Molly Norris Is Going Ghost

Molly is disappearing...on her own.

Her newspaper, Seattle Weekly, reports:

[O]n the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is... moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity... in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It's all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon.

...

ADDED: There's a big Metafilter thread about it, which I'm reading after writing that. A surprising number of people are blaming Norris for bringing the death threats on herself.

Perhaps that number of people shouldn't be all that surprising to Ann Althouse as Ann did precisely that in her blog post.  The best rejoinder to that sort of thinking comes from the comments.

PEOPLE WHO DON'T DESERVE TO BE OFFENDED?!?!?!

Good god, Ann. Their reaction is exactly what makes them deserving.

UPDATE - We also have this from Jihad Watch.

This is the sort of case that the President of the United States should be talking about. Instead of wringing his hands about the prospect of Muslim rioting over Qur'an-burning, the President should go on television and give a brief lesson about how freedom of speech is a foremost bulwark against tyranny and a cornerstone of any society that respects the dignity of the human being. He should say that the idea that Molly Norris would have to live in hiding because of a cartoon, or series of cartoons, is unconscionable, and tell the Islamic world that neither Muslims nor their prophet are harmed by cartoons depicting him, and that their violent rage over such depictions is the only thing that makes people care to draw him in the first place. He should say that to threaten people with death and to kill people over cartoons of Muhammad is sheer madness, and is a form of violent irrationality that is destructive to free societies -- and as such, it is something that the U.S. will do everything it can to resist.

Were we talking about Christians threatening critics with death, the response from the mainstream media and our government would be far more vocally supportive of the critics.  And properly so!