[Heads up: This is a post about a federal obscenity trial. It describes some of what the government contends is obscenity. If that kind of thing makes you squeamish, probably best to steer clear. Otherwise, free free to forward it to all your pervert friends. Oh, also? There's a picture of the painted cowgirl down below.]

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times revealed that Alex Kozinski, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge presiding over the federal obscenity trial of scat and bestiality video producer and distributor Ira Isaacs (pictured at right), hosted a publicly accessible, personal website containing hardcore content, including "a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal." Other images featured a transsexual striptease, an auto-fellator, and defecation themes.

Of course, the hard-drives of many Americans boast similar fare—from girl-on-girl coprophagy (2 Girls 1 Cup) to goatse pics—but in this case Kozinski's role as obscenity trial judge could present a potential ethical conflict of interest. In response to the revelation, Kozinski has stated that he wasn't aware the content was publicly accessible, that he thought the images were "funny," and that his film editor son Yale did it: "Yale called and said he's pretty sure he uploaded a bunch of it," Kozinski told Abovethelaw.com. The judge's site can no longer be accessed by the public, and the trial has been suspended until Monday, when Kenneth Whitted, the prosecutor for the Department of Justice's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, is expected to request Kozinski recuse himself.

In a report from inside the courtroom, adult industry scribe Mark Kernes reports that on the first day of the trial yesterday, jurors were escorted into a 9th Circuit Court auditorium to watch one of the potentially obscene videos in question: Gang Bang Horse (Pony Sex Game). According to Kernes, the movie stars a "busty woman" who attempts to masturbate and fellate not one but two horses, after which she engages in only occasionally successful intercourse with one horse while "reclining on a bale of hay," an "action," Kernes concludes, that "resulted in what appeared to be several faked cumshots." After a short recess, the jury was engrossed by Mako's First Time Scat 2—that is, until they were interrupted by Kozinski, at which point, Whitted requested the trial be suspended so he could further research the judge's potential conflict of interest vis-à-vis his chock-full-o'-porno website, which, asserted Whitted, "reportedly [had] the same or similar material as here.'"

Is Kozinski a pervert? Maybe. Does it matter? Not really. Last year, Zoo, a documentary about a Washington State man who died from a perforated colon after he had sex with a horse, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, enjoyed a limited release, and was deemed "striking" by Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. The movie's most explicit scene contains real video of a horse mounting a man for sex; (the accompanying audio is mostly just pained grunts). It would seem bestiality has gone mainstream.

Meanwhile, in the courtroom, Isaacs and his attorney, Roger Diamond, are employing the 2 Girls, 1 Cup Defense, arguing that what the US government has deemed obscene is, in fact, art. In an interview that I conducted with Isaacs just prior to the start of the trial, he compared himself to Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, and James Joyce. Isaacs believes he's an artist—one whose milieu just so happens to be scat. Without a doubt, whether or not Laurie's Toilet Show is art is highly debatable, but Isaacs has found himself center stage in what appears to be the great shit debate of the 21st century. From CNN to the New York Times to the Times of London, the only-in-America tale of the pervert judge presiding over the obscenity trial taking place in the home of the movie making business has captivated the world. Why?

Because we can't get enough of what we haven't yet seen. And the fact of the matter is that if Kozinski is a pervert, we're all perverts for watching.