A California resort has been siphoning a creek to fill up their wildfire-fighting reserves. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, they're in trouble because they've been swimming naked in their "reserves". It wouldn't be nearly as newsworthy if they weren't a nudist resort, but trying to pretend their swimming pool has firefighting benefit when everyone else has to live pool-less due to the drought is a bit selfish.

Police are pushing for a law that would let them continue to have sex with hookers before arresting them. Seeing that, to prove a woman is a prostitute, having sex is the only way to do it, they must also be pushing for laws that allow them to do drugs seized in stings to prove they're drugs, fight dogs seized when raiding dog-fighting rings to prove they're actually fighting dogs, and shoot people whenever they feel like it because, fuck living up to the laws they're entrusted to enforce, they're cops and should get to do the fun parts of illegal activities. Or, just maybe, like most other low-threat crimes, they should just stick to blatant lawbreaking and not bother having to trick criminals into providing undeniable proof of their crime.

Via.

In sad news, pornographers are pulling up their California roots and moving to Las Vegas over the condom laws. Is it really that big of a deal, that you'd move your entire business? I suspect the devil's in the details - people have been wearing condoms in porn a long time, there's more to the law than just that - but when your business is moving to a place due to its lax worker safety laws, you might want to think about that logic.

Via.

The internet: is there anything it can't ruin? First, Craigslist destroys the newspaper; ebooks are destroying publishing; and, most heinous of all, internet porn is destroying the legal Nevada brothel business. Well, technically the economy is causing the problem, but it's much easier to blame the internet, what with its free nude photos and easy access. The story really can't get anything straight; it seems to want to talk about business, but heads off into weird moral channels, including inviting an anti-prostitution talking head with no evidence to back them up. Hey, Bloomberg: save your exploitation sob-stories for talking about the minimum wage; this is one place people are at least doing an honest job, give them some credit for riding out the economic downturn when so many other businesses couldn't cut it.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. After a few years of accusations of Joe Francis' douchebaggery have quieted down a bit, things have caught up with him: due to the overwhelmingly destructive judgments and lawsuits against Francis and his company, Girls Gone Wild has gone into bankruptcy to shield assets from his debtors. In the beginning it was all about Joe Francis, but what the brand needs now is some business savvy that doesn't rely on late-night ads or bad publicity; bring in a real business to run things, even Hustler brands for cripes' sakes, and bring it back into prime territory. If there's a brand designed for the internet world, it's Girls Gone Wild, and the fact that they went with a fucking magazine - a non-nude magazine a'la the constantly-struggling Maxim, which makes no sense - shows they're not really getting it. Bankruptcy is a time to make these sorts of drastic changes, toss Francis out, bring back consequence-free teen boobs.

Representative Jared Polis of Colorado has temporarily become my favorite person in the world. Towards the end of the debate over the horrible, horrible SOPA law, he introduced an amendment to the law which explicity excluded pornography from the SOPA. This created an odd dynamic: By excluding pornography from SOPA protection - when piracy is such a big problem in the adult industry - essentially goes the conservative route and causes hardship for porn. However, SOPA is designed to protect legal copyright holders, so by voting down the amendment means that Congress, essentially, has thrown their hat into the ring with pornographers. So, thank you, Republican Lamar Smith, for showing us that pornography is in your best interests. We always knew it anyway. Also, the Avenue Q song, "The Internet is for Porn", was used as evidence, and is now part of the congressional record. For as fucked up as the anti-piracy laws are, Polis has done a good job of turning the tables and showing the absurdity of it all.

Sorry, Bostonians: if you're in the middle of a divorce, don't plan on fucking anybody at home. The new law prohibits two consenting people from having sex in the divorcee's home, under a "won't somebody think of the children!" motive. From what I understand, divorce turns people into assholes, so you can bet the only use for this law is for one side in the divorce to totally fuck up the other side's chances of having a reasonable and cooperative divorce. Seriously, if you could turn a cheating ex, even after you've broken up, in to the police for fucking somebody else, wouldn't you? Even better, the article cites that it is designed to "prevent domestic violence", because if you left your husband because he was a controlling, jealous abuser, he'd never call the cops to accuse you of fucking some other guy. Abusers totally become reasonable when you break up with them, right, ladies? It's sure a good thing our duly-elected politicians are working on the economy, isn't it.

So, you've had to leave your elected position due to drunk driving and other ethical violations, you're coming out of the closet, you lost your driver's license, you rent a shabby office above a flower shop to keep your in-state address, and now you're looking for clients. The only logical step: represent pornographers, and use your Iowa offices as the porn company's US mailing address. The florist downstairs, who also owns the building, is absolutely precious in her midwest reaction: ""Oh, Lordy," Hickle said. "I had no idea. I am not OK with this. I don't believe in pornography, and, oh, my, I just don't see Northwood as the sex capital of the world." It's too bad she doesn't believe in pornography: her flowers result in more fucking than all the porn in Bumfuck Iowa combined. Seriously, Valentines Day is all about fucking, and it's the biggest day for buying flowers for your honey. One-stop porn and flower shopping is the Business Model Of The Future, and it's too bad she doesn't believe in pornography, otherwise she's be sitting on a goldmine. She'd just have to team up with the foreign company and their drunk gay lawyer to get it done - nothing bad can come from that, you know.

The Cycles Gladiator wine, known for the vine-ripened grapes in the California valleys that make up their vinyards, is known for something else at the other end of the country: their nude bottle labels. The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board recently decided that the label was too "offensive or immodest", thus making it illegal to sell in their grand state. The style of this label, and others from the same winery, is of the 19th century French Impressionism, which, as it shouldn't surprise anyone, Alabama has no place for in their culture.

More from this gallery >>

The Ukraine, unaware of the "internet" which can provide pornography on everything from computers to celphones, has banned all porn unless it is medicinal. Medicinal? So, if it's used like antibiotics or morphine, it's OK so long as a doctor scribbles a prescription on paper? So, dear Ukranians, get yourself to the doctor right away: prescriptions to cure blue balls, uncontrollable fantasies, and wet dreams are in order! Being a Ukranian pharmacist has never been so much fun - calculating and measuring the dosage is the awesomest part of the day. (via)

Photographs of topless women have been taken in front of an Edmonton police station - and the cops are OK with it. See, Canada, this is why you're so awesome: nobody there freaks out about breasts. Down here, even one breast in the mouth of a baby results in shock and outrage. So, here's to you, Canada - your love of breasts makes you the king of North America!

Sadly, residents and visitors of Mount Pleasant, SC, won't be able to have all the fun that they could in the new Charleston Harbor park. Banned activities? Nudity, treasure hunts, and bird feeding. Come on, there's nothing more I like than to spread peanut butter and millet on my dick and feed the birds in the park. Squirrels: fuck'em. Anyhow, the "no nude treasure hunts" seems to be a practical consideration: where will you carry the things you find if you don't have any pockets? The bannings are only suggestions at the moment: Birdy McNudegames is expected to vote them down when they reach the council for approval

Debating a negative is kinda hard to follow, but those smarties at NPR could do it: they gathered a panel of intelligensia to debate the topic, Is It Wrong To Pay For Sex? in a moderated and rule-bound debate, which is a far cry than most crappy discussions in the media. After the debate, the audience was polled, and they found that 45% agreed that it was wrong to pay for sex, 46% thought it wasn't wrong to pay for sex, with a few undecided. Which gender thought it was more OK to pay for sex? Men, of course, thinking with their dicks when it comes to matters of public policy, just like that sewer tax referendum last summer.

Will abolishing prostitution stop human trafficking? Of course not, says "Foreign Policy in Focus", who recognizes that, although obvious, traffickers are doing something illegal - trafficking - and the trafficking is what needs to be stopped through efforts to, you know, stop trafficking rather than using it as an excuse to stop prostitution. The best results can be had by supporting the legal sex workers, so that there's no market for such illegal tomfoolery, and making it easy to monitor who's doing what. FPIF does a good job of pointing out the stupid and contradictory "evidence" used by the abolitionists, who demonize pretty much everyone involved and make absurd accusations like how nearly all Amsterdam hookers are the victims of white slavery.

Craig's List, who had previously said they'd cut down on prostitution ads, still holds the title "single largest source of prostitution". In Chicago, at least, according to a Cook County sheriff, who has noticed, first-hand, that the place to go to find a hooker is Craigslist. Looks like "your mom" is falling further as the correct answer to the question: "where do I find a hooker?", but Craigslist is nowhere near as funny.

Prosecutors had tried to prevent the copying on grounds the videotape showing a girl "flashing" her breasts was illegal child pornography. Florida's child pornography law makes the depiction of "sexual conduct" illegal and defines that term to include physical contact. There was no physical contact in the video.

--3/9/2004 AP News wire, "Judge Rules 'Girls Gone Wild' Is Not Porn

I recently had this discussion, with a member of clergy no less -- what IS pornography, anyway? Minors exposing their nether-regions ain't porn, apparently, because there wasn't any physical contact. Who'da thunk? Men everywhere rejoice: "No, honey, it's not porn. The courts said so!"