FRED TANNEAU via Getty Images

Let's be clear: I agree there is no justification whatsoever for gunning down journalists or cartoonists. I disagree with your seeming view that the right to offend comes with no corresponding responsibility; and I do not believe that a right to offend automatically translates into a duty to offend.

Pope Francis needs to do more than simply author apostolic exhortations and encyclicals, or replace Western Cardinals and Bishops with non-Western Cardinals and Bishops. Now the laity who are energized by Pope Francis' reform need him to use his pen.

Flemming Rose

We could search for a false harmony, like they do in unfree societies, by continually criminalizing new forms of speech according to the following maxim: If you accept my taboo and you don't speak critically or offensively about all that is sensitive and sacred to me, I will do the same for you. In societies like ours, where diversity is growing, this road leads to a tyranny of silence.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Like President George W. Bush's declaration of a "global war on terror," this new French declaration of war on "radical Islam" will have undercut any attempt to belittle these attackers as common criminals, inflating them instead to the size of worthy military opponents.

French filmmaker Claude Chabrol once remarked of critics, "Sometimes you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue." This was never truer of architecture critics than it was last month.

Bill Clark via Getty Images

Obama's Justice Department has brought more than twice as many prosecutions for the crime of leaking confidential information to journalists as the combined total of all presidents back to Woodrow Wilson. Whether you agree with Obama's track record of such prosecutions, you'd have to admit that treating Petraeus differently would be indefensible hypocrisy and elitism.

Every few days, the headquarters of the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State militias issues a communique on how the war is going. Monday's report said 27 coalition air attacks on Sunday andMonday struck nine vehicles 12 troop units, 10 fighting positions (foxholes), 10 buildings, an oil refinery, a rocket launcher, three boats and a tank, among other targets. The attacks are framed as progress in the fight against extremism and terrorism, although it's difficult to make that link in the aftermath of the violence in France. What we do know, from 13 years of painful experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that one-sided accounts of combat strikes don't necessarily reflect a war that's being won.

Christopher Furlong via Getty Images

This cowardly act against freedom of speech and freedom of expression is reprehensible to all sane people, but sadly, some have used it to exacerbate their already biased views.

LIONEL BONAVENTURE via Getty Images

What has happened to our "Country of Enlightenment"? France has always bragged about being a model of coexistence where the universalist and color blind philosophy of our Republic was supposed to protect us from racial tension. If we don't want our country to plunge into the abyss, the republican fable we are telling has to come to an end.

One doesn't expect the world's leading -- and liberal -- paper to take a stance that goes effectively against a court in a Third World country that's struggling against great historic odds to bring genocidal killers to justice.

AP

While they are proud members of opposing political parties, their ability to speak thoughtfully and civilly to one another should serve as a lesson to both Democrats and Republicans that conversations free of partisan sniping and vitriol are possible across the political aisle.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Freedom of speech must include the freedom to outrage. If you have to fight fire with fire, you have to fight indecency with more indecency. Rudeness subverts oppression. Crudeness ventilates orthodoxy. Laughter strips the emperor naked.

It is time to call on rulers in the Middle East to end their hypocrisy in condemning extremists committing terror abroad in the name of fighting blasphemy while censoring citizens at home for the same reason. They must also defend the freedom of the press and expression denied to their own citizens.

In traversing the politically tinged terrain of what has become a high-water mark for protests, a line was crossed in the successful and ongoing Beverly Hills Hotel boycott.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

My hope is that we will honor the martyrs -- and I think the journalists killed in their newsroom were definitely martyrs -- by finding that critical balance between counter-terrorism strategies and our collective human right to freely express our views.

As I tip-toed into adolescence, I was completely overwhelmed by a suite of products that would later morph into this thing called social media. Be it AOL Instant Messaging, chat rooms, or the almighty email, nobody ever felt far away, no matter their zip code.