“Every time you masturbate, Rove is watching”? “‘Bate and Bin Laden wins”? “Touching yourself = terrorism”? I’m trying to think of catchy slogans for the Bush administration’s campaign against porn. Recently they have asked a federal court to subpoena Google. Google refused to comply with the government’s request to randomly select searches. They claim they are trying to figure out if people are abiding by the Child Online Protection Act. So basically, they are looking for child porn.

Most of us will not, therefore, be affected by the investigations. Still, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I want the federal government to be monitoring what I view at all. Every time I go on bigtit — ahem — I mean strongwilledfeministtastefullymadeportraits.com, I don’t want the government to be looking over my shoulder.

I think if Karl Rove and George W. Bush can view what we are viewing, we should be able to view what they are viewing. That’s why if the administration succeeds in getting Google to turn over its results, the search engine should also make public the searches of various members of the Bush administration. It will keep things honest.

I think the public, for example, will find Rove’s fetish for exposing things interesting. As everyone knows, Bush loves the outdoors, but hates the environment. This contradiction is embodied in his fetish for female lumberjacks.

Condi has a fetish for rich white men in power. Duh.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is really into “fantasies.” He thinks it’s really hot when people in remote locations are strapped to a chair, pushed around, berated in several tongues and sometimes hit with a phone book.

Judging by his hesitance to give soldiers in Iraq body armor, it’s no surprise Donald Rumsfeld has a scantily-clad soldier fetish. This would also explain his insistence that a USO show theme be “GI Joe in Pantyhose.”

Dick Cheney doesn’t look at porn on the Internet. Ever. He simply disappears for days on end and goes to a dark unsecured location with a crumbled up picture of Condi and... never mind. That’s classified.

All kidding aside, if you think about it, this is a bit scary. The Patriot Act curtailed our civil liberties; the wire taps eavesdrop on our phones and now the government wants to look at our porn. Is nothing sacred? As John Locke once said, “The root of all rebellion, of all free thought, lies in the selection of one’s adult pictures.”

My bitter roommate also has a say in this. Hung-over again, he remarked: “Great. They’ve taken Nazi Germany a step further. While the Germans wanted only blond-haired blue-eyed people, Bush can arrest people who don’t think blond-haired blue-eyed people are attractive.” His girlfriend, by the way, is blonde, so I have no idea why he’s so worried.

I’m not sure the justification for the government’s subpoena of Google is valid. Upholding anti-child porn laws is perfectly justifiable, but investigating the random samplings of Google users? Not the best way to do it. And where does one draw the line? If they go after child porn today, what is to stop backwards states like Texas — which only recently decriminalized sodomy — from going after people who search for gay porn? At a certain point, you begin to police people’s thoughts rather than their actions. The ability to abuse this information, for the searches to become a control mechanism, is about as horrifying as seeing what Ann Coulter masturbates to.

The only thing really fascist, though, would be to completely censor the Internet. In communist China, you couldn’t read this column. Instead, Google would give you results on “The reasons Chris Holt is bad for the party” or “Chris Holt: Enemy of the people or harmless asshole from Jersey?” That is to say, with Google’s recent compliance with Chinese censorship laws, they are taking the proverbial flag of freedom and having it shoved up their ass.

But that’s not a bad thing. Think of all the things the Chinese won’t have to put up with. It’s like that AOL commercial: Spam? Blocked. Viruses? Thwarted. Porn? Deleted. Free speech? Hunted down and squelched by the secret police.

While fighting one “overreaching” regime, you lose any moral high ground by then aiding an even more intrusive regime.

Chris thinks Google’s compliance with the Chinese government is even sadder when we realize that MSN.com and Yahoo have already decided that money is more important than integrity or free speech. Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.