For years, Roger Shuler has written about elected officials and those close to them, recently mixing the credulity of public documents with saucy allegations of marital infidelity and criminality.
Earlier this month, a state court judge told him to stop.
He didn't.
And now he is in jail.
Last Wednesday, Shelby County sheriff's deputies arrested Shuler on charges of contempt of court and resisting arrest. Since then some national blogs have portrayed his imprisonment as a political attack meant to silence a contrarian voice in a conservative state.
Others have said that Shuler is a reckless bomb-thrower who has, nonetheless, had his constitutional rights trampled on and that he is a victim of prior restraint, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court has forbidden in all but imminent threats to national security.
