoint to yesterday’s assertion of new media impotence (at least, on the right) offered by Steve Graham. Compare and contrast.

      “Fine, okay. I’ll give you a dollar. And half of my chicken soft taco. Just — put that filthy thing away, for Chrissakes…” **** Epilogue       “By the way. The little tiny raincoat? Nice touch.” ~finis~

That dream being the free exchange of ideas, once again under siege from inside the academy — the very place where the free exchange of ideas should, by the standards of liberalism, be most in evidence. Alas, we’ve surrendered liberalism for the kind of creeping totalitarianism whose resemblance to liberalism is limited to a familiar smile and wink. From the NYT: The appointment of Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense