Spare me faux outrage

Barticles notes today:

NYT’s Thomas Friedman is worried that the current “poisonous” political atmosphere will incite someone to attempt to assassinate President Obama. Too many people, he says, are “crossing the line between criticizing the president and tacitly encouraging the unthinkable and the unforgivable."

Remember this novel written in 2004 with a plot to assassinate President George W. Bush?

In Nicholson Baker's new novella, "Checkpoint," a man sits in a Washington hotel room with a friend and talks about assassinating President Bush.

It's a work of the imagination and no attempts on the president's life are actually made, but the novel is likely to be incendiary, as with Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11."

... Alfred A. Knopf is planning to publish Baker's work Aug. 24, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. "Checkpoint" is 115 pages long and will sell for $18.
...
Though it is against the law to threaten the president in real life, a work of fiction is usually protected by the First Amendment.

Spare me the faux outrage of the left ... they made the blueprint.