So I’m over at Metafilter this morning, reading about how The National Review has decided to let columnist Ann Coulter go, and I’m genuinely amazed that anyone could view her as a martyr to free speech. This is the woman who called her editors spineless girly-boys (among other things) on national television and in the Washington Post when they refused to print a column where she angrily called for the detainment of all “swarthy males” in the wake of last month’s terrorist attack. The National Review is under no obligation to print anything she writes, and if they reach an editorial impasse and refuse to print an individual column, that’s not the same thing as censorship. Coulter was not let go because of a difference of opinion or because her editors feared the backlash from a politically correct Left. As National Review editor Jonah Goldberg so eloquently points out, her syndicated column was dropped because of poor writing and her subsequent insubordination in the national press. “Ann didn’t fail as a person…” Goldberg writes, “she failed as WRITER, which for us is almost as bad.”

In other news, Dean Allen of Textism suggests, “Do not measure distance in kilometres; use gila monsters instead.” Oh, and guess who’s come to town?