Staunton, Virginia [The Roanoke Times]- It’s bad enough that a local prosecutor in Staunton is pursuing obscenity charges against an adult video store. Now the U.S. Justice Department has joined in.

The war on terrorism apparently hasn’t given it enough to do.

The (Staunton) Daily News-Leader reported this week that, at the suggestion of the Justice Department, a city grand jury indicted an employee of After Hours Video on 10 counts of obscenity, six of them felonies. In November, a grand jury indicted the store’s owner, Rick Krial, and his company on 16 felony and eight misdemeanor counts.

Staunton Commonwealth’s Attorney Raymond Robertson told the newspaper that Justice officials got in touch with him a couple of months ago and offered the department’s help. An attorney specializing in obscenity prosecutions will serve as co-counsel when the cases are heard in Staunton Circuit Court.

Given the difficulty of prosecuting obscenity charges without running afoul of individuals’ First Amendment rights, the commonwealth will need all the help it can get. But with pornography as easily accessible in Staunton as anywhere in the world, thanks to the Internet, we wonder what prosecutors are trying to protect the public from.

If they fear an appearance of sleaziness, other tools such as zoning laws and public nuisance ordinances seem better avenues than attempts to define parochial limits on free expression in an era when, as Americans are so often reminded, we all live in a global village.

Is there not enough crime in Staunton to keep prosecutors from taking on the First Amendment?