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.
If someone approached me on the streets of Nashville and offered to let me watch a girl making out with barnyard animals, Tennessee culture would demand that I knock the man's teeth out. And every jury in Tennessee or the South for that matter would rule that was a reasonable response to an offensive situation.
You're right, we don't need the government to block these jerks. Just give us a way of knocking the spammer's teeth out and we will take care of it ourselves.
I have a hunch that you'd be rather selective about who's teeth you tried to knock out. Maybe if Martin Short were to approach you, you'd attempt to knock his teeth out, but if Michael Clarke Duncan (6'5" 310lb black man) were to approach you with the same offer, you'd scamper off quickly.
Wine is a good thing...God made wine...Just don't get drunk: )
May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. [Genesis 27:28]
"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." -- Thomas Jefferson
Thanks for the new tag line.
TJ, you have to be a paid shill for the Democrats. You are certainly doing a fine job advocating for them.
Actually, individual rights are the basis of all our laws. Since I have the RIGHT to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, that means murdering me would violate my right to life.
It's a joke, son. Lighten up.
Nobody, since no justices have retired or died during his presidency. Duh.
"If you want to be honest about clamoring about the First Amendment, then ANYTHING can theoretically be construed as "free speech" -- including murder and rape and threats."
Good point. Since the SCOTUS decreed some years ago that naked tit** dancing is protected speech, now elephant dung on pictures of the Virgin Mary, public faux and not so faux sodomy in "Gay Pride" parades, and kiddie porn as long as it isn't (as far as they know) real children is protected "speech".
You hate to imagine where this could go. The basic rule of hedonism is because all limits or restraints on any sensual indulgence (or anything that might be construed as sensually pleasurable, no matter how painful or unnatural) are rejected on principle, there is nowhere to stop. So off the cliff is the only thing that'll stop a car with no brakes.
That's easy. It's the one with the most puritanical, judgemental residents.
There is a certain sub-culture of "conservatives" who secretly believe that America is so corrupt, it deserves to be destroyed and replaced by some sort of Fundie Theocracy. These were the same people who were secretly delighted to see so many godless, liberal New Yorkers die on 9/11.
They have a mental illness. They're like the Islamonazis in that they long to create some sort of religiously-based utopia, no matter how many people have to die.
On this, if nothing else, we completely agree.
That's because That's because murder, rape, and threats of violence violate the rights of individuals. Your right to free speech does not extend to violating the rights of others. "
Yes, today "murder, rape, and threats of violence violate the rights of individuals." But even all THIS is relative upon who is the arbiter, the "eye of the beholder" so to speak. Ever hear of the psychiatric "profession"?
Just how long before they recommend murder, rape, and threats of violence" be deemed "expressions of free speech"?
"Porno violates no one's rights, so it can't be compared to murder or rape."
Do sensibilities count?
Shall we also suppose neither does public prostitution, public obscenity, public drug use, public sadomasochism, or public defecation/urination "violate no one's rights" either?
-- Thomas Nelson Page, 1911
But apparently the "right" of people to be as vulgar as humanly possible -- in-the-face of whomever, whenever -- supercedes the "rights" of those whose sensibilities are assaulted...
So sayeth the already subverted USSC.
No, it all "boils down" to access and promoting social anarchy.
Because many are more than "willing" to voluntarily wallow in their own defecation; fornicate in public; shoot up in front of nursery school; bludgeon each other to death on the street, shall society establish ANY restriction whatsoever based upon the words "consenting adults"?
And btw -- because necromancy, bestiality, and drinking blood have "existed since people first scratched pictures on cave walls," shall OUR society sanction and condone IT?
Afterall, it can be argued neither of those actions "harms" anyone either.
I'm pretty sure you got a bunch of porn sites bookmarked. LOLOL.
Apparently.
not accusing you, but its a reach for anyone with any common sense to equate freedom and the constitution with what passes for male entertainment....
I always say, let it happen to someone you know, and your tune will change right quick....
by that I mean, let it be one of your dtrs or granddtrs that are sucked into the business, and it will suddenly open your eyes...
I read a statistic once that about 80% of porn "artists" and stripers are drug addicts...
first of all, your little wiener will fall off if you keep tugging at it all the time, and we wouldn't want that to happen...
but mostly, because when you have a good time viewing women and children acting like animals for your enjoyment, you are encouraging them to destroy their own lives....drugs, perversion, HIV, hepatitis, depression, etc etc...
If you are God fearing, which you don't sound like you are, that is called a SIN...no question about it...
but if you are not God-fearing, than it is just plain old arrogant self-centered pandering and perversion....
People don't get "sucked in". They make choices.
I read a statistic once that about 80% of porn "artists" and stripers are drug addicts...
That may well be true. But they aren't "victims".
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