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"If Mr. Frenton had participated in Fred Phelps' other favorite activity, protesting at servicemen's funerals, would anyone here be questioning the NJ Transit Authority's right to fire him for that? I wouldn't.

You mean anyone other than the ACLU? Probably not, but I'd wager a week's pay the ACLU would. I wonder if they'll assert themselves here.

Like I said, my experience so so painfully abbreviated in this are of law, I recognize that what might seem logical (not firing public employees for exercising their 1A rights), may very well be plainly legal (or illegal).

In my mind, I keep coming back to this. If freedom of religion gives freedom to praise our supernatural deities, must it also protect those who wish to blaspheme those same supernatural deities, does it not?

I think it does give him that freedom. The problem is that your freedom from being fired by the government is a lot narrower than your freedom from being arrested by the government. If the government employer can make a convincing argument that some prohibition is necessary for them to effectively fulfill their public function, then they are generally given deference in their decision to fire those who violate those prohibitions.

Also, and these are just my instincts talking, the act of burning the Koran will probably be viewed a lot differently than had he simply said "I hate Islam" or even "I hate Muslims". Even though the Supreme Court has held that both flag-burning and cross-burning are constitutionally protected speech, the Court in both cases seemed to recognize that such burnings were qualitatively different than other, verbal, types of speech.

Publicly burning the Koran is more than just the expression of an opinion or religious belief. It is a gross violation of generally establish standards of public decorum. Burning religious or national symbols or other effigies is legally tolerated, but deeply frowned upon by most of society. While it may not be prosecutable criminally, it is probably sanctionable by a public employer.

I think most of us understand that if we engage in willfully infamous behavior, many around us, particularly our employers, will want to disassociate themselves from us if they value their own reputations. Laugh as we might about the "good name" of the New Jersey Transit Authority, they do have a legitimate interest in their own reputation, and that interest will probably be held to outweigh Mr. Frenton's interest in the freedom to engage in extreme, disorderly, and, frankly, menacing forms of "speech".