What's next, alcohol?

The Baltimore Sun reports:

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.

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.

Department officials say they will send "ripples" through an industry that has proliferated on the Internet and grown into an estimated $10 billion-a-year colossus profiting Fortune 500 corporations such as Comcast, which offers hard-core movies on a pay-per-view channel.

Talk about some fucked up priorities. The United States is fighting a war against enemies that spit on freedom and equality, so what does the government focus on? They want to rid the world of porn. Listen up John Ashcroft, we don't need your religious right agenda, we need you to rid the world of TERRORISTS! Consentual sex is not a bad thing, and if an adult wants to buy it or watch it, why the hell should you or I care? When the United States government starts trying to ban the same things as the Taliban, we're in real trouble.

More here and here.


UPDATE: Oliver Willis says:

What the hell is the sense of fighting against religious extremists abroad if we're just going to have them run our own government?

Amen.