Apparently, a personal view of the evidence was deemed superfluous to that conclusory judgment.
Common sense in Mr Brezinski's terms was not what Charlie Hebdo was about. What they were about was using satire in words and drawings to puncture the self-inflation of members of a range of institutions, whether of politicians in government or adherents of religions.
The cartoons which are available on the internet did not so much attack religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as attempt to hold them to the standards that their adherents profess.
That sort of truth-telling can easily be viewed as offensive, and even blasphemous. You can judge the spirit of their work yourself.
To its credit the New York Times published a video Charlie Hebdo Before The Massacre showing the journalists at work. Whatever they were, they were not mean-spirited.
Satire is not always gentle, and Charlie's was meant to provoke - but to provoke debate, not murder.
And adherence to the democratic principle of freedom of expression means nothing unless it unqualifiedly supports the idea that offensiveness is no ground for murder.
There is a clear line to be drawn here. One that can be more readily scanned closer to home where, because of time and distance, it may generate less emotion and more reason.
The bigotry of the writings of Michael Laws needed to be denounced but his right to free expression of that ugliness needed to be protected. That protection cannot be construed as endorsement.
To protect free expression of despicable opinion is to have faith, as John Milton's Areopagitica would have it, in the inherent workings of the marketplace of ideas. Bad ideas need to be countered but not suppressed. On this, liberals and conservatives can agree.
Ross Douthat is a conservative columnist for the New York Times, who writes from the perspective of a professed Roman Catholic. His blog on Charlie Hebdo is entitled The Blasphemy We Need and Douthat argues that while offensive, even blasphemous speech is necessarily tolerable in a free society, it cannot escape criticism and even social and political pressure.
To argue for "common sense" is fine in ordinary situations of civil discourse. But that criticism loses legitimacy in a context in which the offensive expressions are met with deadly violence.
Then we need more blasphemy, not less.
To give the violent veto power over civilised society soon means the loss of that society.
Douthat concludes: "It's okay to prefer a society where offence for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offences are policed by murder, that's when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed."
Amen to that. Je suis Charlie.
-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
