That'll Teach the Mullahs!

Some news that slipped under the radar last week: Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and her American literary agent has sued the U.S. government for violating the First Amendment via the Treasury Dept.'s onerous new restrictions on publishing work emanating from countries under economic embargo. (I've written about these idiotic, illiberal and counter-productive regulations, in order, here, here, and here.)

As a Scripps-Howard editorial puts it, "It isn't helping America's image in the world that the U.S. government is being sued by a Nobel Prize-winning Iranian human-rights activist, lauded by President Bush, in a lawsuit that alleges censorship." More importantly, it's actually hurting the important cause of Iranian freedom, and violating our own, without producing any tangible benefit that I can fathom.