Saturday began as no easy day to care about the movies and, come to think of it, our so-called freedom of speech.

The first thing you see on TV at 72 degrees just after 5 a.m. is a guy in a heavy winter coat and thick-framed glasses over a bright white scarf stuffed into the back of a newsboy cap. At first blush more haphazardly-costumed “Invisible Man” than amateur terrorist and alleged fraud, the dude is nonetheless escorted out of his home in what looks like the middle of the night by a phalanx of L.A. County Sheriffs deputies and news cameras as NBC’s Mike Taibi mumbles something about “the filmmaker” and how his use of the Internet might have violated terms of his parole.

He stressed the figure “was not under arrest.”

Still, the images of a guy being detained after putting something provocative on the Internet gives...