Ashcroft Doesn't Like Porn?!?

Surprise, surprise. John Ashcroft has begun his great anti-porn crusade. Civil libertarians, the left and those who believe that the Attorney General isn't doing enough in the war on terrorism are all, of course, up in arms about this.

"....what an absolute waste of tax payers money, and limited law enforcement resources this is. Leave them alone."

"I am a pretty uptight conservative but shouldn't we be tracking down alqueda terrorists instead of these (sick) people?"

"Your tax dollars at work and your personal safety being disregarded."

(All quotes taken from the posting at Free Republic.com)

Now I think that we could probably be doing a more effective job in the war on terror. But the AG is responsible for upholding all the laws of the land, not just those that are the most popular or that the public thinks are the most pressing issues of the day. He doesn't get to decide which laws he wants to enforce today; they have to all be equal as far as he is concerned.

Now if someone wants to partake in pornography, that's their business. I personally don't really care what people watch in the privacy of their homes.

However, if the community has decided that a certain act being portrayed on paper or cellulose is obscene, then the porn companies have a responsibility to observe that community standard. Using the Postal Service for an out of state company to violate the local laws is a federal issue, which makes it the business of the AG, John Ashcroft.

And Ashcroft is doing exactly what we hired him to do: he's enforcing the laws as they are written.

Now you might be able to argue that sex, rape and murder aren't really obscene. And taken individually, they generally aren't considered to be so. On many mainstream TV shows all three are considered to be acceptable, if risque, topics.

But a graphic combination of two out of the three is the question here. And, in my opinion, a combination of two of those acts is obscene. These aren't NYPD in the buff, these are "knock her up and knock her off." It's a little much.

If someone wants to buy a tape of people engaging in various acts, hetero or homosexual, that's fine. It's just that some people are pushing the extremes a little too far right now.

And if Ashcroft wants to use existing federal law, as it was intended, to bring them down - that's just fine by me.