Office of Violence Against Women gets a scary new director [View All]

[mondo joe]

http://feministing.com/archives/006128.html

Mary Beth Buchanan, US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, is set to be OVW's Acting Director.

Buchanan’s claims to fame? She’s an enthusiastic cheerleader of the Patriot Act. (It preserves civil liberties, she says!)

She spent $12 million on "Operation Pipe Dreams," taking down 55 people for selling bongs. This included actor Tommy Chong--in the courtroom, Buchanan introduced his fictional pot-smoking characters as evidence of his "frivolous" attitude towards drug laws.

She’s an anti-obscenity crusader, prosecuting people for written stories on the internet and going after any and all porn...The legal director for the Pittsburgh ACLU once called Buchanan "the vanguard of Ashcroft’s attempt to impose his morality on others."