Free speech for creeps

Glenn Greenwald, apropos of Canada's troubling hate speech laws, makes the should-be-obvious point that speech – even that of smarmy, leg-humping, intellectually dishonest shits – has to be free:

People like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant are some of the most pernicious commentators around. But equally pernicious, at least, are those who advocate laws that would proscribe and punish political expression, and those who exploit those laws to try use the power of the State to impose penalties on those expressing "offensive" or "insulting" or "wrong" political ideas. The mere existence of the "investigation," interrogation, and proceeding itself is a grotesque affront to every basic liberty.

(Interesting – though occasionally goofy – discussion going on in Greenwald's comment thread, by the way.)