NYT: Federal Effort on Web Obscenity Shows Few Results (and look who's getting $$$)

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 — Tom Rogers, a retired Indianapolis detective, toils away most days in his suburban home office reviewing sexual Web sites and other Internet traffic to see whether they qualify as obscene material whose purveyors should be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

His work is financed by a Justice Department grant initially provided through a Congressional earmark inserted into a spending bill by Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia.

The grant, about $150,000 a year, has helped pay for Mr. Rogers and another retired law enforcement officer in Reno, Nev., to harvest and review complaints about obscene matter on the Internet that citizens register on the Justice Department Web site.

... The department Web site invites citizens to report material that they believe is obscene so it can be investigated and, perhaps, prosecuted. Clicking on the site to make a report takes the user to ObscenityCrimes.org, which is run by Morality in Media, the grant recipient.

Morality in Media is a conservative religious group that has worked since 1962 to “rid the world of pornography” and whose headquarters is, improbably, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/us/10obscene.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

[NashVegas]

1. It's Good Work If You Can Get It

:)

[spanone]

2. mr. rogers the sex police....

[zabet]

3. So what it really boils down to is...

tax dollars are paying repugs to indulge their sexual perversions under the
guise of being the obscenity police. Puhhhllleeeaaasse. :puke:

[Subdivisions]

4. Republick spooge alert! n/t

[burythehatchet]

5. its all about patronage and buying support

[DBoon]

6. $150K can buy an awful lot of Kleenex (tm)

nt