How Voting for Mitt Romney Led to Obama’s Justice Dept. Cracking Down on Porn Stars (Joke)

Excellent Instapundit column in USA
Today about “Operation Chokepoint,” a Department of Justice
initiative that seeks to squeeze undesirables via their bank
accounts. Writes Glenn Reynolds:

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, our moralistic
Department of Justice would be trying to shut down porn stars. And
they were right: I voted for Romney, and sure enough, the
Department of Justice is trying to shut down porn stars. Along with
a lot of other, perfectly legal businesses. But I’ll bet if Romney
were in the White House, there’d be more coverage in the press.

A while back, some adult performers noticed that
banks were terminating their accounts. The reason, it turned out,
was a Justice Department program called “Operation
Choke Point.” This program, apparently, seeks to target
businesses regarded as undesirable — like porn — by hitting them at
a financial “choke point”: their bank accounts.

Though the Justice Department can’t prosecute people for making
porn, because theFirst
Amendment prohibits that, and too many people would think
of them as blue-nosed morality police, which is politically
undesirable, it can use its power to put them out of business
extra-legally, by pressuring banks to cut off their accounts.
Prosecutors and regulators have a lot of discretion, and the threat
to use (or abuse) that discretion in ways that make banks
uncomfortable provides a lot of leverage. Sure, banks make money
off of the accounts of porn performers (and other targeted
businesses), but not enough to make up for the hassle of being
targeted for harassment by the feds.