Politic: 2012 Edition

If you were not planning not to vote at the 2012 election you NEED to reconsider. Because the fate of porn rest in your hands.
Republican Presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, may hold the most unpopular stance in American history: he wants to ban as much porn as he can. A 2007 video of Romney promising to place porn filters on every new computer have resurfaced after his legal adviser “assured” President Reagan’s anti-porn legal crusader that Romney sticks by his pledge to curtail porn and resumes prosecution under latent federal obscenity laws.
“Computer pornography has given new meaning to the words ‘home invasion,’” Romney said at a 2007 Values Voter summit, “If I am President, I will work to make sure that every computer sold into the home has an easy to engage pornography filter so that every parent can protect their child from unwanted filth.” Federal obscenity laws used to prosecute porn moguls, such as Hustler’s Larry Flynt, have largely been limited to child pornography since the rise of the Internet, but there’s an open debate as to whether they could be reactivated.
According to The Daily Caller, Romney’s foreign and legal policy director, Alex Wong, personally assured former Justice Department porn prosecutors Patrick Truman and Bob Flores, that a Presidential Romney would go after porn peddlers with a pitchfork. “Wong assured us that Romney is very concerned with this, and that if he’s elected these laws will be enforced,” Trueman told The Daily Caller. ”They promised to vigorously enforce federal adult obscenity laws.”
Prosecutions fell out of fashion with the Clinton administration (thanks the Gods for Clinton), whose Attorney General, Janet Reno, didn’t feel the need to make it a priority. The momentum carried over to the Bush administration. “My understanding was that after 9/11 hit, [Attorney General John Ashcroft] was advised that he’d look frivolous if he did pornography cases,” Trueman said.
The hasn’t stopped die-hard moral crusaders from keeping the promise of obscenity prosecutions on a legal respirator for a time when they can be resuscitated. Utah Senator and libertarian arch-nemesis, Orrin Hatch, recently wrote a strongly worded letter urging current Attorney General Eric Holder to resume the porn purge. Even the Utah Attorney General’s website is keeping hope alive, stating:
“Many people believe material must be legal if it is available in their community such as at a store, on television or on the radio. This belief is false. The mere fact that the material is available does not mean it is legal, but law enforcement cannot seize suspected pornographic material without a court order… Citizen complaints are crucial for prosecutions to occur.”
Legally speaking, porn isn’t protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court gave porn prosecutors a present in Miller v. California (1973), declaring that “patently offensive” material that appeals to prurient interests must confirm to contemporary “community standards.”
The ability of a particularly squeamish community to ban porn was once confined to certain geographical locations, but, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns, the Internet reaches all communities, and at least one previous court held this to mean that content should conform to the community “most likely to be offended by the message.”
“I think they would probably prosecute”, Flynt said, of Romney’s potential attorney general, but he isn’t worried, “they have nothing to do with the success of the prosecution.”
Cracking down on morally objectionable material might be an unpopular move, but past Attorneys General, such as Alberto Gonzales, have been known to stretch the legal limits of the law to ram through the interests of the current president.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

History of Homosexual: Ancient Greece

Image
How we from being happily accept in society to being hate and have to fight for equality? Let start begin in the ancient world work our way to the source of the problem. The Ancient Greece "The noble lover of beauty engages in love wherever he sees excellence and splendid natural endowment without regard for any difference in physiological detail." - Plutarch The ancient Greeks are widely known for their gay exploits. Many people are aware of Greek homosexual love poetry, the same-sex relations of Greek gods and heroes, and the gay relationship between Alexander the Great and Hephaestion. It is important in the beginning to define our vocabulary. The term ’homosexuality’ as it is used and understood today is not mainly applicable to Greek of ancient times for three reasons: First of all, most Greeks were bisexual. Second, homosexuality and 'gay' as sexual identities are recent developments. They were emerged only in the 2Oth Century (our idea of what i...
Please read more »

Seven Wonders of the World: Colossus of Rhodes

Image
Travelers to the New York City harbor see a marvelous sight. Standing on a small island in the harbor is an immense statue of a robed woman, holding a book and lifting a torch to the sky. It is sometimes referred to as the "Modern Colossus," but more often called the Statue of Liberty. This awe-inspiring statue was a gift from France to America and is easily recognized by people around the world. What many visitors to this shrine to freedom don't know is that the statue, the "Modern Colossus," is the echo of another statue, the original colossus, which stood over two thousand years ago at the entrance to another busy harbor on the Island of Rhodes. In the late 4th century BC, Rhodes, allied with Ptolemy I of Egypt, prevented a massive invasion staged by their common enemy, Antigonus I Monophthalmus and his son Demetrius. In 304 BC a relief force of ships sent by Ptolemy arrived, and Antigonus's army abandoned the siege, leaving most of their siege equi...
Please read more »

Daily life of Roman life: Slavery

Image
Slavery had a long history in the ancient world and was practiced in Ancient Egypt and Greece, as well as Rome. Most slaves during the Roman Empire were foreigners and, unlike in modern times, Roman slavery was not based on race. Slaves were considered property under Roman law and had no legal personhood. Unlike Roman citizens, they could be subjected to corporal punishment, sexual exploitation (prostitutes were often slaves), torture, and summary execution. The testimony of a slave could not be accepted in a court of law unless the slave was tortured—a practice based on the belief that slaves in a position to be privy to their masters' affairs would be too virtuously loyal to reveal damaging evidence unless coerced (yeah right). Over time, however, slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. How did people become Roman Slaves? People became slaves among the Romans by the following ways: Prisoners of war Sailors ...
Please read more »