THE LOCAL CHAPTER OF EARTH FIRST! has partially covered a billboard for “Hooters” with this sign reading “Frodo Has Failed — Bush Has The Ring.” (A couple of them — looking very chilly — are “occupying” the sign, as you may be able to make out on the lower right. And yes, this is actual, firsthand photojournalism here on InstaPundit.)

Interviewed by local radio station WIVK, a spokeswoman for the group said that they were demonstrating true patriotism by putting the First Amendment into practice. Well, by that logic, so were the Nazis at Skokie, but never mind.

It’s easy to understand why Earth First! — which has an all-too-comfortable relationship with terrorism itself — might oppose a war on terrorism. You’d think, though, that Saddam Hussein’s ecological record, which includes firing the Kuwaiti oil fields and wholesale environmental destruction (“ecocide”) in the war against the “Marsh Arabs,” would be a target that even Earth First! would like to see bullseyed.

But, of course, you’d be wrong about that. Because to them, like so much of what styles itself the “antiwar” movement, it’s not really about the war at all. It’s all about Bush.

UPDATE: Several readers point out that in exercising their “free speech” rights, the Earth First! folks are covering up Hooters’ message, which Hooters is actually paying to present. Yeah. I don’t think Earth First! worries about that sort of thing much.

ANOTHER UPDATE: H.D. Miller seems to think I’m calling the Earth Firsters Nazis with the Skokie reference above. I wasn’t, but if he’s confused others might be, since he’s pretty smart. I was reacting to the dumb notion that speech is, in and of itself and independent of its content, patriotic. If it is, then Nazis are patriotic when they march. Got it?