Um hello…DUH!

Before I explain or comment, let me give you just a few stats on the Internet Porn Biz:

*Pornographic websites - 4.2 million (12% of total websites)
*Pornographic pages - 372 million
*Daily pornographic search engine requests - 68 million (25% of total search engine requests)
*Daily pornographic emails - 2.5 billion (8% of total emails)
*Average daily pornographic emails/user - 4.5 per Internet user
*Monthly Pornographic downloads (Peer-to-peer) - 1.5 billion (35% of all downloads)
*Daily Gnutella “child pornography” requests - 116 thousand
*Websites offering illegal child pornography - 100 thousand *Sexual solicitations of youth made in chat rooms - 89%
*Youths who received sexual solicitation - 20%
*Worldwide visitors to pornographic web sites - 72 million annually

So clearly, porn is a huge world-wide industry. In fact, the industry generates $57.0 billion in revenue world-wide, with $12.0 billion generated in the US.

$2.5 billion comes in through the internet alone.

Why why do I bring this up, you ask?

Well, because the US has now made tracking porn one of its ‘top priorities’. As the Washington Post reported:

Early last month, the bureau’s Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as “one of the top priorities” of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of “the Director.” That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Oh, and my favorite part of the article:

The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against “manufacturers and purveyors” of pornography — not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.

“I guess this means we’ve won the war on terror,” said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity…”We must not need any more resources for espionage.”

Now, it’s understandable to call going after the creeps who produce kiddie porn a ‘high priority’ - but to take resources away from espionage to go after the entire porn industry (which will no doubt fight this tooth and nail with their $12 billion dollars) is just silly.

I thought Republicans were into small and limited government…

Watch out Debbie - your days of doing Dallas are almost over!…