On Friday in Tampa, Florida, Paul F. Little was sentenced by a federal judge to 3 years and 10 months in a federal prison after being convicted of the grave and terrible crime of distributing pornography "over the Internet and through the mail" -- films featuring only consenting adults and distributed only to those consenting adults who chose to purchase them. Even though he lived and worked in California, the Bush DOJ dragged him to Tampa, Florida in order to try him under Tampa's "community standards," on the theory that his website used servers physically based in Central Florida and some of the films were sent to Tampa customers who purchased them.
These porn prosecutions are the by-product of the demands from Senate Republicans such as Orrin Hatch, who simultaneously argue that (a) the Threat of Muslim Terrorism is so grave and "transcendent" that we must dismantle our entire Constitutional system and turn ourselves into a lawless surveillance state in order to combat it, and (b) the FBI and DOJ should use their resources to prosecute American citizens who produce consensual adult pornography. The same Alberto Gonazles who decreed the Geneva Convention to be a quaint relic in order to legalize torture announced in 2005 that adult pornography prosecutions would be his "top priority" as Attorney General (at his confirmation hearing, Michael Mukasey assured Hatch he shares the same concerns about "mainstream, adult pornography" as Gonzales did).
