Al-Qaeda, schmal-Qaeda -- as the Baltimore Sun notes, John Ashcroft is protecting us from the real threat:

Lam Nguyen's job is to sit for hours in a chilly, quiet room devoid of any color but gray and look at pornography. This job, which Nguyen does earnestly from 9 to 5, surrounded by a half-dozen other "computer forensic specialists" like him, has become the focal point of the Justice Department's operation to rid the world of porn.

In this field office in Washington, 32 prosecutors, investigators and a handful of FBI agents are spending millions of dollars to bring anti-obscenity cases to courthouses across the country for the first time in 10 years....

But they're just trying to eliminate the really gross, out-there stuff, right? Er, no:

Nothing is off limits, they warn, even soft-core cable programs such as HBO's long-running Real Sex or the adult movies widely offered in guestrooms of major hotel chains....

The Justice Department recently hired Bruce Taylor, who was instrumental in a handful of convictions obtained over the past year and unsuccessfully represented the state in a 1981 case, Larry Flynt vs. Ohio....

"Just about everything on the Internet and almost everything in the video stores and everything in the adult bookstores is still prosecutable illegal obscenity," [Taylor] said.

"Some of the cable versions of porno movies are prosecutable...."

OK -- porn isn't exactly the most soul-enriching leisure-time activity. But when crazy people are still trying to kill us in large numbers and we're seven trillion frigging dollars in debt, is this absolutely necessary?