Very Nice

Here's the U.S. soldier hung in effigy in Sacramento that you might have read about.

Bonfire says he lives just down the road from there. He reports the owners of the house have been living in Berkeley. "Neighbors say they use the house as their own person[al] stage to trot out their leftist/socialist meandering viewpoints."

I want to be completely clear here, though. I fully support a person's right to display such a thing on their own house. And I don't condone any acts of violence against someone for doing such a thing. But the thing about "free" speech is that it is sometimes not free of its consequences. When you act like an asshat, people will treat you like an asshat. If you denigrate our troops, you are likely to find yourself in a minority. That majority that you live around is probably going to dislike you intensely, so don't expect to get a thumbs up at the grocery store if we see you there.

Aye. And I live a block away from someone who has hung out effigies of both Osama and Saddam in the last three years. Though I have to say they were better crafted and done with a bit of (admittedly macabre) humor.

It's possible -- just barely possible -- to read this as a message of genuine sympathy for soldiers killed in what these people may, perhaps sincerely, believe was an unnecessary war.

But the symbolic act of hanging someone in effigy, a centuries-old expression of threatening contempt, brutally rides over whatever other message was intended to be conveyed.

[The old, Saddam-era Iraqi flag in the window doesn't help, either.]