A deranged Christian extremist in Florida, Terry Jones, burned a religious book and across the world an enraged Afghanistan crowd tore several innocent U.N. and police workers to bloody pieces.

There has been outcry from officials that these deaths were the – which it did last month with the most vicious intentions of denouncing Islam. So you’ve got one extreme religious group insulting, destroying a religious symbol, because in its eye the other is too extreme. Talk about calling the kettle black.

I’m not personally saying the church was justified in burning the Koran, but they absolutely have the right. You can burn the United States flag, the Bible, or the Constitution if you want and no one can do any thing about it. This is a free country, and you are free to express yourself even when it includes burning cultural, government or religious symbols in legitimate protest, for no reason at all or for a really offensive and stupid idea.

So after the church burned the Koran, thousands of people in Afghanistan, whose enflamed passions were fanned by Muslim religious extremists, stormed U.N. and Afghan police buildings in response, killing about 20 people in the name of Allah.

If Allah, or any God, would condone any such action, then I’d be more than happy to burn his book. Of course what the Bible, the Koran or any religious text really says depends almost exclusively on what the reader wants to see in it.

The Westboro Baptist Church, headed by another disturbed Pastor, Fred Phelps, has set out on the mission of picketing the funerals of dead soldiers and others carrying inflammatory signs decrying America’s social liberties. It blames our nation’s turmoil on homosexuality and the war is god’s punishment. And here I though it was the Bush administration’s rash decision to manufacturer evidence of weapons of mass destruction and exploit an injured nation’s post 9/11 political fervor.

One father who buried his son decided to sue the church for infringing on his right to hold a private funeral.

But in early March, the United States Supreme Court said the church had the right to protest so long as it didn’t directly interfere with the funeral service. Basically as long as the nut-jobs stand a distance enough away and picket along the road, the Constitution supports the option to support any crazy cause you wish to demonstrate.