Everybody stop googling for porn!

The Reich-wing bedwetters are at it again:

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The Bush administration, seeking to revive an online pornography law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, has subpoenaed Google Inc. for details on what its users have been looking for through its popular search engine.

Google has refused to comply with the subpoena, issued last year, for a broad range of material from its databases, including a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period, lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department said in papers filed Wednesday in federal court in San Jose.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the donkey! Haven't we got more important things to worry about than whether someone, somewhere, might be spanking the monkey to an online porno site? Our government (and the Republican Party to which the Reich-wing bedwetters all belong) is awash in corruption scandals, our armed forces are bogged down in the biggest clusterfuck since Vietnam, our alliances are in tatters, our deficit is the only thing rising faster than the New Horizons spacecraft that just launched today, people in New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama are still waiting for FEMA to show up and take care of them after the worst hurricane season in recorded history--and what does their preznit do? Try to find out who's been looking at which porno sites on the internets.

Give me a fucking break, OK? You people have tried to impose your narrow-minded, tighty-righty interpretation of personal morality on the rest of the country for the last 15 years. Every single time, the ink is barely dry on the president's signature before the ACLU has obtained a restraining order as the first step in forcing the Supreme Court to review the latest attempt at an online Comstock Act. And as soon as the Supreme Court properly strikes down the law on First Amendment grounds, the tighty-righties start trying to write language to get around whatever objections the Court had to the last version. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson by now.

Apparently not. The government contends, according to the WaPo article, that the information they're seeking from Google will prove that their new law offers better protection to innocents surfing the internets than filtering software does. Frankly, I have my doubts about the effectiveness of both the kind of law they're proposing and filtering software--at least of the kind that's currently available--and about the alleged "innocence" of the people who are surfing for porn. There's also the fact that the average horny teen-ager is likely to be far more computer savvy than his or her parents, which ultimately defeats the purpose of filtering software.

Go ahead, guys. Waste more time and government resources on this wild-goose chase. It's unlikely you'll be able to get anything passed in the time you have left before losing control over the government this coming November. And even if you do, the Supreme Court is still waiting at the end of the road, and even your pet Chief Justice Dread Pirate Roberts is unlikely to let you wipe your asses with the First Amendment.

In the meantime, we should all quit using Google to find porno online. Use Yahoo! or MSN instead, OK?

Comments

[Bryan]

I wonder what the percentage of hits from Google searches are going to resolve to various law enforcement agencies looking for local evil doers.

As many conservative Republicans have found out, visiting kiddie porn sites can result in being arrested.

Instead of pressuring Google, why don't these people learn to use Google to get the data? Just asking...

[Natron Bomb]

Not sure if it matters much, but I'm a lot closer to being a Republican than a Democrat, though dislike both terms. I do tend to fall on the Right side of many issues, with enough Lefts thrown in just to keep some people uncomfortable.

That being said, I'd like to suggest that the blame be more acurately placed - at the foot of the type of person who wants to live in a society completely controlled by a government. There are way too many, on both sides of the fence.

It's all about control, and almost nothing about political affiliation. Both sides make a lot of noise about how it's "the other guys"... all the while ignoring the smell of their own poop.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go Google myself.

[Michael]

Instead of pressuring Google, why don't these people learn to use Google to get the data? Just asking...

Because that would require independent thought? Or maybe they've finally woken up to the fact that they're not above the law and for once in their miserable careers they decided to do something by the book?

[Michael]

Sorry, Nate, but I can't agree with you that government über alles is a bipartisan affair. The Democrats aren't the ones who are trying to legislate who can do what to whom in whose bedrooms, they're not the ones trying to control who can see what on the internets, they're not the ones trying to redefine marriage as only between one woman and one man at a time. Those are all Reich-wing bedwetter-type agendas.

That they are manifestly out of synch with the historical philosophy of the Republican Party is self-evident. But nobody in the modern GOP cares: it's all about keeping the Christofascists happy, since they're the votes that keep them in power.

[Jester]

None of you have kids, do you?

[Michael]

And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?