Spin Dry

That's my advice to the porno police. Because, well, obviously the US Attorney General has done such an incredible job ending crime and terrorism and all of that. Oops. Sorry. Did I say that in my sarcastic voice?

But... this is the kind of shit that just makes my blood boil:

Since 2001, 40 people and businesses have been convicted and 20 additional indictments are pending, said Andrew Oosterbaan, chief of the Justice Department's child exploitation and obscenity section. By comparison, there were four such prosecutions during the eight years of the Clinton administration, he said.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, like his immediate predecessor, John Ashcroft, has pledged to make obscenity prosecutions a priority. The department is expected to announce soon the creation of a special unit within its criminal division to focus on adult obscenity cases.

"Enforcement is absolutely necessary if we are going to protect citizens from unwanted exposure to obscene materials," Gonzales recently told federal prosecutors. He directed U.S. attorneys to report back by late July on effective ways to crack down on obscenity and what tools the prosecutors might need.

To that last bit from Gonzales there, I just say: Horseshit! What, obscene materials are just running up to people in the streets and exposing themselves? Nah. The kinds of companies being persecuted and the material they sell are bought and paid for by people who want them. The only time I can see people being exposed to it against their will, oddly enough, is when they wind up on jury duty in one of these ridiculous, pointless, wasteful, stupid stupid trials.

But there is a bright glint on the horizon:

But a recent court decision in Pittsburgh could upset the administration's plans. U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster tossed out an obscenity indictment against Extreme Associates Inc. and its owners, Robert Zicari, and his wife, Janet Romano, both of Northridge, Calif.

Lancaster ruled that prosecutors overstepped their bounds while trying to block the company's hard-core movies from children and from adults who did not want to see such material. He said the company can market and distribute its materials because people have a right to view them in the privacy of their own homes.

We need more judges like Lancaster, who know the Constitution and will enforce it when asshats like Gonzales decide that the most evil thing in the world is sex.

Of course, there are two motives here. One is kissing up to the JeezusPhreeks™, who have their own heads so far up their asses in so many ways it's not even funny. Hey guys, guess what? If he even existed (doubtful), he died a long long time ago. And he was a Jew.

The other motive?

The government is seeking the forfeiture of millions of dollars in real estate and other property, including a Lear jet, in the Wedelstedt case.

Of course they are. Which they shouldn't. And this is the kind of creeping totalitarianism that must be stopped. Look at the heroes and villains in this case, and you'll see why the wingnuts are working so hard to neuter the court system or to stuff it with their kinds of judges. It took a judge to stand up to this bullshit in one case and stop them cold.

And if you don't think the wingnuts and religiously insane (redundant) aren't trying to use the courts to ram through a theocracy, then you haven't heard about this, via Pandagon via Eschaton:

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled a Virginia county can refuse to let a witch give the invocation at its meetings by limiting the privilege to clergy representing Judeo-Christian monotheism.

Uh... when was it they changed the definition of religion to exclude everything but Christianity? Oh -- they haven't yet. But the fundinazis are trying to, very very hard.

It's little things like this that start sliming up the slippery slope. We have to fight them now, fight them always. We have to kick the fundies to the curb, and leave them where they belong -- in the gutter with the trash.