People do need to wake up about twitter and the internet in general, what gets said on twitter, oh-so-casually, is the same as happens in conversation but everyone can see it and it never goes away. "You have the right to remain silent" are words to live by even when not having your hands cuffed.

Text-only words also lack that 'tone of voice' a recording would have, making it easier to see nasty intent where it wasn't, or the reverse, more reason to be careful.

Also, I don't think this is really a free speech case, she's representing her country and they don't care for her remarks, I don't know how it comes off in the native tongue and it might be much nastier sounding then it seems. There might be some, and should be some, legal protection from arbitrary rulings or outright political persecution even for something of this sort, but it's still not the same as locking someone up. If one of our general's said something asinine we'd fire them or encourage retirement, admittedly that's an elderly gentleman in charge of serious affairs not some young girl in charge of displaying athletic skill.

It seems like an over-reaction to me, and I'm sure there's not much authentic outrage from the Greek gov't, except maybe genuine outrage at being embarrassed. I really don't know much about Golden Dawn, except they get called racist, I don't know if that's a fair charge, just that every European country seems to have a party that's racist and I've no clue which of them are metaphorical cross burners and which are accused of it constantly the way the GOP is.

Which is all a long way of saying I've absolutely no clue if the reaction is justified but am naturally skeptical.