Crime & Federalism

Senator John McCain has recently proposed that every webmaster be required to act as an unpaid deputy of federal and state law enforcement.  Under the proposed legislation, anyone owning or operating a website (that would presumably include bloggers), would be required to report sexually-inappropriate images displayed by its users.

Child pornography is one of the great blights on civilization.  But if McCain really cared about protecting children, he would put the billions of dollars being spent arresting and prosecuting marijuana users towards protecting children.  Imagine how many more child pornographer prosecutions we would have if only people like McCain truly cared about the children?  So long as the federal government pretends that marijuana use is a greater threat to society than child pornography, even deputizing webmasters will do little to stave off the problem.