John Ashcroft may have departed from the Department of Justice, but under the direction of his successor, Alberto Gonzales, his morality crusade continues.

Under the guise of regulatory powers, the department is planning a punitive and ideologically motivated assault on the adult entertainment industry. A legal challenge last month delayed the onset, but Justice is hoping later this year to begin enforcing a host of regulations so onerous that they may represent the end of pornography as a viable business in America.

Regardless of one's feelings about adult entertainment, the situation is a disturbing illustration of a larger trend in the Bush administration: the use of regulatory powers to advance a conservative moral agenda.

Part of a revision to the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988, the new regulations were quietly published last year and target a seemingly mundane part of the porn business - record keeping. While huge corporations such as Time Warner make a hefty profit broadcasting adult entertainment, porn is largely produced by smaller entities, often operating without even an office.

Individuals and small companies producing adult entertainment will be devastated by new regulations requiring them to provide copies of government-issued IDs for performers retroactive to 1995. In addition, these small producers, perhaps operating out of a garage or second bedroom, will need to have a public office, open at least 20 hours a week, where their records are available for inspection.

The largest target for the new regulations is Internet porn. The Free Speech Coalition, which is legally challenging the regulations, estimates that 50 percent of Web sites carrying adult content will be shut down by the rules because they don't have sufficient records. The Internet has long been the bête noire in the American culture wars because it is so difficult to regulate. Now, the Bush administration has found a way to potentially eliminate half of the cyberspace it finds objectionable.

One can understand that the government wants to ensure that porn performers are of legal age. However, these regulations ensure no such thing. In fact, in several lawsuits involving underage performers, the minors had provided government-issued IDs to producers. As we are learning in terms of both national security and immigration, government IDs are easily obtained and easily falsified. And demanding proof of age for performers who are clearly 30 or 40 years old seems less about protecting children than about punishing an industry the government deems immoral.

By focusing on regulatory enforcement, the Department of Justice cannily avoids repressing adult entertainment on the basis of content, knowing that the First Amendment presents a challenge that probably cannot be overcome. But the effect - suppression of protected speech, whether or not it is deemed obscene - is achieved outside the normal checks and balances of American government.

The Bush administration has a track record of attempting to regulate morality behind a smoke screen of law enforcement, bureaucratic rules and scientific research. These efforts are often focused on unpopular issues, where the administration is fairly certain that public opinion will provide protection, regardless of the ethics involved. Few citizens in an increasingly conservative America will fight to protect the constitutional rights of pornographers.

AIDS is another example. For several years now, researchers applying for National Institutes of Health grants to study AIDS have been told to remove references to gay men, even though they continue to represent the majority of cases here in the United States. And, famously, the Bush administration has touted its compassion for those dying of AIDS in Africa, even while it denies funds to organizations that offer reproductive health services or stress condoms over abstinence.

All of these efforts represent the promotion of a conservative, often religious, viewpoint through use of executive powers, circumventing the proper constitutional process. The Bush administration is displaying the very abuse of power it rails against in "activist judges."

The suppression of the porn industry may not stir patriotic outrage in most Americans, but the manipulation of regulatory powers to support a moral agenda should.