WASHINGTON – Typically, when Congress cooks up a new bill designed to curb access to or otherwise regulate online pornography, you can count on the bill to be at least two things: verbose and unconstitutional.

H.R. 5628, also known as “The Eliminating Pornography From Agencies Act,” bucks at least part of the Congressional tradition in that the entire text of the bill isn’t much longer than its title.

Sponsored by North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows (no relation to Julie, presumably), H.R. 5628 is in part a response to last summer’s revelation an Environmental Protection Agency employee had been watching porn on the job for two to six hours per day.

Subsequent investigations by the Washington Times and other media outlets further revealed the not-so-shocking news such porn surfing was not unique to the EPA, uncovering employees of other agencies and departments had been caught surfing porn at work, including at the Federal Communications Commission and the Commerce Department.

“It’s appalling that it requires an act of Congress to ensure that federal agencies block access to these sites,” Meadows said. “While there are rules in place at most agencies to ban this kind of unprofessional and potentially hostile workplace behavior, it continues to take place.”

To be sure, even with respect to an employee of the EPA, one would hope this person had something more important to do while on the clock than download porn videos. What’s not clear is whether it truly “requires an act of Congress” to address the issue of porn consumption in the federal workplace, because at just about any workplace, spending 25-75 percent of your time doing something other than the job for which you’re being paid generally is grounds to fire your worthless, lazy ass.

Despite what you might have read about it requiring either a bulldozer or shotgun to remove the average tenured bureaucrat from his cozy sinecure, the prospect of a person suing for wrongful termination when he or she has been shit-canned for watching porn all day instead of doing their job strikes me as a remote possibility, regardless the strength of his or her claim.

Entertaining though the image may be, I have a hard time picturing an EPA employee showing up in court to defend his constant porn downloading.

“Truthfully, Your Honor, I spent six hours a day on Pornhub only because I believed parent company MindGeek to be engaged in illicit toxic waste disposal … and I was certain the evidence would be found by a thorough, careful, video-driven investigation of the contents of Lisa Ann’s rectum.”

At any rate, no one can criticize Meadows for legislative verbosity. Whatever else his new bill may be (like purely symbolic, doomed to die in committee, or utterly worthless feel-goodism), it’s undeniably brief.

Meadows’ bill is so short in fact, here it is in its entirety:

[QUOTE]A BILL To prohibit accessing pornographic web sites from Federal computers, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled.

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Eliminating Pornography from Agencies Act”.

SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON ACCESSING PORNOGRAPHIC WEBSITES FROM FEDERAL COMPUTERS.

(a) PROHIBITION. — Except as provided in subsection (b), not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall issue guidelines that prohibit the access of a pornographic or other explicit web site from a Federal computer.

(b) EXCEPTION. — The prohibition described in subsection (a) shall not apply to any Federal computer that is used for an investigative purpose that requires accessing a pornographic web site.[/QUOTE]

That’s it! No fuss, no muss, and no real legalese, statutory definitions or alterations to existing law, for that matter (not yet, at least).

Impressively, H.R. 5628 manages to be both extremely concise and incredibly vague. It’s not so much a “bill” as it is a memo, almost like a note of the sort one hands off to an intern or some other bureaucratic gopher. Stripped of its Congressional formatting and procedural flare, the Act can be translated thusly:

[QUOTE]Hey, Director of the Office of Management and Budget: You need to write up some set of rules prohibiting all those allegedly sentient flesh-lumps who work for us across the entire alphabet soup of federal governmental agencies from watching porn all day.

I don’t really give a prolapsed rat’s anus how you do this. Just get it done. Be sure to let me know when you’re finished, so I can call a press conference to take credit and get a boost in the polls from all 46 of my constituents who actually give a flying fuck about government bureaucrats spending their time watching porn. You’ve got three months to get this done, pal.

Oh and I almost forgot — make sure whatever structure you come up with accounts for the need of federal cops, investigators and regulators to do their jobs, obviously.[/QUOTE]

My guess is Meadows’ bill will never be debated or seriously considered, much less voted on, by Congress. This is a shame, because according to Meadows the Act could be a real game-changer for the federal workplace.

“This commonsense legislation ensures that federal workers have a comfortable, safe work environment and protects taxpayer resources from being misused,” Meadows asserted.

Wow! H.R. 5628 does all of that? Everyone can rest easier now, knowing the nation’s federal employees are going to be safe at work and they will never again waste taxpayer resources. I must say this accomplishment on Meadows’ part is the very definition of awesome. Honestly, I just never would have expected a 17-line act to be able to accomplish so much, using so little.

I must have missed the part of the bill that prevents recently-terminated federal employees from returning to the workplace with a grudge in one hand and a firearm in the other. I also must have skipped right over the portion which prohibits employees of federal agencies from spending all day on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any of the countless other time-wasting options available to them via the internet.

Luckily for the U.S. and all its cherished taxpayers Mark Meadows is on the case, not some unimaginative prick like me.