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When Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle stepped off a plane at LAX in July 2008 – a couple of jet-lagged Brits on the lam from the United Kingdom – they looked for the first uniformed U.S. official they could find. Unfortunately for them, they found one. They thought they had found safe harbor from the English court that three days earlier had convicted them of hate-related writings originating on their website. Rather than wait for sentencing – expected to range from a year or two for Whittle to perhaps five years or more for Sheppard – the men skipped bail and hopped a plane in Dublin, believing that U.S. free-speech traditions and the visa waivers they secured at an Irish airport would shield them. Sheppard says he approached a U.S. official in Los Angeles, showed him the visa waiver and said in effect, “I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but we want to claim political asylum in the United States.” Eleven months later, Sheppard, 52, and Whittle, 42, remain in U.S. custody, spending their days in orange jumpsuits in the Santa Ana City Jail and awaiting a return to England and likely jail sentences. Since arriving in America, they haven’t spent a single day as free men.

[Article continues at link. Their website is heretical.com, which is archived in a google cache, the wayback machine, coral content distribution network and probably elsewhere. What sort of works are published (perhaps violating copyrights) at heretical.com? Works by Isaac Asimov, R. Crumb, Roald Dahl, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Authur Conan Doyle, Sigmund Freud, Rudyard Kipling, H. P. Lovecraft, H. L. Menken, Ivan Pavlov and others. And, yes, Adolph Hitler. Fortunately for the entire planet, words and pictures can never cause harm no matter who made them or who perceives them. Private information such as diaries deserve legal protection. Government secrets can sometimes deserve legal protection. Business secrets can sometimes deserve (or at least purchase) legal protection. But outside of these exceptions, I advocate the freedom of speech guaranteed in the United States Constitution. There is mistaken information at heretical.com, but publication of mistakes should not be criminal. There are unkind remarks and images at heretical.com, but publication of the unkind should not be criminal. It would have been better if the US had given these two men asylum, even though they have published mistakes and unkindness. From heretical.com: "News just received on June 11 that Simon Sheppard and Steve Whittle are to be deported from LAX on June 16, arriving in London June 17, when they will be arrested, taken to court, and put in jail for writing on a web site in Torrance, California words protected by the First Amendment." Advocates of freedom of speech, now is the time to step forward. - Trevor Blake]