According to Brit Hume tonight, the Denver’s own Rocky Mountain News is one of just four American newspapers willing to publish the Danish cartoons. Ari Armstrong saw the print edition. He said that the newspaper published the “Stop stop we ran out of virgins!” cartoon with this op-ed. As Ari said, “Surely, according to the principles of justice, the News deserves our gratitude and thanks for its defense of liberty and denunciation of Muslim violence.” I particularly loved this passage from the editorial:

Defense of free speech is not so robust in this country as it could be, either. A State Department spokesman issued a mealy-mouthed statement that recognized the importance of freedom of speech but then added that the publication of cartoons that incite religious or ethnic hatred is unacceptable — as if that is what happened. There is no evidence whatsoever that the cartoons incited hatred against Muslims or Islam, only that they incited violence by Muslims. That is, indeed, unacceptable.

From what I’ve read, most media outlets refusing to print the cartoons claim that to do so would be offensive to Muslims, in bad taste, and so on. That’s a pathetic, context-dropping rationalization. They ought not run the cartoons as cartoons — but as news. However, at this point, given the overwhelming barbarity of the response from the Muslim world, the cartoons damn well ought to be reprinted as cartoons, not just as an act of solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, but also as a perfectly just comment upon the deplorable violence of the Muslim response.