Freedom isn't free -- in Arizona, it can cost you

PHOENIX -- A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred Arizona from using a state law to prosecute an online merchant who sells shirts that list names of thousands of troops killed in Iraq.

Here come those meddlin’ fedrul courts again, throwing that damn Constitution thing in the way of some good old-fashioned Red State patriotism policing.

Seems there’s this guy in Arizona who sells T-shirts that, under the heading “Bush Lied – They Died,” list names of Iraq war dead -- the political effectiveness, taste and basic decency of which are certainly debatable.

What isn’t debatable, except, apparently, in Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, is that the message -- like it, hate it or ignore it -- is political speech and the names of troops killed in Iraq a matter of public record.

That didn’t stop Arizona from passing a law last year that made it illegal to sell any product that uses troops’ names without families’ permission. The other three states have passed similar laws.

Defenders of this unconstitutional nonsense have no doubt argued passionately that gag laws like this (and laws like this almost always make me gag) need to be upheld because these soldiers died for our freedom. Which, of course, they did.

The irony never quite sinks in.