Merkel allows prosecution of German comedian who mocked Turkish president

washingtonpost.com ^ | April 15 at 9:30 AM | Rick Noack

[Trumpinator]

Merkel allows prosecution of German comedian who mocked Turkish president

By Rick Noack April 15 at 9:30 AM

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has cleared the way for the prosecution of German comedian Jan Böhmermann, whose poem mocking Turkey's president has become the centerpiece of a clash between Germany's free-speech traditions and the government's efforts to safeguard its important relations with Turkey.

In a news conference Friday, Merkel emphasized that it will now be up to German courts to decide whether Böhmermann is guilty of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But critics — including members of her own government — have described it as a betrayal of values protecting open expression.

[Trumpinator]

This is insanity - why are we in NATO again? To keep this un-free European perversion towards Islam going? To placate Turks who wiped out Christianity in the land of its birth and have never been part of the Western tradition?

[TangoLimaSierra]

She was so much more at home in East Germany.

[Trumpinator]

I think - I just realized - Europe is once again paying Islam a ransom like it did during the times of the Barbary Pirates - only in a more updated way.

[Truth29]

Merkel has gone over to the enemy. She needs to be removed before she completely corrupts the German state and turns its citizens into dhimmis.

[pgkdan]

This is insanity - why are we in NATO again?

Insanity is right! Merkel needs to go. I can't believe that the German people are standing for this!

[ClearCase_guy]

We should nuke Germany. It would be a kindness.

[PGR88]

These people are no longer our allies.

NATO now is just security cover for progressive-left massive social-engineer and to protect the rise of proto-fascist statism in the EU. The USA is complicit in the slow suicide of Europe

[Mr. K]

Hey Germans!
You’ve been down this path before... You know where it leads...

[McGruff]

He better look east for a safe space to live.

[angcat]

I can’t believe no one has blown her away yet.

[null and void]

Change Merkel to obama and German state to America and the sentence is equally valid.

[DesertRhino]

Well, they didn’t allow Germans to insult Bush. Oh wait...

[kiryandil]

Put on a hijab and make me a sammich, Merkel.

[HiTech RedNeck]

That, and postwar Germany wasn’t set up to be all that rah-rah about free speech anyhow, lest Nazi talk spring up and flourish again.

Nazi talk might not, but I can see a great temptation in Germany for something else bad to take its place.

[HiTech RedNeck]

And it has to be halal. No braunschweiger.

[lgjhn23]

Everyday, there is another example of the insanity that the mental disorder of liberalism causes.
These imbeciles need to put in a mental institution, not in government.

[USMCPOP]

Interesting article about insult laws in Germany.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-05-23/news/1994143033_1_creative-insults-berlin-wimp

But does someone from another country have standing if they weren’t in Germany?

[Trumpinator]

Everyday, there is another example of the insanity that the mental disorder of liberalism causes. These imbeciles need to put in a mental institution, not in government.

Merkel is actually what passes for a conservative in Germany...

[ifinnegan]

“Germany’s free-speech traditions “

Say what?

A tradition imposed on them by the good ole USA in 1945.

Time to occupy again?

[TigerLikesRooster]

That is a little too much of Ostalgie at work here. Is a vision of her former Vaterland, Deutsche Demokratische Republik, showing up in her dream these days?