Priorities
The budget is a disaster. Job growth is 2 years behind schedule. Our military is overused, insufficiently compensated and taking donations from home for basic equipment. Our ports aren't secure. The Medicare trust fund is leaking. Education mandates are under-funded. Pell grants and veterans benefits are being cut. And we remain the biggest target of a growing, emboldened, enraged terrorist network spreading all over the world, our intelligence agencies demonstrating little structural improvement since 9/11/01.

So what is John Ashcroft doing?

"32 prosecutors, investigators and a handful of FBI agents are spending millions of dollars to bring anti-obscenity cases to courthouses across the country for the first time in 10 years. Nothing is off limits, they warn, even soft-core cable programs such as HBO's long-running Real Sex or the adult movies widely offered in guestrooms of major hotel chains.

Department officials say they will send "ripples" through an industry that has proliferated on the Internet and grown into an estimated $10 billion-a-year colossus profiting Fortune 500 corporations such as Comcast, which offers hard-core movies on a pay-per-view channel.
[SNIP]
Ashcroft, a religious man who does not drink alcohol or caffeine, smoke, gamble or dance, and has fought unrelenting criticism that he has trod roughshod on civil liberties in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is taking on the porn industry at a time when many experts say Americans are wary about government intrusion into their lives.

The Bush administration is eager to shore up its conservative base with this issue. Ashcroft held private meetings with conservative groups a year and a half ago to assure them that anti-porn efforts are a priority."

I assume the Justice Department must have already convicted all other major federal criminals. They must be the greatest crime-fighting team we've ever seen to have worked through all other more threatening crime. Otherwise, do we really have resources to spend on this luxury??