The War On Porn: Behind Enemy Lines

It's been more than fifteen minutes since eight US Attorneys were fired by the Justice Department—an unprecedented and suspicious occurrence—and amazingly, the country is still talking about it: in fact, the media just keeps digging deeper and it doesn't look good for the DOJ, the White House, and especially for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The best part of this whole brouhaha? It's all because of porn! There were hints of this from the very beginning, but as more details come out it appears that at least two of the firings were orchestrated by Brent Ward, a former US Attorney himself, who now heads the adorably named Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. It seems Mr. Ward was upset by the performance of prosecutors who were "unwilling to take good cases." (ie., anti-porn cases.) Lo and behold, those prosecutors' names were added to the list of lawyers to be "pushed out" in favor of "loyal Bushies." Despite nearly everyone in the government being in favor of an end to porn (we're not talking child porn, either, but old fashioned obscenity cases), the whole thing has become such a black eye for the administration that even some conservatives are calling for Gonzales to step down. Will he weather the storm? (Possibly.) Will there be a cease fire in the government's war on porn? (Unlikely.) Will anyone continue to care in three months? (Let's hope so.) We never thought anyone could get in trouble for hating porn too much ... but we'll try not to gloat if they do.

· "The White House's Porn Plot Against Prosecutors" (thenation.com)
· "Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Porn and the DOJ" (scienceblogs.com)
· Gonzales Urged to Quit "For the Nation" (techyum.com)
· See also: "Nation's porn prosecutor fronts war against obscenity" (sltrib.com)
· Thumbnail via Red Light District's "Lick Her Ass Off My Dick", in case you were wondering

Previously: US vs. Extreme Associates, Round 2, US vs. Extreme Associates, Round 3