Posted on 07/13/2004 10:11:42 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Do you ever wonder why the internet is so polluted with pornography? The Supreme Court just reminded us why: it blocks every attempt by Congress to regulate the pornographers.
From its ivory tower, the Court props open the floodgates for smut and graphic sex. Over the past five years, it has repeatedly found new constitutional rights for vulgarity, most recently invalidating the Child Online Protection Act (COPA).
This latest judicial outrage happened on the final day of the Supreme Court term, after which the justices headed out for a long summer break. Lacking teenaged children of their own, the justices closed their eyes to electronic obscenity polluting our children's minds.
For decades, pornographers have enjoyed better treatment by our courts than any other industry. The justices have constitutionally protected obscenity in libraries, filth over cable television, and now unlimited internet pornography.
The flood of pornography started with the Warren Court when it handed down 34 decisions between 1966 and 1970 in favor of the smut peddlers. In mostly one-sentence decisions that were issued anonymously (the justices were too cowardly to sign them), the Court overturned every attempt by communities to maintain standards of decency.
The judges' obsession with smut is astounding. Even though five Supreme Court justices were appointed by Presidents Reagan and the first Bush, graphic sex wins judicial protection in essentially every case.
Woe to those who transgress an obscure environmental law, or say a prayer before a football game, or run a political ad within two months of an election. They find no judicial sympathy, as courts now routinely restrict private property rights and censor political speech.
But the pornographers can do no wrong in the eyes of our top justices. The most explicit sex can be piped into our home computers and the Supreme Court prevents our democratically elected officials from doing anything about it.
COPA was enacted by Congress in response to the Court's invalidation of the predecessor law, the Communications Decency Act of 1996. But decency lost again when six justices knocked out COPA in Ashcroft v. ACLU.
COPA was badly needed, as filth plagues the internet, incites sex crimes, and entraps children. COPA banned the posting for "commercial purposes" on the World Wide Web of material that is "patently offensive" in a sexual manner unless the poster takes reasonable steps to restrict access by minors.
You don't need to look very far to find a tragic crime traceable to the internet. In New Jersey in 1997, 15-year-old Sam Manzie, who had fallen prey to homosexual conduct prompted by the internet, sexually assaulted and murdered 11-year-old Eddie Werner, who was selling candy door-to-door.
COPA did not censor a single word or picture. Instead, it merely required the purveyors of sex-for-profit to screen their websites from minors, which can be done by credit card or other verification.
But minors are an intended audience for the highly profitable sex industry. Impressionable teenagers are most easily persuaded to have abortions, and homosexual clubs in high school are designed for the young.
Justice Kennedy declared it unconstitutional for Congress to stop porn flowing to teens, shifting the burden to families to screen out the graphic sex rather than imposing the cost on the companies profiting from the filth. His reasoning is as absurd as telling a family just to pull down its window shades if it doesn't want to see people exposing themselves outside.
In a prior pro-porn decision, Kennedy cited Hollywood morals as a guide for America, but this time he relied on the prevalence of foreign pornography. "40% of harmful-to-minors content comes from overseas," he declared in holding that the other 60% of obscenity is wrapped in the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court insisted that individual internet users should buy filters to try to block the vulgarity. Should those who do not like air pollution be told to buy air masks?
The Supreme Court protects pornography in books, movies, cable television, and the internet, real or simulated, against all citizens' clean-up efforts. The Court is no longer the blindfolded lady weighing a controversy, but is dominated by media-driven supremacists forcing us down into a moral sewer.
This latest pro-porn decision was too much even for Clinton-appointed Justice Breyer. He said, "Congress passed the current statute in response to the Court's decision" invalidating the prior law; "what else was Congress supposed to do?"
The solution to these ills foisted on us by judicial supremacists is for Congress to exercise its constitutional powers to remove jurisdiction from the federal courts over pornography. The Court has abused its power, and it's Congress's duty to end the judicial abuse.
Twit.
Bewlla would never compare conservative Republicans to the Taliban.
She compared you Fascist Statist Theocrats masquerading as Republicans to the Taliban.
Of course the implication is that what happened to the Taliban should happen to us.
Bring'em on.
Big talk from the anonymous.
Of course, the original Tailguner Joe was a notorious drunkard.
So9
I know it's not relevant in this case but still true.
You are a Communist Anarchist anti-Christian bigot, and I compare you to Joseph Stalin.
Nah, no smears there, eh, Joe?
Is that the limit of your rhetorical abilities? If so, you're in good company.
"Women make both the manners and the morals of a people. Neither rises higher than the gauge which women set in a community...Where a woman has bad manners, it always has in it an element of vulgarity which is more painful than it could be in a man. The result will be a society hopelessly vulgarized...with no end but to sink in an ever deeper abyss of vulgarity."
-- Thomas Nelson Page, 1911
Just giving you morons back what you give me.
Nah. We're using logic, good sense, and reason. You're using schoolyard insults and wild paranoia. There is absolutely no comparison.
For example, you still have yet to support your assertions with anything except more ranting and raving.
So what is it about the court's decision in this case that has you, and the author of this article so worked up? That they made the right decision, but for the wrong reasons?
If you presented me with any rational argument, I'd address it. You have not.
For example, I said I would ban all porn outright, but this case is only about the internet.
I agree with Scalia's dissent. Porn is not speech and is not protected by the first amendment.
Just giving you morons back what you give me.
A man that cannot rise above ad hominem attacks and responds to them in kind is but the shell of a man.
Side note: This is not to imply that anyone slung an ad hominem prior to TJ's.
Personally, I think "porno-pimps" is much more creative, and it has a snappy ring to it.
I'll boil it down: Adult pornography, produced and consumed by consenting adults, harms no unwilling person. it has existed since people first scratched pictures on cave walls, and societies have come and gone regardless.
Also, prosecuting a "war" on it is wasteful, foolish distraction from a REAL war in which we now find ourselves, and would serve no purpose other than to infringe on the rights of peaceable citizens to conduct their lives as they wish. The history of such "wars" on vices makes this abundantly clear.
Your calls for killing those who produce it, and for jailing those who consume it, are wildly extreme to the point of laughability, and are based soley (to be charitable) on your own, individual religious beliefs, which are not shared by many people, and thus should not be imposed on them by such extreme force as you advocate.
Furthermore, such imposition would cost billions of scarce dollars, and put at risk the lives of police and military who have MUCH better things to worry about.
Your approach has the effect of removing liberties from citizens and creating criminals where there were none before.
Okay, Joe...let's hear your rebuttal, and let us all see what you call logic and reason.
OK. How would you go about implementing and enforcing that ban?
I agree with Scalia's dissent. Porn is not speech and is not protected by the first amendment.
Fair enough. But wheather it is speech or not is irrelevant in this case if you don't subscribe to the "every blade of grass" interpretation of the Commerce Clause. If you're going to abide by the intent of the Founders, then this case should have been thrown out regardless, and the author of this article should be taken to task for thinking it should have been upheld.
I disagree on your response to the side note I wrote. I acknowledge that you understand The Point: being the shell of a man. Interesting that your response defends and supports The Point.
We will never win the War on Terror if we are an immoral, indecent, degenerate people who pimp their daughters out, and we won't deserve to. We cannot confront enemies abroad when our Republic is undermined by enemies within.
Pimps deserve to die. I think there are many non-religious people who share my opinion in this matter.
The cost to this nation will be much greater in the long run if our moral culture is completely destroyed at the hands of porn-pushing pimps and social liberals than it will cost to stop the problem now.
Those people afflicted with the terrible pathology pornography inflicts will be much better off having been stopped in their tracks and given a chance to change their lives.
In the early days of the porno industry, pornographers and porn actors were indeed arrested and charged with prostitution. This state of affairs should resume.
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