"Scott Lemieux's Spencer Ackerman moment."

Actually, I think this is unfair, but I'm not going say why or distinguish Scott Lemieux from Spencer Ackerman, because I swore off linking to Lawyers, Guns and Money when they deleted all Meade's comments. I'm not going to interact with people who have deliberately and finally cut of my channels of interaction with them.

Restore everything and apologize and I will.

Why does the left hate free speech?

Because they don't know how to talk about the substantive merits when they are challenged. Having submerged themselves in disciplining each other by denouncing any heretics in their midst, they find themselves overwhelmed and outnumbered in America, where there is vibrant debate about all sorts of things they don't know how to begin to talk about. They resort to stomping their feet and shouting "shut up"... when they aren't prissily imploring everyone to be "civil."

UPDATE: Scott Lemieux, the blogger I linked to above, has written a new post in which he might think he's responding to my challenge and providing substance rather than crude denouncement. If you can slog through his laughably poor writing — "It’s not just liberals but Althouse herself who don’t believe in the standards of free speech she criticizes 'liberals' for not practicing" — you'll see he's come up with 3 links to posts of mine which supposedly show that I don't have principled free-speech values. Follow those links and see what I actually wrote.

"That has nothing to do with family and friends and everything to do with security... It's a question of distance."

Yes, it's a question of distance between you and ordinary mortals. Can someone explain how Nancy Pelosi has the nerve to tell a group of veterans that her desire to avoid having her plane stop to refuel is all about security?

ADDED: Scott Lemieux -- who has a bizarre case of Althouse Derangement Syndrome -- links to this post and rants obtusely about how it's a post-9/11 security requirement that the Speaker of the House fly in a military plane as opposed to a commercial plane. But this post is about a controversy over the size of the military plane she should have, not about whether or not she should have a military plane. He points out that Hastert got a military plane. Well, duh, Scott, that's in the article I linked to:

[A]fter the Sept. 11 attacks, it was deemed that anyone two heartbeats away from the presidency warranted a military jet.

Until now, the only speaker affected was Republican J. Dennis Hastert, who commuted to his Illinois district in small executive-style military jets.

But those aircraft require ideal weather conditions to make the cross-country trip without stopping to refuel....

The Defense Department delivered a letter to Pelosi late Wednesday that "offers her, as a courtesy, the same provisions to travel that Speaker Hastert had," said a senior Defense official.

And then read the text of my post, which doesn't criticize Pelosi for wanting a military plane by for "her desire to avoid having her plane stop to refuel." You know, words have meaning. Two words you might want to learn are "never" and "mind." And then maybe "I'm" and "sorry." You twit.

Lemieux['s blog] had to withdraw a rant about me on Thursday because his own commenters explained how he was being an idiot and got it wrong. Let's see if he figures out his boo-boo this time and corrects it. I don't normally link to my haters, but I'm going to make an exception just to say that Scott's bumbling is especially ridiculous. [NOTE: I see now that it was a co-blogger with the near-invisible moniker "d" that wrote the post that was regretted. Lemieux writes about me constantly over there, and I was wrong to assume that post was another one of his droppings. Apparently, the ADS over there is contagious, but d hasn't got it as bad.]

I thought Scott was a lawyer, because his blog is called "Lawyers, Guns, and Money," and I was going to say I feel for his clients, but it turns out he's a political science professor, and I don't think there's a law school to blame for his consistently poor reading, wildly flailing attacks, and obsession with a certain female law professor. Get well soon, loser. ADS is a ravaging disease for pathetic little men.