They say it's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. I'm hoping that I've just lit a road flare and tossed it at DOJ. Using a very obscure provision in federal law, I've petitioned the Office of Management and Budget to conduct a formal hearing into the economic burden of these regulations on not only the adult industry, but on ordinary Americans. I did this in face of the statutory obligation imposed on DOJ to assess these costs, and the failure or refusal of DOJ to "certify" the truth of its pretty-crazy under estimates. When they said that they just could not determine the economic impact, I'm asking why they didn't knock on the door of the FBI down the hall, the most powerful investigative tool that's ever existed on Planet Earth, and under the command of the same Attorney General who promulgated these regulations and who is now asking for them to be rubber-stamped.
I'm hoping to turn what should be a very routine re-approval of these regulations, as is required from time to time, to turn into something very non-routine. Cross your fingers. Regardless of the outcome, I've lit at least a candle here, and time will tell whether what I've done will have any traction.
The Comments and Petition for Hearing can be read here -
http://www.xxxlaw.com/section-2257/2257%20Comments.pdf
My brief announcement summarizing it is found at
http://www.xxxlaw.com/news/index.html.
These comments were due before midnight, DC time, so I had them in the hopper about an hour early.
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Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice. . . Restraint in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue.
Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964