Of course, it's easy to appreciate free speech when it is done by people you sympathize with. It's much harder to do it in case where it's done by people you disagree with. That's why US has First Amendment and that's why, so far, the Supreme Court was very reluctant to allow any restrictions, even in case where political pressure is massive - such as the CU case. Unfortunately, the executive branch is not as adamant in protecting the Constitution as the SCOTUS are - see the recent case of Hillary Clinton promising to arrest and prosecute the maker of the infamous "Innocence of Muslims" flick.
It is by now a demonstrable fact that free speech restrictions are a slippery slope. You start with the laws that prohibit "bad" speech or political speech by "bad" people - and voila, in short time you get bloggers arrested and filmmakers jailed because somebody powerful didn't like what they said. The law is always written against "bad" people, but whoever gets to enforce it may have very different definitions of "bad" than you do.
It is by now a demonstrable fact that free speech restrictions are a slippery slope. You start with the laws that prohibit "bad" speech or political speech by "bad" people - and voila, in short time you get bloggers arrested and filmmakers jailed because somebody powerful didn't like what they said. The law is always written against "bad" people, but whoever gets to enforce it may have very different definitions of "bad" than you do.