What is up with conservatives and the First Amendment? For years now, all those people who love the Constitution so much they carry it around in the breast pockets of their bespoke suits have had this totally sane and logical notion that criticising someone for being an idiot is the same as taking away their freedom of speech. Logic, it is what's for dinner! But Jack Welch -- the poor little billionaire who axed a hundred thousand jobs as head of GE and now has only his plum perches at CNN and Fortune tohuff away from -- has taken his case to the Wall Street Journal, noted comforter of the comfortable and afflicter of the afflicted, and raised it to a whole new crazy.

Imagine a country where challenging the ruling authorities—questioning, say, a piece of data released by central headquarters—would result in mobs of administration sympathizers claiming you should feel "embarrassed" and labeling you a fool, or worse.

Soviet Russia perhaps? Communist China? Nope, that would be the United States right now, when a person (like me, for instance) suggests that a certain government datum (like the September unemployment rate of 7.8%) doesn't make sense.

Oh. Oh my.

Now, we aren't even going to read the rest of Herr Welch's Wall Street Journal op-ed, because after Welch has displayed such a fine grasp on why people laughing at Jack Welch is worse than the Holocaust, forced 'bortions, and Jar Jar Binks, there really doesn't seem to be a need.

But we will note that crabby insane lesbian Welch is not the only billionaire to think that having a joke made at his expense -- or even being told that people disagree with him! -- is a fate worse even than meeting Mme. Guillotine.

Everyone who made fun of Jack Welch, please report directly to jail. That is just how the First Amendment works.

[WSJ]