A Conservative Look at Pornography. On 9 July 1986 the report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography was released. For those who had followed the proceedings of the commission, the report held no surprises: the two-volume, 1,960-page document advocated stricter enforcement of existing obscenity laws and the expansion of definitions of obscenity to make more types of pornography illegal. While conservatives praised the commission's report as a step toward restoring what they perceived as the lost moral tenor of American life, publishers denounced it as an effort to undermine the First Amendment, and social scientists found fault with its use of research. Some stores pulled magazines censured by the commission from their shelves, and local communities increased efforts to crack down on sellers of pornography — even if sales clerks, rather than the owners of the stores, were the ones who were arrested. Procedures. U.S...