SCATHING – AT 8:47 A.M. ET:  In an early, scathing response to the Paris carnage has been written by British conservative columnist James Delingpole, who has been heroic in questioning the "settled science" of global warming.  A must read, from Breitbart: 

The story so far: 12 people, including two policemen, have been murdered at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by two hooded men wielding AK47s. In 2011 the magazine was firebombed after running a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. Charlie Hebdo’s most recent tweet, before the latest attack, was a cartoon featuring the leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Here’s what will happen next.

1. French authorities will urge the public not to jump to any unhelpful conclusions about the identity and motivation of the killers.

2. Politicians, police chiefs and mainstream media reports will urge restraint over what is clearly an inexplicable rogue incident which may have nothing whatsoever to do with the Religion of Peace.

3. Extensive – and largely fruitless – efforts will be made to find Muslim community leaders prepared to speak out against the incident, in the unlikely event that it proves that the killers may have had Islamist sympathies.

4. Liberal commentators will take pains to draw a distinction between Islamism and Islam, noting that the former is a malign perversion of the latter which (apparently) explicitly forbids the murder of innocents.

5. Warming to this theme – and once the bodies are sufficiently cold, so as not to offend anyone’s good taste – one or two braver liberal commentators will suggest that while, of course, they wholly condemn all such acts of violence, it’s nevertheless the case that one or two of Charlie Hebdo’s editorials and cartoons could be quite needlessly provocative and that their contribution to the current climate of Islamophobia may have been responsible for heightening religious tensions in the broader culture. There have to be limits to free speech, after all. You can’t shout fire in a crowded theatre.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's well worth it.  Then see how many of the predictions come true.  I'm hoping at least part of what Delingpole is saying will turn out to be wrong.  Maybe the hand of national-defense Republicans in our new Congress will be strengthened by this latest outrage.  Maybe even some people in our universities will come to their senses.

January 7,  2015