Today’s Freedom News

So now Frothy vows to end internet and other porn (Note to commenters — remember to misspell “porn” so that your comment isn’t caught in the spam filter. Or just call it “santorum.”).

Santorum says in a statement posted to his website, “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.”

If elected, he promises to “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”

According to the Daily Caller article linked above, the way to “stop” internet porn would be to prosecute people who are receiving it. So if the Gubmint determines you are browsing in naughty places, the prosecutors might knock on your door, seize your computer and indict you for what you were doing with it.

Ain’t freedom grand? But one catch with this (hat tip Digby) — internet porn consumers disproportionally live in red states.

In 2009, Benjamin G. Edelman of the Harvard Business School published the results of a state-by-state study on the number of people who were subscribing to adult membership Web sites; Edelman found that eight of the 10 states that had the highest per capita consumption of online porn were states that Republican John McCain won in 2008’s presidential election. Utah topped the list, and other red states in Edelman’s top 10 included Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alaska, North Dakota and West Virginia. The only states in Edelman’s top 10 that Obama won in 2008 were Florida and Hawaii.

To be fair, this may be because other outlets for porn are less available in, say, Salt Lake City than in, say, San Francisco. But my impression was that porn is not the hot-button issue it was in the 1970s or so. See also Annie Laurie and Doghouse Riley.

The state of Texas, which tirelessly protects women’s freedom to not get abortions, has now gone a step further and liberated poor women from access to family planning services.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday that it will cut off all Medicaid funding for family planning to the state of Texas, following Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) decision to implement a new law that excludes Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid Women’s Health Program. …

… The federal government pays for nearly 90 percent of Texas’ $40 billion Women’s Health Program, and nearly half of the program’s providers in Texas are Planned Parenthood clinics. But the new law that went into effect earlier this month disqualified Planned Parenthood from participating in the program because some of its clinics provide abortions, even though no state or federal money can be used to pay for those abortions.

I’m sure the women of Texas are grateful.