Court Upholds Law That Prohibits Promotion of Child Pornography

[bijou]

The Supreme Court today upheld Congress's most recent attempt to prosecute those who would promote child pornography, ruling that the law did not violate free speech guarantees.

The court voted 7 to 2 that the law criminalizing "pandering" of real or purported child pornography over the Internet or through the mail met constitutional standards. The majority dismissed arguments Justice Antonin Scalia called "fanciful hypotheticals" that the law might make documentarians, movie reviewers and even unsuspecting grandparents subject to its pandering standards.

"Child pornography harms and debases the most defenseless of our citizens," Scalia wrote for the majority, adding that federal and state authorities have been frustrated to find it "proliferating through the new medium of the Internet."

Congress has responded to the court's decision that a previous law was unconstitutional with a "carefully crafted attempt to eliminate the First Amendment problems we identified.

"As far as the provision at issue in this case is concerned, that effort was successful."

Scalia was one of the dissenters in 2002 when the court struck down parts of the Child Pornography Protection Act because they were written so broadly that, as Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote, they could apply to a production of "Romeo and Juliet." ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/19/AR2008051900948.html?hpid=topnews

[Rebel]

Souter and Ginsberg ought to be taken out back and shot. 

This should have EASILY been 9-0, unless two are suffering some seriously degenerative brain disorder.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Great, even if it couldn't be a majority, I hope those two bozos throw in the towel though I know they are hanging on for a Dem to be elected.  I do wonder how it affects things like "To Catch a Predator" and even police stings since there is a line you aren't supposed to cross in police ops in actually breaking the law yourself (other than under duress, like being the undercover cop in a room full of heavily-armed drug gangsta killers who decide to pass the bong around).