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Timbo,

First, thank you for serving America and being willing to offer up your life if required to keep my family safe. You and your predecessors deserve all of our thanks for the fact that we can still celebrate the Fourth 231 years later.

Even though I did the Army Reserves and Guard, I have a “Semper Fi” on my bumper sticker in honor of my Dad, a WWII and Pearl Harbor vet whose unit received a presidential citation for shooting down a Jap Zero with M-1 rifle fire. In December 2002, I took him and my Mom back over there. We stood in the street in front of Marine Barracks in the very spot where he stood shooting at the planes 61 years earlier. On the 7th, he and I were on the Arizona for the formal Memorial service. He smelled the oil and said, “I will never forget.” Died nine months later.

Anyway, appreciate your comments on the issue at hand. As a matter of current constitutional law as defined by SCOTUS, an individual choosing to purchase porn, even that which meets the legal definiton of obscenity, is protected activity.

It is the SALE of the stuff that’s at issue with Romney and Marriott, incuding — as you correctly note — hardcore porn which pro-family activists and some prosecutors believe constitutes illegal obscenity. Selling obscenity is both a federal and, in some states, state offense. Witness the two Marriotts who removed the stuff under threat of criminal obscenity charges by two county prosecutors in the Cincinnati area.

Agee on keeping the Reagan coalition of social and fiscal conservatives together. That requires a candidate who’s acceptable to both. Romney is not acceptable to many social conservatives for a host of reasons.