Today's Washington Post reports on a new priority given to the FBI by the Department of Justice and its chief, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Instead of counterterrorism, the FBI will now focus on adult porn as a threat to families, using its resources to pick cases that could meet the community-standards threshold of obscenity for prosecution:

Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of "the Director." That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. ...

Federal obscenity prosecutions, which have been out of style since Attorney General Edwin Meese III in the Reagan administration made pornography a signature issue in the 1980s, do "encounter many legal issues, including First Amendment claims," the FBI headquarters memo noted.

Applicants for the porn squad should therefore have a stomach for the kind of material that tends to be most offensive to local juries. Community standards -- along with a prurient purpose and absence of artistic merit -- define criminal obscenity under current Supreme Court doctrine.

It might appear crazy in the middle of a war on terror to suddenly ask for volunteers among a group of already overextended professionals to join what looks to be the Adult Publication Of The Week Club to troll for possible prosecution. Such an effort may seem wasteful when we see resurgent activity among Islamofascist groups in London and Egypt, where bombings have killed dozens. The Porn Squad, even under normal conditions, ordinarily would look silly next to the publicized priorities of the FBI, which are (in order) terrorist attack, foreign espionage, cyber-based attacks, public corruption, civil rights, and organized crime.

Appearances, however, can deceive -- especially when the AG might want to brush up his conservative credentials while the Supreme Court has an opening. Barton Gellman notes that Gonzales needs a bit of kiss-and-make-up with the GOP base:

But Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."

Perhaps adult porn does do the kind of damage that these groups fear, but if so, it's self-inflicted and doesn't present a national priority. Congress funds a special squad of 10 agents for this task already. That should give sufficient priority to the enforcement of those laws and allow the rest of the FBI to pursue the real, existential dangers that could kill Americans by the thousands, instead of flipping through consensual filth for minimal benefit.

Doing this just to pander to the base is bad enough. I suspect that the pandering has another purpose, however -- to convince social conservatives that Alberto Gonzales will make an acceptable Supreme Court nominee, if not for O'Connor's seat, then for the next opening. Otherwise, reshuffling FBI agents to this purpose in the middle of a war makes no sense at all. Whoever came up with this plan should have his head examined. All this demonstrates is that Gonzales has no sense of priority.

Let's dump the Porn Squad and get back to business at the FBI.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference FBI Porn Squad: The Gonzales-For-SCOTUS Trojan Horse?:

» Captain V: Assho!e from Voice of the Taciturn
The back-handed, up-ward slap came after visiting Captain’s Quarters (Argh! Oh wait, that was yesterday) and a post on the new focus of the Department of Justice and FBI: Adult porn. And here I thought the greater danger to the nation was terrorism, ... [Read More]

Tracked on September 20, 2005 10:35 AM

» Blech from NIF
Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... It's a TJ-is-sick + Kerry-180 Tuesday [Read More]

Tracked on September 20, 2005 3:22 PM

» Links and Minifeatures 09 20 Tuesday from Searchlight Crusade
I thought I would give a local fan run science fiction convention a free plug. Conjecture will happen October 7-9 at the Double Tree in Mission Valley. Guest of Honor is Jack McDevitt, whose wor... [Read More]

Tracked on September 20, 2005 4:31 PM

» Greetings, disenchanted conservatives from Daniel W. Drezner
It's no secret that I've been disenchanted with President Bush for some time now. Recently, it seems, a lot of conservatives have joined the club. Shailagh Murray and Jim VandeHei report in the Washington Post that Congressional Republicans are less... [Read More]

Tracked on September 20, 2005 11:41 PM

» Outrageous Incompetence from Countertop Chronicles
On the day we find out that the Bush Administration has nominated one of the least competent, and most difficult to deal with, individuals I have ever had the misfortune of work with, we also find out that the Justice Department is removing valuable ... [Read More]

Tracked on September 21, 2005 1:33 AM

» Apparently The War On Terror Is Over from Below The Beltway
According to today's Washington Post, the FBI is looking for recruits in a new anti-pornography effort [Read More]

Tracked on September 21, 2005 5:39 AM

» Did Ben Shapiro just churn out the dumbest paragraph ever produced by a professional pundit? from Right We Are
Conservative columnist Ben Shapiro thinks the FBI should spend resources investigating producers of adult pornography suspected of obscenity (obscenity being a crime). That is probably, but not definitely, the minority view in America, but not particu... [Read More]

Tracked on September 21, 2005 4:03 PM