U.S. Justice Department Prepares Assault on Pr0n

An anonymous reader writes "The Baltimore Sun is reporting that the Justice Department is preparing to reawaken old laws to fight the war on ... no, not terrorists... porn! And not just the kinky stuff either. In the age of Internet connectivity, will this mean these jobs are headed to India too?"

Comments

Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the age of Internet connectivity, will this mean these jobs are headed to India too?

They are going to outsource the DOJ? Good god, is nothing sacred?

Re:Say what?

[47Ronin]

Let me be the first to say "N O O O O O O O O !!!"

who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the age of Internet connectivity, will this mean these jobs are headed to India too?

Let's hope so. Indian women are hot.

Re:who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Word of warning: Don't ever search for "indian woman" (without the quotes) on Google Image Search with filtering turned off.

Re:who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Word of warning: Don't ever search for "indian woman" (without the quotes) on Google Image Search with filtering turned off.

After some brief research, I must concur with this statement.

How will this help Gas prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see how this war will help gas prices at all? What's the point? :)

Re:How will this help Gas prices?

[criordan]

It won't directly help lower gas prices. However, it will force us to walk places more often to burn off the calories that we used to lose doing other things.

Re:How will this help Gas prices?

[The_Mystic_For_Real]

If I had a girlfriend, do you think I would be posting stupid jokes on /.?

Hindi for Bukkake?

[Akai]

I for one welcome our new Indian porn actresses.

Pointless

[Tango42]

All mediums are used for porn almost as soon as they are made, and AFAIK none has every stopped being used. No laws are going to stop it.

Re:Pointless

[Flakbait]

Yeah, I can still remember about the first readings of erotic material over the telegraph back in the 1800's...

SHE GRASPED HIS THROBBING PURPLE WARRIOR IN HER HANDS STOP. OH SHE SAID ITS SO BIG STOP.

Re:Pointless

[macshit]

Very true, but I suspect this has more to with:

1. election-season wooing of the hard right, and
2. the fact that our attorney general is a prudish freak (or is that a freakish prude?).

They can take my pr0n when...

[Anonymous Coward]

...they pry it from my glazed, sticky fingers!

Fewer chargebacks to credit card companies

[Lord Grey]

From the article:

Any move against mainstream pornography could affect large telephone companies offering broadband Internet service or the dozens of national credit card companies providing payment services to pornographic Web sites.

While the article doesn't explicitly say if the "affect" would be positive or negative, it implies the negative. From my experience with the credit card companies, however, I would think that they would love to be able to rid themselves of at least some of the porn business. The largest percentage of chargebacks are, I believe, due to porn purchases using stolen or manufactured card numbers. Reducing those chargebacks would be a good thing for them.

Re:Fewer chargebacks to credit card companies

[QuantumRiff]

I think the majority of the charge backs take the form of "No honey, I don't know where that $80 charge from HotDicksAreUs.com is for, someone must have stolen our credit card info, I'll refuse payment right away" followed by a quick kicking of the DVD further under the bed.

Why does this not surprise me?

[thesolo]

This is of course being spear-headed by John Ashcroft, a very conservative christian. The very same John Ashcroft who spent $8000 of taxpayer money to cover up the bare breast of the statue of Lady Justice.

He once gave a speech at Bob Jones university, that contained such amazing lines as "Unique among the nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus."

If he's offended by the bare breast of a statue, just imagine what he thinks of porn. That this man holds public office frightens me very, very much.

Re:Why does this not surprise me?

[Citizen of Earth]

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." -- Diderot

Re:Why does this not surprise me?

[orthogonal]

He once gave a speech at Bob Jones university, that contained such amazing lines

And, according to the linked article (emphasis mine):

In a speech in 2002, Ashcroft made it clear that the Justice Department intends to try. He said pornography " invades our homes persistently though the mail, phone, VCR, cable TV and the Internet," and has "strewn its victims from coast to coast."

Other than spam, which I'll grant does sneak in, if this is an "invasion" we've outdone the French in surrendering to it.

Porn doesn't sneak into your phone, VCR, or cable TV: you have to call a 900 number, rent a video, or order pay per view.

And so many Americans are doing those things -- to the tune of billions of dollars a year -- that the argument that the porn "violates community standards" is laughable. Porn is the new community standard.

But Ashcroft will find a way around this: Ashcroft had the case against Rob Zicari's Extreme Associates filed in the conservative Western District of Pennsylvania -- jury shopping so that the "community standards" of the whole country will be decided the citizens of the most conservative counties of the state that elected Rick Santorum senator.

And realize, all of you who think this is a good idea, that when

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....

is to the exclusion of anything else Lam Nguyen could be doing -- like looking for Osama bin Laden, or the next Enron fraud, or even kiddie porn (which is covered under a different statute). Resources are finite: every dollar and every hour spent on this witch hunt means real and dangerous criminals are going to get away.

But I guess that's ok: we've won the war on terrorism, Iraq is a happy democracy, and the arch-villain Tommy Chong is in prison!

It's all Asscroft's fault

[User 956]

This from a man who is *so offended* by the statue of Justice in the Supreme Court building, he ordered it covered up.

Talk about a right-wing freako nutcase. This is our government, folks. Get used to 4 more years when Bush steals the election again in November.

Dear dear dear

[Space cowboy]

Ashcroft, a religious man who does not drink alcohol or caffeine, smoke, gamble or dance,

The perfect antithesis then, to all the people who pay for the 'products' on sale. The line "Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?" springs to mind. Have you in fact checked he's still alive ?

Sure, I'm dead-set against kiddie porn - string them up by the bollocks and burn them over a slow fire. Sure, there are other people being exploited in this industry. Newsflash: there are people being exploited in *all* industries - it's just that society places a higher importance on sex than fishing, cooking, or cleaning (for example).

and has fought unrelenting criticism that he has trod roughshod on civil liberties in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is taking on the porn industry at a time when many experts say Americans are wary about government intrusion into their lives.

Yep, now we see, he is dead. In the water that is. When a public figures decide to go on a non-popular crusade, they're dead men walking. I suppose there's an outside chance (only in the US, [grin]) that he *might* be right - witness the uproar over 1 cm^2 of female flesh after a certain kickabout recently... Naaah.

Simon.

Re:Dear dear dear

[DAldredge]

No, the uproar came from people who let OTHERS tell them what the Bible has to say about sex rather than reading what it for themselves.

That is the major problem with religion, people won't read the Holy Books for themselves, they depend on others to do it for them and then 'explain' it to them. But the people doing the explaining sometimes corrupt the message for personal gain.

That's normal

[Dinjay]

"Lam Nguyen's job is to sit for hours in a chilly, quiet room devoid of any color but gray and look at pornography"

Hmm...sounds like a day in the life of the /. crowd. It's just as well it cold in there...

Re:I've never understood why sex is taboo in the U

[User 956]

Asscroft wasn't elected. He was appointed.

Three Cheers

[Lord_Dweomer]

Three cheers for the stupidest attempt at controlling Americans since Prohibition and the War on Drugs.

I mean, seriously, of all the things they could have picked........if there's anything us Americans like more than our booze and weed its porn and sex. Is Ashcroft BEGGING to have a lynch mob show up at his front door?

Is Ashcroft insane?

[freeweed]

No, really.

The only possible conclusion I can draw from this is "I don't partake, therefore it's bad and no one else should be able to, either". I guess this is the same line of thinking that still has people up in arms against homosexuality. "They're doing something I wouldn't do! Let's get 'em!".

Ashcroft, a religious man who does not drink alcohol or caffeine, smoke, gamble or dance

Great, so we better shut down Nevada, kill all breweries, tobacco companies, coffee importation, and *gasp* Rock and/or Roll while we're at it!

They're going to try to go after a multi-billion dollar industry because its material "is obscene by community standards". Um, just who exactly do these people think are paying these billions? Hate to break it to you, folks, but Mr. and Mrs. Joe American. Consentual pornography is, by definition, acceptable by community standards. There wouldn't be so much of it if it wasn't.

I work in the industry

[jCaT]

And frankly, a lot of companies are scared. At this point everybody is just making sure their 18 USC 2257 links are up to date, and hoping for the best. The company I work for recently stopped selling videos (actually, before the Extreme Associates case) for the reasons listed in the article... and we've maintained a list of states that we will not send tapes to, exactly for the reason that got EA busted. That whole inter-state commerce thing can really get you in trouble.

If they are actually going to go after the major TV and cable networks over their hardcore stuff, the industry as a whole is screwed. The majority of the "good" sites out there now make the spice channel look like hotel porn.

I just hope that Bush gets voted out in november, so that we can ditch Ashcroft. He is completely out of touch with morality in this country! I'm not trying to say we should be selling explicit hardcore porn from vending machines, it has its place in our culture, and he and his cronies seem to not see that.

Re:I work in the industry

[pclminion]

I just hope that Bush gets voted out in november, so that we can ditch Ashcroft. He is completely out of touch with morality in this country!

The problem with the Puritanical morality of the US right now is that it's insincere. People claim to be "offended" by things because it's in style, not because they are actually offended.

Notice the subtle but highly effective sexualization in advertisements. We seem to accept this, and allow our children to view it. We let 10 year old kids walk around with halter tops and belly button piercings. I saw a kid no older than 5 in a restaurant recently wearing makeup. Nice. That's what I want to think of when looking at a 5 year old, sex.

And yet at the same time, Janet Jackson's boobie pops out and we all have a fucking heart attack. It's all fake, it's a fucking fake reaction that we are all mutually emulating. Other people seem offended, so by God, I should be offended too!

The thing is, nobody (or at least, hardly anybody) is really offended by it.

Americans are fucking schizophrenic, and it's only getting worse. This Puritanical neoconservatism is really, truly dangerous.

I thought Republicans were for free markets

[Mrs. Grundy]

From the article:
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.

It's interesting that the government looks for market-based solutions to behavior that actually kills people like dumping mercury into the air, serving arsenic-laden water to towns, or creating vehicular death-traps but when you offend their puritan sensibilities they go for the jugular--even when the market clearly says that a HUGE chunk of the electorate is all for a little obscenity.

The American Taliban have Spoken

[Un pobre guey]

Sex? Bad.

Blowing the shit out of civilians in foreign lands, taking stewardship of their natural resources, selling them land mines, protecting the opium crops of our allies, looking the other way as our allies sell nuclear weapons technology on the black market, channelling hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to the "defense" industry, making sure Joe SixPack is armed to the teeth back home, destroying our own natural resources, canceling Constitutional rights as necessary, etc. etc.? Good. A God-given duty, in fact.

Wake up, folks. The only thing the religious fanatics that have leached into our government do not insist upon is the use of burkas by American women. OK, they also allow them to be on the same floor in public buildings.

I'm not worried

[sTalking_Goat]

John Aashcroft crushing our civil rights, by attaching the word terrorism to anything he doesn't like; That worries.

But John A vs the porn industry; John A doesn't have a chance.

Porn like weeds has its roots deep and will surface and thrive in any scrap of dirt, through the tiniest of cracks.

So I say let Johhny Boy fight his porn war, maybe that'll distract him from doing some real damage.

Real obscenity

[ManoMarks]

Terrorism, war, hunger, poverty, homelessness, child abuse, disease, et al. We should be dealing with those issues first. Leave consenting adults alone. But should be be surprised that this administration is wasting tax payers money on this?

The Porn Industry Isn't Going To Just Take It...

[severed]

I make porn. That's what I do. I work a 50 to 60 hour week.

I pay my taxes, and make payroll on time.

I comply with the law, while still standing up for my first ammendment rights.

I do my best to screen our tallent to make sure that they can handle doing this type of work. Sometimes when it looks like they don't really want to do this type of work, but they're just down on their luck, I'll buy them dinner and help them consider other options.

I even use 100 percent recycled 2 ply Facial Tissues (The brand is seventh generation, btw) when... testing... the product.

In my morning review of all the sources that I get my news from, I continue to watch the Bush administration and their wacko and corrup cronies continue to wage murder under the guise of war to line their own pockets, while continuing to push these insane and unrepresentative extreme right religious agendas, that were bought and paid for by the religious right.

After that, I go through the considerable frustration of trying to forge business partnerships with other business such as banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, etc, etc, to be able to function in the business world. All the while being discriminated against because the widgets I happen to sell have some naked bits.

I choose between people who often have little interest in supporting my business, but would love to freely copy my work, and the people who want to throw everyone in prison for copying anything, and at the same time throw me in prison for making it.

However I don't let either group of assholes get to me. Instead, I remember that there are more people out there who will choose to support what I'm doing in order to see that I keep doing it.

I don't spam. I don't film anyone who is a minor. I work as hard as the next guy, trying to make the economy recover.

However, until I get arrested, just for exercising my first ammendment right to speech, the speech that I'll be making will be against Bush, Cheyney and Ashcroft.

Why go through all this? Why not just go back to being a database programmer working in a cube somewhere? Because I love what I do. I've built my own company from the ground up, and kept it going. The fundamentalists aren't the only people who believe in what they're doing. They're also not the only people who will stick up for their way of life.

Actually true...

[MooseByte]

"Yeah, I can still remember about the first readings of erotic material over the telegraph"

Actually one of my old friends who served in the Navy (comm ops) told me about how they used to keep the morse code students interested - every now and then they'd slip a section of a porn story into the interminable copying sessions.

You'd get keel-hauled for doing that these days, but I imagine it kept folks going. :-)

I live in germany but....

[Qbertino]

... I actually read the article.
The investigation team seams to after some very extreme stuff.
Anyhow I find it curious that they mentioned something like near-european like tolerance of pornography. What's that supposed to mean?
Yes, believe it or not, you can see naked women on billboards advertising skin lotion. You can see naked women (and/or men) on magazines. Open them up and you see: Guess what? Naked women and/or men. Just that. No extreme posing, no sick and somewhat unaestetic pussy tearing or any of that kind of stuff.
As prudish as a large portion of US citizens may be, the most extreme (and sick) porn I've ever seen comes from the US. I strongly suspect there's a link there somewhere.
I met an american once who noticed the same. He said like 'Yeah, here in germany you keep turning your head for those magazines laid out right next to the newspaper and you're all mixed why no one's irritated. But when you look inside it's cuddly inocent naked girls, much softer porn than what you see in the american editions.' Right on.
I'd say it may be time for you across the pond to lighten up a little, no? Ok, so some people say the US may be founded by all the crazy religious fanatics that got chucked out of europe a few centuries ago, but aren't things changing for the better over there? Or are they getting whorse?

+1 Karma Sutra

[craXORjack]

will this mean these jobs are headed to India too?

new newsgroup:

nttp//alt.binary.pictures.employed.indian.brunette

Only Extreme?

[SeinJunkie]

If your job was to surf for extreme porn all day, is it still considered slacking if your boss catches you browsing softcore?

cf. Bush's broadband initiative

[bat, blind as a]

Bush wants everyone to have broadband. The DoJ wants to rid the internet of porn. I don't think the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. (no pun intended - well, ok, it is)

Re:The law's the law

[sflory]

Isn't this the same Ashcroft who had some poor Canadian pulled off a plane. (Which was making a stop over in the US.) Deported him to Syria, and told them he's a terrorist. After about a year Syria deported him home, and said they were sure he wasn't.

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2002/10/16/arar021016
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109153,00.htm l

stupid dang "goody two shoes" USA pollies

[diablomonic]

when are these morons going to wake up and realise.. hey, its just a body, in its natural form, doing what its supposed to do, or what it enjoys doing. Oh hang on, their religion is built on crap like "sex is evil, sex is a sin" to keep everyone but the REAL wierdos sinning. Now Im not advocating child pornography, nor anything in which all involved parties have not consented to the action, but really, its 2004 for cripes sake, GET OVER IT ALREADY. if you werent all such prudes, you wouldnt mind explaing to your kids how sex works, without geting all embarrassed. I mean, it is HOW THEY WERE CREATED!!!!!. Note that this rant (and yes I realise it is a bit) is not aimed at all americans, or even the majority of americans(in fact the issue is world wide), just at those people who are too silly to realise a natural human act and desire when they see it. Unfortunately, these can screw it up for everyone else.

Re:stupid dang "goody two shoes" USA pollies

[ControversialPosting]

In a speech in 2002, Ashcroft made it clear that the Justice Department intends to try. He said pornography "invades our homes persistently though the mail, phone, VCR, cable TV and the Internet," and has "strewn its victims from coast to coast."

"It just keeps coming" Ashcroft continued. "It's everywhere. Pornographic website just keep appearing in your bookmarks. Credit cards fly out of your pocket buying movies on late night when your wife is at the RNC sewing circle. Young hot girls repeatedly spank eachother while giggling and jiggling on videos which jump into your hands at the rental line. Steaming co-eds with possessed toys do the bouncy-bouncy with a group of district attorneys in jail. Make it stop! Make it stop!"

Ashcroft then broke down into tears and sobbed.

Why are the champions of decency always the ones who are having problems repressing things? Like Rush Limbaugh's perpetual rants against drug use, or anything done by Eminem? Should we really allow important government policy about sexual freedoms to be formed by a man who doesn't dance?

BTW, parent is not flamebait. Parent is pointing out that in most other developed nations, we're viewed as highly sexually immature. And really, we are. Our viewpoint on sex is formed more by preconceived notions rather than experience, leaning far more towards an unattainable idealized sex life than a real one. This cultural repression leads to sex being a problem for many, in exactly the same way that binge eating is a problem for dieters, and binge drinking is a problem for people (of every culture) just before the minimum legal age. In this respect America needs to mature.

Re:stupid dang "goody two shoes" USA pollies

[Vancorps]

I'd say America has matured but currently there is a big religious movement caused in no small part by 911 and then the problem kept growing from there at the convervative movement gains more and more momentum. This is against the common morals of I dare say most of America. Look at TV over the last say seven years, the stuff that is allowed on broadcast TV has greatly changed, of course, now there is always someone that attempts to go a little further than a group of people are willing to go and you end up with this taking steps backwards that you see cause of the Janet Jackson incident which is considered stupid by a good portion of this population.

Maybe I give America too much credit but I think its come a long ways since the times when you couldn't even say pregnant on TV.

Ashcroft needs to wake up that's for sure, I'm not sure that guy knows what country he lives in. Everytime I look at him and look at his policies I think Nazi Germany, the guy scares me more and more because Bush keeps fucking giving him more power, way more power than the attorney general was ever supposed to have.

I hope this will be a very active election year, last election all of America made the mistake of being apathetic, who'd have thought things would turn this drastic since the two candidates in the last election were more or less the same. America did not elect someone to change things and Bush has sure done a great job of forgetting that.

Anywho, porn employs a good chunk of us IT people, I'd like Ashcroft to please leave it alone.

Re:stupid dang "goody two shoes" USA pollies

[JulianOolian]

Parent is pointing out that in most other developed nations, we're viewed as highly sexually immature.

The perception in most of Europe is that the US has a good appetite for on-screen violence, but gets upset at the slightest bit of sexy flesh.

Case in point? There's a war on, lots of bad shit going down right there on the TV and no-one bats an eyelid. Then Janet Jackson flashes a bit of tit and hysteria prevails.

Still, that's puritans for you. :-p

Re:stupid dang "goody two shoes" USA pollies

[Bootsy Collins]

There is nothing wrong with sex - you set up a strawman then attack it. The problem is in improper use of it. I don't care what you say - the thought of a man recording his wife (as I heard in one case) act in sex scenes makes me sick and angry.

Sick and angry enough to make it illegal for them to do so, even if that's what they both want to do?

The whole porn industry in general makes me angry - a comment which is bound to displease many slashdotters, as I know how popular pornography is.

No, what's popular is the idea of letting people live their own lives without our poking our noses into parts of their lives which aren't any of our business. If you and your wife want to invite a third consenting adult to join you, I may think that's immoral, and I may not want to do it myself; but it's none of my business what you and your wife do.

Sex should never involve multiple men. It should never involve having sex with another man's wife. It is an evil institution that damages the lives of people who participate in it, and those who view it.

Those are your opinions. In my opinion, life should not involve slavish belief in an unsubstantiated fairy tale about a hypothetical omnipotent being. And in my opinion, most religions are evil institutions that damage the lives of people who participate in them and interact with them. Those are my opinions. How fortunate for both of us that we live in a place where people are granted the freedom to pursue happiness as they see fit, and we can agree to disagree.

How many of you porn supporters can honestly say you'd be pleased if your daughter became a porn star, having sex with many different men in her life, for thousands of other men to view?

I wouldn't be pleased. I wouldn't be pleased if she became a fundamentalist, either. But I'm not about to make either thing illegal. It's her life; it would lose a lot of its meaning if I got to tell her what she could and could not do with it.

Re:stupid dang "goody two shoes" USA pollies

[Bootsy Collins]

It's fascinating how all questions on morality boil down to God's existence.

They do? I don't think so. What makes you think they do? The fact that I made my (negative) comments about belief? They were included not to make a statement about the basis for morality, but merely to illustrate a point: you, too, might find uncomfortable a world in which others get to decide for you the terms of your life.

With no God, there is no "right" or "wrong". Suddenly everything is neutral. It is then ever so convenient to deny God's existence as an excuse for what you want to excuse, and to then use nonsensical terms like "evil" when you want to appeal to morality, such as when you said most religions are evil institutions.

Such terms are not nonsensical at all. The fact that you don't see any basis for right and wrong outside of a belief in a supreme being doesn't mean that other people are similarly hobbled. I'm perfectly capable of judging right or wrong in my life without the threat of eternal hellfire, thank you very much.

So, which way is it? If you think these organisations are evil, then by what standard or law do you judge them to be evil.

What standard? My own. The one I've developed over the course of my life's experiences, which I think is mostly internally logically consistent, but ultimately (like all logical systems) is based on some assumptions about what's good and right, assumptions that seem kind and fair and that I can live with. And over the course of my life, through my life's experiences, I sometimes see holes in my logic, or even things which challenge my assumptions; and so my moral sense is refined. But it's something that I've generated, and am constantly re-assessing, for myself. And while external sources of course make and have made an impact on me (to use an extreme example, I'd probably be more likely to think murder was OK if I lived in a society where everyone thought murder was OK), my moral sense doesn't parrot anyone's list of dos and don'ts.

Surely you're not saying that you can't think of any reason to do the "right thing" in your life other than the threat of eternal punishment, are you?

This is Seriously Fucked Up

[the_mad_poster]

This is truly a disturbing parellel.

This guy basically just looked at something that a LOT of people shell out their hard earned money for and said "I don't like it, let's crack down".

This guy is absolutely off his fucking rocker. I want to know what he bases this crackdown on? Has a large portion of the consenting adult population suddenly decided to go on a porn-free diet? Does he have persuasive documentation to show that a significant number of children are being adversely affected by pornography despite a reasonable effort from parents to monitor their children?

I don't know how many more people I speak for when I say this. But, Mr. Ashcroft. Get the fuck out of my life. If you don't have better things to do with your time than this, you don't have anything worthwhile to do with your time, and I'm tired of paying your salary.

Re:This is Seriously Fucked Up

[afidel]

Um, we knew Aschcroft was off his rocker within a couple days of him taking office. He had a curtain put up for a freaking nude marble statue! Also you point out the ultimate irony of Republicans, they want the government out of their lifes unless it's to instill their own brand of morality on everyone else.

Re:This is Seriously Fucked Up

[mp3phish]

It's not the democrats or the republicans that are fucking everyone... Well, depending on how you look at it...

Since the republican party caters to southern ignorance when it comes to their "learned" norms (war on drugs, abortion, economic policy, social bureaucracy, gun laws, religion, etc.) you could probably say that the reason republicans are powerful is because of their masses which buy into the taught accepted standard. Democrats on the other hand are always telling the poor joe (everyone who isn't rich or completely ignorant, plus some of those as well) to stick with them because of such issues as health care, taxes, natural resources and beauty, human and personal rights, privacy, etc.

Both sides are basically fueled by a bunch of masses who are having strings pulled behind the scenes while they watch the curtains stay in place. So the question becomes not what does conservatism or liberalism or democrat or republican mean. Because you can't define those. It is different depending on if you are poor, rich, greedy, compassionate, racist, or ignorant.

It all boils down to rich white men from the south running the Republican party with a platform that doesn't make sence to an educated person because it makes perfect sence to the ignorant. And then Democrats trying to do good for the poor guy because they are the only other masses left over, and they need votes as badly as possible. Poor and Ignorant are the only masses we have. The rest are all in a serious minority, and they are the ones running both parties. Republicans are always recruiting new poor people all the time though, because there is a large segment of poor people tend to be very religious on such issues as prayer in school and abortion. So these ignorant people will jump ship to the republicans on those issues alone, ignoring that they are poor and being stepped on when it comes to their natural resources, tax dollars, and big business CEO's ripping them off. Walmart, Dell, Microsoft, these are just the little guys, all banking because they control enough of their market that they can control minute details of how their much smaller competition runs their own business. Republicans have figured out how to get the ignorant vote: marketing marketing marketing. This is exactly how walmart, dell, and microsoft get those same exact votes.

You can't beat the money with intelligence. Because there is too much misinformation spreading from the deep pockets. This modern day marketing tactics is why the republican party is growing, and the democrat party is shrinking, and everything is slowly moving right. 10 years ago, most of today's democrats would be considered republicans in most situations.

I wouldn't blame it on the party itself. But the people running the party and the people who support it. Republian principle and Democratic principle are both very well thought out, they are just ruined by utter lack of respect, compassion, and a surplus of ignorance.

I don't know what party to recommend to you. They all run on the same principle. The smaller groups control the masses. Dictatorship, monarchy, democracy, and republics are all controlled the same way. They are all subject to corruption, and any way of government which is will eventually finish in corruption.

[/rant]

The people of Missouri spoke...

[TrentL]

...and they elected a dead guy instead of re-electing Ashcroft.

Using money and resource on that its stupid

[ArcticCelt]

if you werent all such prudes, you wouldnt mind explaing to your kids how sex works, without geting all embarrassed. I mean, it is HOW THEY WERE CREATED!!!!!.

To ad on top of your point of view, then its ok to show people get killed and beaten on tv but not making love.

Or let's talk about fear factor, I think its les degrading for a human being to make love live on tv than to eat cow turd just to entertain the masses.

Anyway I am certainly not advocating to ban any of those issues I am just saying that using the public money and resource on those matters is the most stupid thing that a government can do.

Not just any statue

[Anonymous Coward]

He covered up the statue of Justice.

You can't get any more ironic, symbolic, or prophetic than that.