It's not just your porn that the Bush administration wants to regulate and make decisions based on the tastes of the Family Research Council. Now he's pushing for "decency" on broadcast television.

Presumably these people haven't figured out the obvious option of, you know, turning off their televisions or maybe even just changing the damned channel when something they don't like is on the TV. If they're so interested in bringing the government into their living rooms I'd happily write to my Congressman urging passage of a bill that would deputize me to walk into their houses and turn off their TVs for them. Coming from a party that has historically pushed the line of "smaller government," the fact that the GOP is bowing to such blatant political pressure to increase government interference in the personal lives of people and corporations belies the marginalization of any remaining libertarian wing of the party.

And of course, most definitions of obscenity rely on "community standards" to define what constitutes an obscene act. So for a nationally broadcast show, whose community is used as a reference point? I know in my neighborhood in New York City there's very little what would get more than a chuckle and a second glance as people walked by. So why should we be forced to live by the standards of some prudish community that still believes exposed ankles are the height of scandal?

But the idiots demanding increased regulation aren't the only ones who don't know what they're talking about. The broadcasters aren't too bright either.

Clearly they also don't get it. The EM spectrum represents a public trust; it's a naturally occurring resource that the goverment has granted broadcasting companies an exclusive license to use a portion of. And as such, they have some sway over what can and cannot be said or shown using that public resource as part of the agreement for granting that license.

Cable and satellite transmission are private ventures. The government had no part in establishing them as a means to bring entertainment into people's homes. It's just like if someone built a private highway in their backyard that never connected to another road. They could drive as fast as they wanted on that highway without fear of getting a ticket - because they created it themselves, the govermment has no standing to regulate how it's operated. The same logic applies to cable and satellite television. As soon as the government builds its own cable TV infrastructure and licenses portions of that bandwidth to content providers then they'll be free to regulate it as they see fit. But as it currently stands, cable is an entirely private ordeal, and even if broadcast TV sees it as unfairly free of government intervention, tough shit. NBC or CBS are just as able as anyone else to start cable networks and broadcast without those restrictions.