"I think the heart of the matter is that Governments torturing people is as appalling as porn producers torturing people....He (Glenn) says it's a matter of law, not of humanity. Aka Smith differs. She thinks they are both wrong. I agree." - you

I think you misuse "torture" - there seems to be a difference between prisoners of war (or enemy combatants or terr-rists) and porn actors. One is being paid for a job they willingly signed up for, while the other is being held as a prisoner of war - captive - against their will. Needless to say, the porn actor can get out while the POW can't.

The issue in dispute, as you define it, is also kind of circular because it just begs the question: what is consent? Or, what is free will? You're essentially saying that the porn actors can't choose, or they're not old enough to choose, or they're being coerced in some way. But we know they can choose, they may not be old enough which is a separate legal/criminal issue besides obscenity, and we definitely know if they're being coerced. In this example, the actors in question were not. So that's kind of a wash.

So then it seems you're saying Max Hardcore's porn is "wrong" as in "immoral" or "something that doesn't sit well with you," but I think that perspective has already been established as irrelevant to the point of Glenn's post, which seems to be to highlight the hypocrisy of a government jailing people for fictionalized, consensual scenes of humiliation/degradation while protecting or ignoring its own tendrils that actually do those things in reality to non-consenting prisoners.

Ironically, inherent in your claim that it's a matter of humanity instead of law is a negation of the validity, or even existence, of choice - which many would argue is essentially to negate the thing that makes a human a "human," as distinct from all other living beings. Conscious choice. After that, your contention that it's about "the humanity" is kind of self defeating.

I'm not trying to be snarky - if I understand the definition of that term correctly.

Way to work in the Ron Paul smear, Leonard. Honestly, your ignorance here is astounding. For the last 20 years, Paul has been the only member of government that has been warning us this was coming. He was telling us what was being done in our (the taxpayers) name and telling us what needed to change to prevent the exact financial quagmire in which we now find ourselves. And of course, the entrenched elite who ran that ship are still running it, and Geithner is moving to expand thier power rather than encourage the systemic change that is so desperately needed.

But according to you, we shouldn't worry about any of that, apparently because Obama's man in Treasury is a good guy, and we should trust that his plans truly have the People's best interest at heart.

And to think Greenwald linked to you today. The irony, the irony.

There's more strawmen here than in Kansas. Paul knows more about economics and banking and systems of currency than any of us will likely learn in our lifetimes.

Sadly, his knowledge is lost on the non-thinking "yay for our team" partisans that have gathered here. Most here completely missed his point. His anology could've been better , but his main point is right on. Regulations are not the answer in and of themselves. He also is NOT saying, as many here like to beleive, that NO regulations is the answer. He is pointing this out because it ought to lead a rational person down the intended avenue. He is purposely "begging the question:". What, in your opinion, Dr. Paul, is the problem that we need to fix? And he would tell you that it's not the regulations that are the problem, it's the system that the regulations are aimed at. He explicitly stated this in his exchange with Geithner. But people here are convinced, apparently, that the corporations who have been running us the last 50 years have nothing to do with the issues we face now, and that the Fed is totally legitimate and is actually the right way to go about having a central bank, and that the fact that the vested elites at the top of this slide are getting richer and richer while the rest get poorer and poorer is just fine. You people want to believe more regulations are the answer and that we should give the institutions who have lead us here bailouts and the Fed more power, while calling the one man in government who isn't mobbed up and is trying to undermine those institutions a stupid, insane loon. It's beautiful in the same way that gang rape is: it shows us the primitive stupidity and base instincts of a mob of like minded, angry humans. A true reveal of man's innate and passive death wish.

Clearly this is a forum for petty political jabber and "I'm right, you're wrong" one upsmanship. That's why no one here has any clue what they're really talking about when it comes to economics and systems of currency and banking. No one here wants to talk root causes, they just want to tribally affiliate.

But you are a poor reader, and you bring more strawmen! Yay! Your lack of understanding and your grasp of history do not serve you well either. You also are still somehow maintaining that regulations are the issue, and that further, Paul thinks there should be no regulations whatsoever, or that somehow he thinks that guilty parties should go unpunished. The point here is monetary policy and how the central banking system works and who runs it. You missed it completely. Simple question for you Levy, which shouldn't be hard for you because you are so adept at thinking for yourself: what is the Fed and how does it operate?