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December 6, 2004

Justice Department Gets New Lawyers
by Stuart Shepard, correspondent

The extra manpower is earmarked for prosecuting adult obscenity and child pornography cases.

The Department of Justice is poised to hire more than a dozen new attorneys to fight pornography, a move family advocates say may finally signal that the Bush administration is taking seriously its responsibility to enforce federal laws against obscenity.

In all, Congress allocated money for the Justice Department to bring on 17 new attorneys to prosecute adult obscenity and child pornography.

"We're certainly happy that the Justice Department is going to be throwing a lot more manpower at the problem of adult obscenity," said Tom Minnery, vice president of government and public policy at Focus on the Family. "But it's like a team that spends a lot of money to get good players: It depends on the coach. We're not happy with the coach."

That's a reference to Drew Oosterbahn, head of the department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Division.

"He has not performed in the first four years," Minnery said. "He's still there."

Former Justice Department official Pat Trueman agreed that new leadership is needed, noting that prosecutions so far have primarily involved small-time operators rather than the large-scale distributors of illegal pornography. Even those in the porn industry, he noted, are perplexed by the lack of prosecutions under an otherwise conservative, pro-family administration.

"Since Congress has given the Justice Department 17 new attorney slots to prosecute obscenity," Trueman said, "I think that pro-family people must insist that the Justice Department change its top prosecutor in the obscenity prosecution unit."

What needs to be done, he added, is to go after companies distributing illegal pornography on the Internet, through cable and satellite television and in hotels.