When Alberto Gonzales came on board as Attorney General, it was like, okay, this isn't a good guy. "Torture guy," being one of Bush's closest associates, clearly couldn't be a good guy. But some of us were thinking, well, at least he's not the psycho Christian that Asscroft is. Sounds like he'll at least leave us alone when it comes to things like porn. Well, not anymore. Linked off of that editorial is a slightly less slanted view, but fuck it; the slant pretty much has it right. Err, left, depending on how you want to parse that.

This is riduculous, and of course, not entirely surprising. But yeah, this is how they're keeping us safe from the big bad men out there -- by giving some people a few less things to masturbate over.

Concerned parents argue that our society has become increasingly tolerant of pornography and socially questionable material, and many of them blame the Internet for the degradation of traditional American values.

You hear shit like this a lot, and it both irritates me and makes me laugh. "Traditional American values." Yeah, in a country whose foundations are in things like, uh, slavery. Also, I'm tired of the 'net getting blamed for everything. Is the internet a cesspool? Yeah, but so is humanity. The explosion of porn on the internet is just a reflection of what's going on in peoples' minds. Stuff that would be there anyway; now everyone just knows that they're not alone. "But it's an enabler!" As an example, from what I understand, the rates of child sexual abuse haven't really gone up since the internet got big, even though we know that the 'net is big with pedos.

Also, "socially questionable"? That's meaningless. Anything can be socially questionable, but that doesn't make it illegal. And of course, just because something is illegal doesn't make it wrong, just like something being legal doesn't make it right. That't not to say that everything is nebulous and gray, but a lot of things are nebulous and gray. On the other hand, some things aren 't. Look, I didn't mean for this post to ramble on like this, but when you have a thousand loose ends, why not add some more.

As long as what I do doesn't harm you personally, I have a right to do it. It's a silly view and a view rejected by law enforcement policies all over the country.

Well, fucker, that's how things should be. It's not silly, and god, the fucking arrogance to say that it is. If it doesn't hurt anyone else, then where the fuck is the harm? I know, I know, bigger picture, fabric of society, blah blah blah. It's the same kind of stretched, abstract reasoning that people use against things like gay marriage. The arguments don't really mean anything and the supposed results certainly aren't quantifiable, but it all sounds good (mainly becase they agree with it), so they roll with it.

Before I delve too far into the second link, take a look at the picture of Alex Acosta. What the fuck is up with that guy? If you look at his picture for more than a couple of seconds, you realize that something is wrong with that guy. In fact, everything is wrong. He looks like something by Escher -- bits and pieces look OK and make sense, but as a whole it just doesn't work with reality.

Sources say Acosta was told by the FBI officials during last month's meeting that obscenity prosecution would have to be handled by the crimes against children unit. But that unit is already overworked and would have to take agents off cases of child endangerment to work on adult porn cases.

Wow, that is fucked up. They will actually have to pull people off of investigating kiddie porn for this bullshit. It doesn't take a genius to see that this is how it will be, though, and of course it will be pointed out left and right. The thing is, the people behind this -- religious conservatives -- obviously don't care. They're more interested in pushing their views and making a point than really doing things to help children. We know that Catholics don't give a shit about kids based on that little pedophile priest thing, but the rest of them talk a good game even though -- surprise, surprise -- they're completely full of shit.

"It's all part of the same thing, of the organized crime syndicate," Sharp said. "It has an effect on children."

Again, bullshit. You just want to think that it has a huge effect on children. Or, more importantly, you want everyone else to think that it does. But as always, children are just pawns to these people. Anytime there's something that the religious right doesn't like, they claim it's bad for children. Look, I'm not saying that any of this is good for children, but they're not the targeted consumers of it. Now, I'm not naive enough to think that kids can be completely isolated from pornography, but I don't think many kids have died or been irrevocably damaged by accidental exposure to porn. How many of us when we were younger were exposed to it in some fashion or other? And yeah, it's just total chaos in our society. And for kids who are damaged, I'd be willing to bet that it's stupid adults and the stigma they bring to things that causes the real damage. The problem is that adults look at sexual material through adult eyes, as opposed to kids' eyes where they're kinda curious about things, but they don't have those hormones to give it any meaning. Again, I'm not saying that this is stuff that kids need to be exposed to, since they don't understand it, but if they are exposed maybe more people should just do some of that goddamn "parenting" stuff that they seem to be so proud of but are actually really shitty at.

Our society sucks, but not because of things like this. Sure, there's some fucked up shit out there, hell, lots of shit that even I'll say "uhhh, no thanks" to, but as long as it isn't hurting anyone else, I don't care if others are into it. As always, do what you gotta do. Don't involve kids, don't force anyone, and don't hurt anyone who isn't into the whole pain thing. Again: where is the harm? And give me something concrete, not just a bunch of the aforementioned bullshit. The problem is, to a lot of people out there, it isn't bullshit -- and they've got a lot more clout than a bunch of superstitious dumbfucks should have.

Another problem I have with this is that even if they succeed in putting people in jail, levying fines, and shutting pornographers down, it still doesn't really accomplish anything. All it does it push shit underground, but it doesn't go away. And any dumbfuck knows this. Good luck fighting human perversion. Now, in some cases, like with child porn, it's still worth fighting the fight because the consequences are clear. But with lots of other "obscenity," it isn't worth it. You're not going to change things. But as long as they make their point and think they're making great inroads in helping society, they're happy. Even when they are the ones who are truly destroying the values that we're (supposedly) built on.