Justice Dept's #1 Priority: Porn???

[snot]

From http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1125318960389&rss=newswire

When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be.

Would it be terrorism? Organized crime? Narcotics trafficking? Immigration? Or maybe public corruption?

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it's obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults.

[charlie]

1. Fucking Ashcroft redux

Can't they just lock up Tommy Chong again, save us the expense and aggravation?

[madeline_con]

2. See, this is what passes for "leadership" in this twisted theocracy

called the US of A. It's just damned sad!

(We need an emoticon who scratches his head)

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. what happened to that vile, dangerous medical marijuana?

Boy, our priorities are really screwed up.

[Fovea]

4. First Tommy Chong

then Janice Jackson, now this.

Niemoller had it nailed.

Next it will be 'degenerate art.'

[LoZoccolo]

5. Porn is #1 superstar wedge issue.

For us. Serious! Do you think the Maxim readers in the Republican Party like this kind of stuff going on? The Mancow listeners?

[wli]

6. I thought it was militarily assaulting peaceful demonstrators. n/t

[chicagiana]

7. Well of course ...

After all, Ashcroft's policies led DIRECTLY to letting the blatantly obvious 9/11 terrorists slip through the FBIs hands. If two separate agents hadn't been denied permission to pursue investigations against Arab men taking flight lessons without takeoff and landing, than the 9/11 plot would have been discovered. And if 9/11 would not have happened, Bush would have continued to sink in the polls. And of course, Bush would have had no excuse to invade Afghanistan on behalf of Exxon and Iraq on behalf on the defense and energy sectors.

Just think, if Iraq was still smuggling out all that oil through Syria, than the price of oil would be NOWHERE near where it is right now. And all those oilmen wouldn't be NEAR as rich as they are.

Just think how much money and political capital Republicans can make on the NEXT big attack???? Of course the FBI more interested in the persecution of constitutionally protected speach rather than defending our nation against foreign and domestic terrorism.

[Eric J in MN]

8. Who were the two agents? nt

nt

[chicagiana]

10. Colleen Rowley, Kenneth J Williams ...

Colleen Rowley in Minnesota and Kenneth J Williams in Phoenix.

Both were DENIED permission to pursue investigations by the justice department and FBI Headquarters.

People always say that Clinton "got lucky" when his administration thwarted and a handful of terrorist attacks. The truth is that Clinton pestered everyone in the beauracracy to justify what they were doing to fight terrorism. He got the word out and made sure everyone KNEW it was important whether they wanted to be concerned or not.

Let's put it this way. You may be a "whatever" type person going about your federal beauracracy job. But then your boss puts a memo on your desk that says that he has to write a weekly report about what HE is doing about terrorism. And therefore you have to write a report and everyone who works for you has to write a report too.

All the sudden things that seemed inocuous and non-eventful become source material for that report you have to write every week that seems like a complete waste of time. So when someone puts something on your desk saying that Arabs with ties to radical Islamic groups oversees are taking flight lessons but skipping the takeoff and landing sections, this piece of information normally considered a nuisance (for the unimaginative) now becomes a real gem to satisfy your superior that you're helping to write his waste of time report for that over-interested President Bill Clinton.

That's what they call "shaking the trees". The Bush administration shakes the trees for the sake of political retribution, energy sector pork, religious prostelitizing and pornography. They don't shake trees over national security.

[Eric J in MN]

12. Collen Rowley wanted to search Zacharias Mousaui's laptop,

which didn't reveal the 9/11 plot.

With regard to Kenneth J Williams, I agree that was a major screwup which his supervisor should have been punished for.

[chicagiana]

13. And you don't think ...

And you don't think that subsequent snooping would have turned up anything. What if they put him on surveillance and tapped his communication???? And how do you know what exactly was on Mousaui's computer or in his dwelling at the time the Rowley wanted to pursue and investigation????

[Eric J in MN]

16. The FBI looked at his laptop after 9/11 and didn't find

the 9/11 plot described in documents in it.

Mousaui was under arrest on 9/11.

[bpilgrim]

9. looks like OBL is kicking our a$$

http://media.globalfreepress.com

peace

[Porcupine]

11. These guys have realized their frat house dreams.

To prosecute porn you have to LOOK at it. LOTS AND LOTS of porn to determine which porn is the best stuff to prosecute.

Duuuude, I'm getting paid to look at porn ALL day dude! No WAy Dude! Way!! The cool part is is that my boss PAYS to get me on the sickest sites Dude. Then I download it on the worlds fastest freaken computer.

So cool Dude. So cool.

[SofaKingLiberal]

14. What theocracy?

:eyes:

[Warren DeMontague]

15. YAY!

I didn't feel that my tax dollars were getting wasted quite enough, you know, with things like the War in Iraq & its attendant giveaways, and the DEA going after pot smoking cancer grannies.

But to know that the #1 priority of Federal Law enforcement is pictures of nude adults, well, now I feel complete.

[mongo]

17. The powers that be consider adult obscenity worse than child porn

Number One with a Bullet: DOJ 'Mandated' to Prosecute Obscenity
By: Kathee Brewer
Posted: 11:00 pm PDT 8-30-2005


MIAMI - The U.S. Department of Justice, at least according to its chief representative in Miami, believes obscenity is a bigger threat to the American way of life than drugs, terrorism, corruption, or organized crime. That’s the impression U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta has been leaving in his wake lately, anyway, and it’s creating something of a backlash in the legal and law enforcement communities.

Addressing a meeting of Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisors here last month, Acosta reportedly said his mandate to pursue adult pornography cases even more aggressively than those against child pornographers was delivered directly by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales himself. The FBI and other law enforcement groups with which Acosta spoke subsequently have been less than enthusiastic, according to published reports.

"Compared to terrorism, public corruption, and narcotics, is no worse than dropping gum on the sidewalk," Stephen Bronis, a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder in Miami and chair of the white-collar-crime division of the American Bar Association, told Daily Business Review. "With so many other problems in this area, this is absolutely ridiculous."

Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union and a partner at Duane Morris in Miami, told the paper, "It's amazing that we're wasting our resources on the morality police instead of battling organized crime, illegal drugs, corruption, and undocumented immigration. I can't even believe this."

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