Indiana Rep. Mike Pence can be pretty aggravating.

On the one hand, Pence one of the few true conservatives in the House of Representatives.

Pence is one of the orchestrators of “Operation Offset,” the plan aimed at cutting wasteful government spending to pay for Hurricane Katrina (though I can think of some far more likely targets than what Pence and his colleagues have suggested).

On the other hand, um, Pence is one of the few true conservatives in the House of Representatives.

So he feels obliged to introduce legislation like this:

In an attempt to exert control over the sexual practices of American citizens under the guise of protecting children, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) introduced bill H.R. 3726 this week, also called The Child Pornography Protection Act of 2005. Among other provisions, the bill targets adult citizens who record visual images of consensual sexual activity in the privacy of their own homes, adds nudity and clothed images of pubic areas to the definition of “explicit sexual activity” as defined in U.S.C. 18 §2256, and criminalizes the production and distribution of R-rated mainstream motion pictures that fail to comply with the record creation and notice provisions of 2257, and possibly for violation of obscenity laws.

H.R. 3726 was introduced by Mr. Pence on Monday, and attached Wednesday afternoon to another bill, The Child Safety Act of 2005 (H.R. 3132), with the blessing of that bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), but without any debate on its merits. The Sensenbrenner bill was passed by the full House the same afternoon, with a vote of 371-52, and now moves to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration.

The bill also requires that any movie theater, adult video or book store, cable network, etc., that distributes images deemed “obscene” by the bill’s standards have paperwork on file verifying the age and identity of the people in the images. That means, for example, that an adult bookstore would need to have a copy of photo identification for every person who appears in every video on the store’s shelves. So, ostensibly, would anyone who purchases one of the movies.

It gets worse. The bill’s enforcement provisions empower law enforcement with the power to seize the assets of violators, proving that there really is a graveyard of stupid ideas deep in the bowels of the U.S. Capitol Building that Congressmen return to when they’re out of stuff to legislate. Because asset forfeiture has worked so well with the drug war. Idiots.

Frankly, I can’t think of any bigger threat to the United States right now than people who take intimate photos of one another within the privacy of their own homes. Good thing Rep. Pence is on the case. Clever move to lump it all under a bill with the phrase “Child Pornography” in the title, too. Tired tactic, Congressman.

Of course, the Republicans had better be careful, here. Get Alberto Gonzalez’s “Porn Squad” nosing around in the business of private, intimate photos and you never know what might turn up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 25th, 2005 at 11:44 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.