Anti-Muslim movie doesn't meet free-speech test

 
Steve Klein is an insurance agent and Christian activist involved in "Innocence of Muslims," a film denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that sparked outrage in the Middle East.

In one of the most famous First Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck v. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited.
"The most stringent protection," he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, "would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."
Holmes' test -- that words are not protected if their nature and circumstances create a "clear and present danger" of harm -- has since been tightened. But even under the more restrictive current standard, "Innocence of Muslims," the film whose video trailer indirectly led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens among others, is not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution and the values it enshrines.
According to initial media investigations, the clip whose most egregious lines were apparently dubbed in after it was shot, was first posted to YouTube in July by someone with the user name "Sam Bacile." The Associated Press reported tracing a cellphone number given as Bacile's to the address of a Californian of Egyptian Coptic origin named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Nakoula has identified himself as coordinating logistics on the production but denies being Bacile.

Anti-Muslim movie doesn't meet free-speech test | StarTribune.com