Let's hope the Justices on the Supreme Court read this news story; they have a pending case before them, post-oral argument; it's in the opinion writing stage. The issue is whether the federal statute that prohibits soliciting child pornography is impermissively vague and broad such that it contravenes the First Amendment.
I read the oral argument transacripts: the justices wanting to strike down the statute were just so out of touch with reality. They were asking questions like, "well what about Lolita or the pictures from refugee camps. What if I solicited them on the internet, would I contravene the statute?"
If they could only see that we're not talking about Lolita here, but millions of documentary records of the worst kind of child abuse . . . In this one area, Justices, please rely on prosecutorial discretion and realize that the FBI can't even catch a fraction of the worst that is out there. There's no way law enforcement would spend a fraction of a second thinking about wasting resources on nabbing those who trade pictures of children from refugee camps.
From the oral argument, it seems like the federal statute rests in the hands of Justice Kennedy. Suprise, surprise.
|