OK, there's no pretense -- no one but pedophiles likes kiddie porn, and no one but pedophiles support pedophiles. But as discussed last month (SCOTUS nixes CPPA), kiddie porn is different from regular porn only if actual children (living and breathing, or were at one time) are involved. If kids are involved in porn, they're undeniably harmed by it or its record, and that ups the ante. If no real kids are involved, it's just porn, and is illegal in all the same ways any other pornography is.

That is, you can sometimes punish people for making it or selling it, but you can't punish people for looking at it. And that's exactly what the lawmakers want to do with kiddie porn -- punish people who want it, even if no kids were involved in its production. They're trying another bill that makes illegal what the Supreme Court just ruled is not illegal.

The latest? A bill that would hope to ban Web sites or services that offer "suggestive" pictures of minors for sale. But Declan McCullagh (of Politech) found out the bill is so badly written that it would ban any commercial photography of children -- anything that "displays" or "offers" an image of a person under 17 "without a purpose of marketing a product or service other than an image of a child." No kids in cookie commercials, no commercial photographs, no posters of child singers, maybe not even any photography of kids in TV or movies.

But don't worry -- the Ashcroft Justice Department says it's a good bill that only affects the bad guys.