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And for all us porn lovin anti bush people I am still worried about the Ketchup ladies influence on her husband and his possible policies towards porn. Porn availability is more likely determined by the community standards where you live- like Rudy's policies towards porn shops in NYC.

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I disagree. Federal policies don't matter with obscenity charges, but the person in the White House sets the tone at Justice, including funding. Clinton stopped porn prosecutions in a meeting of the minds with Reno (at least I hope it was only minds... yech). Together they simply starved the Justice Dept budget of money for porn prosecutions and made it clear that any DAs that went after porn would not be welcome. A DA in Cincinnati still could have gone after Larry Flynt. He or she would have done so alone, with no help, or money, or support, from Washington, and would have been looking for work in a year's time.

It works in reverse as well. The Feds in fact have a huge say in "community standards" due to the realities of the market. You need look no further than the pending Extreme Associates trial. By selecting a conservative constituency to prosecute them in (when they basically had their choice of venue of any state Extreme sells to), the Feds will in effect make Pennsylvania's "community standards" the standard for us all. A guilty verdict there will come with multi-million dollar fines, in the very least. The company will be gone. The chilling effect from there isn't hard to imagine.

I don't follow the case very closely but from what I've read in civil liberties-type journals, the Feds are backing the prosecutor up with heavy artillery. They want this one.

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