Burnt Orange Report

I never would have guessed that

By Nathan Nance

Guest post by Nate Nance

I couldn't make this up if I tried, Alberto Gonzales' stepson quit his job as a consultant to Hustler when he was nominated to be AG. Yes, that Hustler.

I'm not going to make a speech about conservative values out of this. People have jobs and he was only a consultant for the Web site, for Pete's sake. It's not like he was trying to be the next Dirk Diggler. Besides porn is a multi-billion dollar industry, so it must be pretty popular.

No, this is more about conservatives who think some people in the Republican party aren't conservative enough, so they go after them like pihranhas.

Yesterday, Jan LaRue, chief counsel of the conservative group Concerned Women for America, told me Freeze's employment with Flynt is "a legitimate issue" that should be raised next month before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"The Justice Department is responsible for enforcing the obscenity and child pornography laws," LaRue said, "and Larry Flynt's publications include hard-core prosecutable material, in my opinion."

She added that she wants to know if Gonzales had urged his stepson to quit before he knew he was going to be nominated.

"If he didn't, that wouldn't be very helpful," she said.

I really don't see why some 20-something working on a Web site has anything to do his stepdad becoming the Attorney General. LaRue gives some bullshit about her opinion about what is obscene. I watched The People vs. Larry Flynt and I remember Edward Norton arguing about First Amendment rights in front of the Supreme Court, and they won that one. The point is local areas have a right to determine what is obscene and have a community standard, but I don't think an individual has that right. If they did, then I would proclaim cat-blogging obscene and get rid of it (I'm not a cat person).

I want to give a hat tip to Josh Marshall for picking this up and thank God for the NY Daily News.

This is a guest post by Nate Nance. Nate is a sports/news clerk at the Waco Tribune-Herald and writer editor of Common Sense a Texas-based Democratic Web log. He can be reached at nate_nance@yahoo.com.