Pot, meet kettle

The Rocky's Vincent Carroll gets in one last pre-election shot at the dope fiends who shouted down Gov. Bill Owens and others at an anti-Amendment 44 rally on the Capitol steps a couple of weeks ago. He quotes an e-mail from Allan St. Pierre, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws:

"I'm genuinely dismayed," [St. Pierre] wrote, "to see the Rocky Mountain News' editorial board chose to highlight Governor (Bill) Owens' disgusting slur rather than one hundred and fifty Coloradans' righteous and angry tones confronting prevaricating politicians . . ."

St. Pierre, who witnessed the protest, seems to believe the First Amendment does not apply to anyone who utters what he considers a dangerous lie.

But the ever-fair Carroll does concede one point:

[St. Pierre] complains that Owens was out of line in comparing the protesters to "brownshirts" - aka Nazi storm troopers. And to be fair, the Nazi analogy in contemporary America is almost always a stretch.

So let's concede that SAFER protesters were by no means the modern equivalent of Ernst Rohm's SA. A more generic term will have to do for those who deny freedom of speech to their fellow citizens.

My humble vote is for "fascists."

Har-har. Well, SAFER gave Carroll the opening; they can't expect him not to waltz through.