TERRY JONES: THIS IS GOING TO GET MUCH UGLIER

Do you know what the sonofabitch is planning next? This:

"It is definitely a consideration to stage a trial on the life of Mohammed in the future," he said in interview on Saturday....

Do you know what that would probably be like? Do you know the details of his recent Koran stunt?

Before a Koran was burned at his modest church here on March 20, the pastor Terry Jones held a self-styled mock trial of the holy book in which he presided from the pulpit as judge.

... After listening to arguments from both sides, the jury pronounced the Koran guilty of five "crimes against humanity," including the promotion of terrorist acts and "the death, rape and torture of people worldwide whose only crime is not being of the Islamic faith."

Punishment was determined by the results of an online poll. Besides burning, the options included shredding, drowning and facing a firing squad....

Good grief. He's thinking of doing this next to -- I mean, what else could it be -- an image of Muhammad?

This would lead to the cartoons riots on seroids.

The inevitable violence is, from my point of view, utterly absurd and irrational. But my disgust at the rioters is also extended to the American right-wingers who are rubbing their hands gleefully, delighted that the angry reaction by some Muslims will tarnish all Muslims, and who are actually going to take smug satisfaction at the deaths that will result, just because those deaths will help them score political points.

Jones's plan for this new "trial" are vague. He is going to do this, however:

The pastor and his supporters will later this month join a protest against jihad and sharia law in front of the biggest mosque in the US in Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a large Islamic population which Mr Jones described as the "Mecca of America".

I throw up my hands.

****

I'll note that the U.S. Supreme Court's standard for laws restricting political speech is that such speech can be proscribed when the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." I'm not a lawyer, but that strikes me as a pretty good description of what Jones is doing, even if the "imminent lawless action" the justices had in mind was action in violation of domestic law, and was action advocated by the speaker. (On the other hand, can we really say that Jones is condemning the violence that followed his deed? He's deeply invested in the idea that Muslims are a lower order of being. He wants them, or at least some of them, to affirm his theory. He wants this to happen. So in a way he's an advocate of this violence.)