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House Legislation Would Keep Porn Mags Off Military Bases
As important as it is to fight back against the far-left which has absolutely hijacked the Democratic party, it’s also important to fight back against far-right kooks whenever they emerge. One such far-right kook is Rep. Broun of Georgia who wants to take porn magazines away from soldiers.
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., has introduced legislation that would close a loophole in the current law that allows the sale of some sexually explicit material on military bases by lowering the threshold required to deem material “sexually explicit.”
This is in response to a Department of Defense committee that reviews materials sold on bases ruled last year that magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse are not pornographic. But Broun’s Military Honor and Decency Act includes language that could make those magazines eligible for the ban.
The new language in the law could eventually lead to a ban on magazines such as Maxim or FHM, which do not show nudity and are not pornographic in any way. Regardless of what Broun says, I can assure you that his underlying intention is to rid bases of any magazines that show even a little skin.
With all the problems this country is facing right now with high gas prices, egregious health insurance costs, rising food prices, and an overall slumping economy, it’s keeping soldiers from reading ‘Playboy’ that most concerns Rep. Broun.
Here’s his explanation:
Broun said he is concerned by the negative effects of all pornography, including an increase in the number of violent sexual crimes on military bases.
“It erodes the family as a primary building block of society,” he said, “and it denigrates the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad.”
Reading the latest issue of Swank doesn’t erode families, but untreated Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) sure as hell does.
It’s not the bloody guerrilla insurgency that our troops are currently fighting that’s causing marital problems, its gotta be the stroke books. Yeah right.
Maybe Rep. Broun should take a break from trying to legislate morality and work on making sure our soldiers are getting everything they need when they return from war.
People like Rep. Paul Broun need to quit with the self-righteous nonsense and start working on issues that actually matter.
-Chris Jones
Former American Idol Contestant Subject Of New Sex Tape
Former “American Idol” contestant Jessica Sierra is apparently the latest celebrity to have a sex video released.
Sierra finished 10th in the fourth season of “American Idol” in 2005. Since then she was arrested on drug-related charges and was sentenced to a year at an in-house drug treatment facility followed by three years of probation.
“Jessica Sierra Superstar,” from Vivid Entertainment’s Vivid Celeb line, is scheduled to street Jan. 30.
Adult Club In Japan Serves “Pee On The Rocks”
A popular adult club in Osaka, Japan called Impulse was recently targeted by Police for a number of “eyebrow raising” practices.
Recently six of the club’s hostesses and one male customer of Impulse, a “sexual cabaret club,” were arrested on charges of indecent exposure after the hostesses allegedly worked while in the nude while the customer exposed his genitals.
That’s the tame stuff according to XBIZ, it’s the other “indecent acts” that are a little more disturbing.
“As soon as you enter the club, a hostess will give you a hot towel that she has already used to swipe her private parts. You can start fondling the hostesses’ breasts as soon as you sit down, but that’s nothing.
You immediately get a drink, but it’s a hostess’s urine served on the rocks. They also serve tidbits sprinkled with cuttings of the workers’ pubic hair,” Shukan Jitsuwa reported.
“They also had a service where the ice served in drinks is first inserted into the hostess’s private parts. They just kept on getting wilder and wilder and I think they went too far in the end.”
I have no problem with adult clubs whatsoever, but that’s just disgusting. You can always count on the Japanese to get carried away when it comes to matters of sex.
What’s funnier is that many in the community are complaining about this so-called “crackdown” and hope the cops will just leave them alone in a couple of months.
Again, I have no beef with adult clubs and all that goes with them, but come on!! That’s an off the charts public health issue to say the least.
-Chris Jones
Playboy Invites Viewers To Vote For Playmate Of The Year
Playboy junior photo editor and star of E! Network’s “The Girls Next Door” series Holly Madison will host Playboy TV’s “Playmate Review 2007,” showcasing the 12 nominees for 2008 Playmate of the Year.
“While thousands of girls have dreams of becoming a Playmate, only 12 girls, the Playmates from 2007, can dream of becoming Playboy’s Playmate of the Year for 2007,” according to Playboy director of photography Gary Cole.
“However, it will be the results of Playboy’s online voting poll for Playmate of the Year that will determine which Playmate’s dream comes true.”
The winner, announced in the June 2008 issue of the magazine and on Playboy.com, takes home a cool $100,000, a new car and other prizes.
Starting Dec. 9, members can go to PlayboyTV.com to view video profiles of each candidate, hosted by Madison, and then visit Playboy.com to cast their vote for their favorite Playmate.
Voting opens Friday and lasts until Feb. 7.
Via XBIZ
Plaintiffs Drop Suit Against Girls Gone Wild Founder
A representative for “Girls Gone Wild” (GGW) founder Joe Francis has confirmed the two women who filed suit against him have dropped charges, after video surfaced showing the two women verbally stating they were of age to be filmed and also consenting to it.
The video of plaintiffs Brooke Patsolic and Christina Brose was posted last week at MeetJoeFrancis.com, an apparent attempt to inform the public of his extensive legal woes.
In a statement Francis said that he would forego suing the two women in exchange for a public apology, which he was sent soon after. In it, Patsolic and Brose acknowledge that GGW parent company Mantra Films and Francis suffered as a result of their actions.
“We have agreed to dismiss our lawsuit and acknowledge that no money has been paid to either of us,” the women wrote. “Further, we understand that by dismissing this action, Mantra Films Inc., ‘Girls Gone Wild’ and Joe Francis have agreed not to pursue legal action against us stemming from the filing of our lawsuit.”
In the suit, both women claimed that they were enticed aboard the GGW bus and coerced into exposing themselves and engaging in sexual acts after being promised the footage would not be used for commercial purposes. Free clothes and alcohol — though they claimed they were under 21 — also allegedly were provided.
However on the videotape, released several months later, features Brose telling Francis that he has permission to “put this on anything, I don’t care,” and later provided her full name and age on tape.
Patsolic also gave consent to use her footage and even pointed out that there were police officers present at the time.
“Tomorrow, we’re going to be like, “What the [expletive] were we doing?’” Patsolic said on the tape.
Girls Gone Wild Founder Fights Back Against Lawsuit
Girls Gone Wild (GGW) founder Joe Francis has launched a blog website, MeetJoeFrancis.com, apparently as an attempt to inform the public of his life story and extensive legal woes. Posted also on the site are GGW video clips of two Florida women who currently are suing Francis.
Francis has been incarcerated in Nevada on tax evasion charges since May; he was scheduled to be released in June but opted to stay in jail to avoid being transported to Florida where he was facing further jail time, as well as charges of using minors in GGW videos and possession of a controlled substance (in a case separate from that filed by the two women).
The most interesting part of the site is a section called “You Be The Judge.”
In this section Francis has posted the very movie clips the two girls are suing him over. Christina Brose and Brooke Pastolic filed suit against Francis for conspiracy, providing minors with alcohol, profiting from unauthorized use of video footage, deceptive and unfair trade practices, as well as several other charges stemming from the assertion that the two women did not give consent for the use of their image or likeness.
In the first video clip, both Brose and Pastolic appear to give verbal consent to appear in the video for GGW.
The second video clip shows Brose and Pastolic apparently dancing suggestively with a group of young women, shot inside a nightclub. A soundtrack accompanies the video that has thumping techno music and a crowd chanting, “Take it off” in the background.
A third video clip shows a group of young women, including Brose and Pastolic, apparently shot in the GGW bus, as they strip down to their panties, kiss and follow the instructions of the unseen cameraman.
It’s quite clear from watching the clips that these two broads were quite willing to be a part of the movie. Then later upon further reflection they figured they could get some money out of Francis.
Regardless of what you think of Joe Francis, these two girls like many others before them are trying to get rich off a bad personal decision they willingly made.
By Chris Jones
The Hot Joints
Joe Francis Changes Attorneys in Florida
PANAMA CITY, Fla. — “Girls Gone Wild” owner Joe Francis has fired Aaron Dyer and Larry Simpson, the two attorneys who have represented him for the last four years, and replaced them with lawyer Roy Black.
The Florida-based Black won acquittal of William Kennedy Smith on rape charges in Palm Beach, Fla., in 1991 and also represented Rush Limbaugh after he was arrested on charges of doctor shopping in 2006.
Black filed his first motion in Francis’ case at once, a request for bond that he can file under seal, or out of the public eye. The request was not immediately acted on.
Francis is facing two counts each of using and conspiring to use minors in a sexual performance after shooting two 17-year-old girls performing sex acts with each other in a Panama City Beach motel shower during spring break in 2003. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 40 years in prison.
At one time, Francis had been charged with 43 offenses from 2003, but Judge Dedee Costello dismissed most of the charges after throwing out all the physical evidence that had been collected under a flawed search warrant.
While representing Francis, Dyer and Simpson won almost every legal argument they presented. In 2004, they convinced Judge Michael Overstreet that girls baring their breasts in public, regardless of their age, was not prohibited by state law, and that it was not illegal to record it.
They also filed the motions that got the physical evidence thrown out and the majority of the charges dismissed. But in a recent case, Costello found that the charges did not require Francis to verify the performers’ ages when a cameraman shot them in a sexual situation. The defense had argued that knowledge of age, and therefore criminal intent, was essential to the charge.
Costello refused to dismiss the remaining charges.
Francis has been incarcerated in Nevada the last four months awaiting trial on charges of tax evasion. Although he has been granted bond, he has not been allowed to leave jail because of Costello’s detainer on him. If Francis is released from jail in Nevada, he would be returned to jail in Florida.
On Tuesday, Black filed notice with Costello that he would be the new attorney of record, replacing Dyer and Simpson. Dyer is still Francis’ attorney in his tax case in Nevada, and it is not clear whether he will remain so.
[XBIZ]
Student Cracks Australian Porn Filter
MELBOURNE, Australia — A 16-year-old student cracked the federal government’s new $69 million Internet porn filter in minutes, leaving the toolbar icon intact so the filter still appears to be functioning.
The student, Tom Wood, who spoke to Communications Minister Helen Coonan about cyber safety during a forum in May, said the Federal Government should have developed a better, Australian-made filter.
“It’s a horrible waste of money,” Wood said. “They could get a much better filter for a few million dollars made here rather than paying overseas companies for an ineffective one.”
Wood said it took him just over 30 minutes to bypass the government’s filter. A former cyber-bullying victim, Wood said he was afraid that a computer-savvy child could develop a bypass and put it on the Internet for others to use.
On Aug. 25, the government added a new Australian-designed filter, Integard, to its Internet safety website. Wood defeated it within 40 minutes.
Communications Minister Coonan said the government had anticipated children would try to get around the filters, and said that the supplier contract includes continuing updates.
“The vendor is investigating the matter as a priority,” Coonan said. “Unfortunately, no single measure can protect children from online harm and … traditional parenting skills have never been more important.”
Senator Steve Fielding of the Family First party said that cracking the software showed the need for compulsory filtering by Internet providers.
“You need both. You need it at the ISP and at the PC level,” Fielding said. “The government has not listened to common sense and it leaves kids exposed.”
The filters were designed to block sites on a national blacklist, stop use of chat rooms, and also can be tailored by parents to stop access to sites parents select.
“Filters aren’t addressing the bigger issues anyway,” Wood said. “Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I’d fix. They really need to develop a youth-involved forum to discuss some of these problems and ideas for fixing them.”
The $156 million NetAlert program includes $69 million for the National Filter Scheme, plus funding for online policing, a help line and education programs. The program also will mandate filtering by Internet service providers per user request.
[XBIZ]
Death Squads Reportedly Targeting Iraqi Adult Web Surfers
BAGHDAD — Dozens of Iraqi citizens have been murdered after using the Internet to access adult websites, according to Middle Eastern media reports.
“We have received information from many sources that militants are operating spies inside Internet cafes just to find out who is browsing sites they have deemed offensive to Islam,” Iraqi Aid Association spokesperson Fatah Ahmed said. The IAA is a Baghdad-based nongovernmental aid agency.
According to Ahmed, most of the killings and abductions have happened directly after the victim leaves an Internet café.
“It is very serious because in an Islamic country in which violence is spreading on a daily basis, people search for some entertainment and it is found today only on the internet,” Ahmed said. “There are no places to go, so young people are making friends via chatrooms, which are now also being condemned by Islamic extremists.”
One victim of kidnapping and assault, university student Ibraheem Abdel-Qahar, told Al-Jazeera that he was kidnapped after leaving a café, then blindfolded, transported to what he believes was a house on the outskirts of Baghdad, and then beaten and tortured.
“They told me to take off all my clothes and handcuffed me. They started to beat me and use cigarettes to burn my legs,” Abdel-Qahar said, adding that he was beaten with an iron bar, and forced to drink chicken blood and his own urine.
Abdel-Qahar said that he was desperate, shouting questions at his abusers as to why they were assaulting him.
“After three hours of continuous torture they told me that it was because I was watching non-Muslim sites on the internet,” Abdel-Qahar said.
Following six days of torture, Abdel-Qahar said he was dropped off near his home and told that if he was found surfing adult sites again he would be killed. The perpetrators also advised him to seek salvation in the local mosque.
Armed marauders have not spared the proprietors who operate Internet cafés, either; in February, Internet café owners Fadhel Ibraheem and Youssef Ala’a were tortured and beheaded, reportedly for allowing access to adult sites in their café.
“It wasn’t my brother’s fault,” said Yehia Ala’a, the brother of Youssef. “He was just offering the computers and Internet access for people to use. The people who search for the Internet entertainment just want to have some distraction in the middle of this hell and hypocritical society.”
The violence toward Internet café patrons and proprietors has not gone unnoticed in other segments of Iraqi society. Baghdad University Professor Hussam Abdallah said that the University offers access to the Internet, but does so “on the condition that the browsing is controlled, and pornographic sites are blocked.”
“We have also prohibited online chatting,” Abdallah said. “We do not want to give extremists an excuse to attack us.”
[XBIZ]
Flynt Hunts for Political Sex Scandal
Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt offered $1 million Sunday to anyone who could provide proof of an illicit sexual encounter with a high-ranking government official.
In a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post, Flynt asked for “documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder.” He said he would pay up to $1 million for material that could be verified and published in Hustler.
Flynt ran a similar ad in October 1998, during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to the impeachment of President Clinton.
The publisher took credit for the demise of Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., who admitted he had had extramarital affairs after word got out that Flynt was investigating him. Livingston announced his resignation in December 1998, days before he had been expected to become speaker of the House.
[ABC]
China’s Porn Crackdown to Target Campus Websites, Text Messages
BEIJING — After a month-long crackdown on Internet porn, government officials have shut down 4,800 websites and made more than 270 arrests — and now the Education Ministry is targeting mobile content and online campus bulletin boards.
The Xinhua news agency has reported that Deputy Minister of Public Security Zhang Xinfeng announced the government will continue the fight next month, this time focusing on obscene text messages and school bulletin boards distributing pornographic material.
“We strongly condemn website hosts for making ‘unlawful’ money by distributing pornographic information,” Vice Minister of Education Li Weihong said. “Student netizens are easily influenced and perverted by such information as they are still in their formative years and do not have a solid grip on the right values.”
Chinese officials blamed a recent surge in youth crime to online pornography. A spokesman said that 80 percent of “arrested youth criminals” were “seduced by the Internet.”
It has been reported that nearly half of China’s 23 million Internet surfers visit adult websites.
Weihong said a section of the Ministry’s website has been formed for users to report campus websites violating anti-obscenity rules, and has urged college professors to “get to know the mentality of today’s students from the [Internet].”
In the past month, Chinese authorities have filtered 90,000 sites featuring pornographic content. Xinfeng said that more than 90 percent of the adult sites available to the Chinese public are from abroad.
[XBIZ]
Tenn. State Senate Passes “Girls Gone Wild Bill”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee State Senate this week voted unanimously to pass the so-called “Girls Gone Wild bill” — despite the fact that Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper had issued an opinion stating that portions of the legislation are “constitutionally suspect.”
According to the text of the bill as published on the website for the Tennessee state legislature, the bill “creates a new offense of advertising or promoting the sale, production, distribution, exhibition or display” of obscene materials in the state.
If passed in the state House of Representatives, the Senate Bill 14 (SB14) would also make it unlawful “for the owner or an employee of a television station or cable television company that broadcasts in this state to knowingly accept or solicit for advertising material that is obscene, harmful to minors, or in violation of the above-described federal law, or for such a company or station to actually and knowingly promote or advertise such content.”
In an opinion letter dated May 14, Cooper stated that while some sections of the bill closely track federal law regarding obscene materials and those aspects of the legislation are likely to withstand legal challenge, other sections of the proposed law are more dubious constitutionally.
“Given the extensive federal regulation of the content of programming on television, it is possible that a court could determine that [the bill] is preempted to the extent it applies to public or private television broadcasts,” Cooper wrote in his opinion.
“Moreover, Section 4 of the proposed amendment to [Tennessee state code] is constitutionally suspect under the 1st Amendment because it lacks a ‘safe-harbor’ provision to allow the broadcasting of indecent material during hours when minors are unlikely to be viewing television, does not directly advance the governmental interest in restricting a minor’s access to material harmful to minors, and is more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest.”
The bill’s sponsor, Democratic State Sen. Doug Jackson, told the Associated Press that he was encouraged by Cooper’s evaluation of the bill, and said that the legislation is designed to apply only to material that a jury determines to be obscene.
“If a jury says the product is obscene, what we’re saying is the cable companies can be held responsible,” Jackson said. “Why should they be allowed to make money off a product that they know or should have known is obscene?”
The portion of the bill that Cooper termed “constitutionally suspect,” states in part that it is an offense for “the owner or employee of a public or private television station or the owner or employee of a cable television company… that broadcasts for public viewing or paid subscription viewing in this state to solicit, accept or cause to be solicited or accepted, advertising for any material that is harmful to minors.”
According to Jeffrey Douglas, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, the fact that the bill provides no “safe harbor” provision that allows for the broadcast of material that is deemed inappropriate for minors but fine for adults will likely prove the bill’s undoing in court, should it be signed into law.
“Beyond being bad policy, the bill is indefensible, legally,” Douglas told XBIZ. “These efforts by states to ban speech that they don’t like are facially unconstitutional.”
In addition to the lack of a safe harbor provision, Douglas said it is not clear whether states have the legal authority to regulate cable TV content, at all. Even the Federal Communications Commission does not have clear authority to regulate cable television the way it does broadcast TV, Douglas observed.
“The ability of a state to regulate cable content is highly questionable,” Douglas said. “One can imagine how insane it would be if every state could regulate cable content — every cable company would have to have different programming for every state.”
The bill has little chance of passing in the Tennessee House of Representatives during the current legislative session, according to AP reports, as a companion bill was tabled by a House subcommittee in April, after it received no support from members of either party.
Despite the reservations of legal experts, including his own state’s Attorney General, Jackson said he believes the bill will pass in the state House next year, during the second session of the 105th General Assembly. If passed, the bill would effectively stop Girls Gone Wild from advertising in Tennessee.
[XBIZ]
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