If you look on the bright side too often, you may be blinded :-)

Wait, the Democrats are the ones who proposed and sponsored pretty much every censorship law over the past 20 years, and it's Republicans you're worried about?

It's not the Republicans I'm more worried about, but the way reactive politics works. Democrats are in general more against free speech than Republicans, which is good.

A key censorship issue now before the Supreme Court involves the right to depict animal cruelty:

http://www.ncac.org/NCAC-Files-Brief-in-U.S.-v.-Stevens-Urging-Supreme-Court-to-Reject-Invitation-to-Censorship

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/washington/06bar.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

It was a Republican-sponsored bill, which Clinton signed.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d106:HR01887:@@@P

http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?sel=DOC&&item=&r_n=hr397.106&&&sid=cp106FWNRg&&refer=&&&db_id=cp106&&hd_count=&

How it works as a slippery slope is explained here (intended to stop "crush videos" but ends up used against videos of animal fights):

http://www.volokh.com/posts/1216416918.shtml

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/11/post_511.html

Then there's so-called "virtal kiddie porn" law -- passed by a Republican congress and signed by Clinton. (Its broad bipartisan support indicates it was a product of this reactive process. No one wants to be called "pro-kiddie porn.")

BTW, I agree with Penn Jillette that it punishes thought crimes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62J15bVFX64

The Supreme Court struck it down:

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/04/16/scotus.virtual.child.porn/

The ban was revived with another bill, passed unanimously and signed by Bush:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003

What worries me about this is that the crime can be committed by one person expressing his own thoughts.

Of course, what is far more egregious is that many Democrats want to ban hate speech -- very clearly a thought crime -- and they would love to kill talk radio.

Will they dare?

Why no good deed goes unpunished

I know that's not a question, but I can answer it anyway.
Because people are involved.

What's the difference between men and dogs?
Let's ask Mr. Twain
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.

People are scum.
It's right there in all the owner's manuals, like the Bible for instance.

Couple of issues here:

* This isn't about passing laws, this is about using those laws to put people in jail. People who make videos of adults engaging in activities of their own free will may be disgusting individuals and the stuff they are doing might be gross, painful and degrading, but as long as no one is forced to participate, watch the video etc. then no harm, no foul. When you start doing it to animals, children (there's a line there, but that's a different argument) or forcing people blah blah blah.

* Democrats are marginally more willing to pass these laws. Republicans are more likely to actually want to, you know, enforce the law. Democrats will have no problems enforcing the law against their political opponents because to them it's a political issue. Republicans will enforce most of the obscenity against anyone since to them it's a moral issue.

* I think it's very telling that the Obama Administration didn't get ahead of this story. They could have *easily* said that they were going to re-align the DoJs investigation and prosecution efforts to focus on problem areas rather than just playing "gotcha" by applying Small Town Mississippi standards to material produced and marketed in Big Town Florida/California.

* RE the virtual kiddie porn law: One side effect of this is that now a significant percentage of the creeps[1] that get caught with child porn immediately claim that the images are "virtual". This will often trigger a call to the FBI, who has a team of image analysts who get called to testify in court as to the "reality" of the image. Often times they "know" the participants in these pictures. The FBI image analysts occasionally have trouble sleeping because of the quantity and contents of some of these pictures.

* Throwing someone in jail for their thoughts is clearly wrong, all of us can go down dangerous thought-tracks from time to time. Expressing these thoughts in some ways, especially in safe "coping mechanisms" or as a part of therapy etc. should be protected to a degree.

* But having a culture, a society means we must have lines. These lines should be bright and obvious, but they should be there. I am totally comfortable with "You shall not create images depicting sex with pre-pubescents" and "You will NOT use models/actors under the age of majority in sexually explicit film/photo material". Yes, I'm sure this infringes on some peoples right to be titillated. And no, I don't think that drawing a line *somewhere* means that that line can be arbitrarily whipped around all over the place.

[1] There are significant problems with current "child porn" laws. Almost all hetro men are stimulated by pictures of post-polymorphic women in erotic poses. This can include "well developed" 13 year olds on up. Most of the people getting busted are NOT getting in trouble for "Traci Lords" type of child porn where the participants look a little young. That's not what the Feebs are after and that's not what most people think of when they think of child porn.