Let nobody say that John Ashcroft isn't trying to help George Bush get re-elected; in addition to helping to direct the domestic side of the war on terror, our Attorney General is creating fun and stimulating new jobs to help with the national employment figures:
Lam Nguyen's job is to sit for hours in a chilly, quiet room devoid of any color but gray and look at pornography. This job, which Nguyen does earnestly from 9 to 5, surrounded by a half-dozen other "computer forensic specialists" like him, has become the focal point of the Justice Department's operation to rid the world of porn."Honey, how was your day at work?"In this field office in Washington, 32 prosecutors, investigators and a handful of FBI agents are spending millions of dollars to bring anti-obscenity cases to courthouses across the country for the first time in 10 years. Nothing is off limits, they warn, even soft-core cable programs such as HBO's long-running Real Sex or the adult movies widely offered in guestrooms of major hotel chains.
It's crap like this that gives war-on-terror-supporting libertarians agita when we think of the November elections. We have the choice between religious wackos and un-deregulatory anti-free traders. Yuck. But what's particularly disturbing about this story is this: even if you think the first amendment shouldn't and doesn't apply to this sort of material, what the heck kind of use of national resources is this? Is there really nothing more threatening to national security than pictures of naked people that forty or fifty law enforcement types couldn't be spending their time on?