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Looks Like We Won the War on Terror!

20 September 2005 - gk - reactions

President Declares America has won the War on Terror, now onto the War on People's Privacy:

The FBI is joining the Bush administration's War on Porn. And it's looking for a few good agents.

Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of "the Director." That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
...
The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography -- not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.

"I guess this means we've won the war on terror," said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. "We must not need any more resources for espionage."

Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, "it's a running joke for us."

How completely asinine. Can anyone in this administration explain the misapplication of agency time and manpower to divert agents to pry into consensual adults private lives? This isn't about child porn, this is about good old regular porn - or as friends like to call it, "Art Films." Consensual adults people!

We thought Ashcroft was obsessed with porn, but apparently Gonzales is also.

Funny thing is about the porn industry, is that porn makes billions of dollars a year - it is perhaps America's single best export - and is a model of free market design. It is almost classical economics 101: there is an insatiable demand, and yet the purveyors of porn turn a huge profit even with the near infinite supply available on the internet.

Besides obvious First Amendment problems and the "local mores test," this is one area Republicans show their structural divisions. Where's the free marketers defending the "inalienable right" of the market to create and distribute porn without governmental interference? They defended cigarettes and alcohol, why not porn? We guess that the administration has got to keep the holier-than-thou set happy, and the business set are happy to satiate their fundy fellow travelers.