Our valiant protectors

Good news! The Department of Justice is pulling out all the stops, resurrecting long-neglected laws and theories of prosecution, and devoting uncountable man-hours to rooting out shadowy networks of finance and individuals that threaten the very existence of America. 'Round the clock they work diligently, looking for incriminating evidence and ways to arrest those who seek to infiltrate our fair society with the scourge of....

Naked people.

Oh, you thought that terrorists were a bigger problem? I guess you don't hold daily prayer sessions in your taxpayer-funded office, either, you unAmerican freak!

As the Baltimore Sun article indicates, the current standard for "obscenity" prosecutions rests upon "the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Miller vs. California, which held that something is "obscene" only if an average person applying contemporary community standards finds it patently offensive.

But which community? Hollywood? Denver? Salt Lake City? Dime Box, Texas?

There's a simple solution, known to shady ambulance-chasing lawyers the world 'round, for juries and judges that refuse to give you the verdict you want. Simply go forum-shopping and find a community where the judge & jury will apply their standards to someone else's community:

The department's most closely watched case involves "extreme" porn producer Rob Zicari and his North Hollywood company Extreme Associates. The prolific Zicari is charged with selling five allegedly obscene videotapes, which he now markets as the "Federal Five," that depict simulated rapes and murder....

The case hangs on a strategic move by the Justice Department that could make or break hundreds of future cases. Instead of bringing charges in Hollywood, where Zicari easily defeated a local obscenity ordinance recently in a jury trial, department officials ordered his tapes from Pittsburgh, Pa., and charged him there, hoping for a jury pool less porn-friendly. (From the Baltimore Sun article linked above.)

Now Mr. Zicari's trashy productions are doubtless unpalatable to most people. But apparently the community of Hollywood doesn't consider them legally obscene. No problemo! Just apply some other community's standards that more closely match Mr. Ashcroft's own opinions. The application of this principle to the internet is obvious: whatever Mr. Ashcroft deems personally offensive is to be prosecuted or banned nationwide.

From a 2001 interview with the PBS program Frontline, as quoted in the B. Sun:

"Just about everything on the Internet and almost everything in the video stores and everything in the adult bookstores is still prosecutable illegal obscenity," [Ashcroft] said....

It's incredible that in the age of the internet, with communication of ideas and images between points thousand of miles apart reduced to a matter of mouse-clicks and mere seconds, Mr. Ashcroft intends to apply the most restrictive "community standards" he can find to all communities in the nation, with total disregard for the wishes of the vast bulk of the country. It's quite possible that a jury in East Buckfutt, Idaho, might very well convict someone of obscenity for content that wouldn't even raise an eyebrow in, say, San Francisco. It's quite possible that in some benighted one-horse town, a halfway competent prosecutor could get a jury to ban Charles Darwin as "obscene". The possibilities are endless....

Perhaps he will be equally sympathetic when Saudi Arabia demands -- in accordance with its local "community standards" -- that websites containing the text of the Christian Bible be shut down as "obscene". Or when a politically liberal, atheist community somewhere in the U.S. files suit to ban objectionable religious proseletyzing websites from the Internet. Ya wanna bet?