Why enable pornographers?

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By Alan Sears

Not long ago, President Obama addressed America's schoolchildren, asking them to take personal responsibility for their choices and always strive for excellence.

Unfortunately, while he's preaching responsibility to the next generation, his Justice Department is turning a blind eye to those who would destroy that generation's future for personal gain.

Earlier this year, I was one of nearly 400 pro-family advocates from across the nation's political, philosophical and legal spectrums who signed a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., asking him to meet with concerned citizens and step up his department's efforts to combat what has become a multibillion-dollar stranglehold on the minds and souls of millions of American men, women and children.

In response, we received one short form-letter paragraph two months later from a department official assuring us our input was valued and our concerns were being considered "carefully." Since then ... nothing but crickets.

The tepid response is all the sadder because our request didn't seem an unreasonable one to make of the man who, 11 years ago, was one of the few members of the Clinton Justice Department who seemed to take the threat of pornography seriously. At the time, as deputy attorney general, Mr. Holder boldly called for stronger enforcement of pornography and obscenity laws, saying:

"Priority should be given to cases involving large-scale distributors who realize substantial income from multistate operations and cases in which there is evidence of organized crime involvement.

"However," he added, "prosecution of cases involving relatively small distributors can have a deterrent effect and would dispel any notion that obscenity distributors are insulated from prosecution if their operations fail to exceed a predetermined size or if they fragment their business into small-scale operations.

"Because of the nature of the Internet and the availability of agents trained in conducting criminal investigations in cyberspace," Mr. Holder said, "investigation and prosecution of Internet obscenity is particularly suitable for federal resources."

What a difference a decade makes. Today, the evil has proliferated. The number of both large- and small-scale distributors has multiplied many times over, and federal resources are even more indispensable.

However, under Mr. Holder's direction, the Justice Department is taking a profoundly laissez-faire attitude toward a criminal enterprise making pervasive use of the Internet to facilitate the efforts of child molesters to infect children with their profoundly warped and perverse ideas about sexual activity and deviancy.