The Great Jerkoff Case of 2007

Guess what: the War On Pr0n has its very own Halliburton. Yes, the DOJ is paying an outside contractor to investigate naughtiness on the internets:

The grant, about $150,000 a year, has helped pay for Mr. Rogers and another retired law enforcement officer in Reno, Nev., to harvest and review complaints about obscene matter on the Internet that citizens register on the Justice Department Web site.

And how's that going? Well, I did make a Halliburton reference, didn't I?

In the last few years, 67,000 citizens’ complaints have been deemed legitimate under the program and passed on to the Justice Department and federal prosecutors.

The number of prosecutions resulting from those referrals is zero.

And with whom, you ask, is this contractor affiliated?

Morality in Media is a conservative religious group that has worked since 1962 to “rid the world of pornography” and whose headquarters is, improbably, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

I love this story. Really--what's not to love? It's got wacky Republican earmarks. It's got laughable incompetence. It's got the contracting of government services to politically-connected parties. It's got pandering to the Religious Right. It's got Alberto Gonzales, who decided it was a good idea to make porn a top priority of the DOJ (read that one--it's hilarious).

Best of all, it gives me an excuse to use one of my favorite lines from L. A. Confidential.

This isn't about the money; that's chump change. 150 grand wouldn't pay for five minutes worth of occupation. What it is is just one more illustration of the fact that these people aren't even trying to look like they take governing seriously.