Well said, Mr Rusbridger. I hope that your article will be seen as final proof that civil liberties are not a Right vs Left issue. I would love to see the Left back on side. The likes of John Mortimer, a lifelong Labour man, used to be far more reliable on liberty in the pre-Blair days than many on the Right.

Sadly, given time, your article is more likely to provide final proof that the Left has the same feeble grasp on the law of unintended consequences as it does on the law of supply and demand. All limitations on free speech are to be resisted and - where possible - rolled back, so you might like to rein in your journalists' daily output of new demands to restrict it.

As a footnote, I am pleased to see that "professional status" doesn't matter any more, now that a "Fleet Street irregular" has been intimidated at Heathrow Airport. Journalists are, like policemen, people doing for money what all of us should do as a civic duty. Now you have grasped that, I look forward to an end to Guardian journalists sneering at bloggers from their imagined dizzy heights. 

In a civilised world, the validity of a person's views or actions has nothing to do with their status. Grasp that one, and not only will The Guardian's predeliction for ad hominem come to an end, but you will also be looking for a lot of new material to replace your coverage of the national victimhood poker tournament.