Here we go again.

Another round in the culture wars, with politicians playing the media blame game and attempting to score points with voters as they attack video games that they don't play and don't understand.

		Clay Calvert and Robert D. Richards are professors of communications and law at Pennsylvania State University and co-directors of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment.

And the rhetoric is heating up as if on cue with the July weather.

This month saw Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., proclaim in a press release that video games depicting violent content are "stealing the innocence of our children."

Sen. Clinton is proposing federal legislation that would ban the sale to minors of games with violent and sexual imagery. She is particularly concerned with "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," which has become of the whipping boy of politicians everywhere.

California Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Leland Yee, a Democrat from the San Francisco area, issued a press release July 14 in which he asserted that "in addition to teaching our children how to stalk, maim and kill other human beings, Grand Theft Auto inundates developing minds with demeaning images of women."

One would think, based on that combined Clinton and Yee rhetoric, that surely Osama bin Laden was creating these games and that the Department of Homeland Security will be getting into the act shortly to conduct secret surveillance of the video game industry.

Clinton certainly is right about one thing -- there is no doubt that "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" is a particularly offensive game that concerned parents should prevent their children from playing. The revelation this week that it includes what gamers call a "mod" -- lingo for modification -- that allows savvy users to convert it into an interactive sexually explicit game merits the senator's wrath.

The industry was correct to respond by quickly relabeling the game from "M" for Mature to "AO" for Adults Only. But that voluntary action by the Entertainment Software Ratings Boards and the related reaction of many chain stores in pulling the games from their shelves is not likely to stem the tide of attacks.

Clinton and Yee are now teaming up in their cross-country crusade. "I look forward to working with Sen. Clinton as we try to pass meaningful legislation to protect our children," Yee said in press release.

The legislation, however, won't be very "meaningful" in stopping real-life crime or violence. Gang members don't commit drive-by shootings because they played a video game, and school kids don't shoot others because they played a video game. Their problems are far more complex and greater than that, and the politicians know that too.

Hundreds of thousands of kids play video games every day, the vast majority of which do not portray violence, and those kids will never assault, attack or otherwise harm anyone.

But somewhere, sometime there will be another school shooting and it will turn out that the shooter once played a video game that showed violent content, and the politicians will pounce on the industry with even more furor than they are this month.

What this feel-good legislation will do, however, is provide people with a false sense of security.

It will also violate the First Amendment protection of free speech, if the past precedents hold true to form. In fact, every federal court that has considered video game restrictions has found them unconstitutional.

To support their bills, lawmakers rely on flawed research that purports to show a correlation between playing violent games and behaving violently in society. Undoubtedly, correlations between drinking lemonade, eating cookies, and using soap could be shown as well because people who commit violent acts do those things, too.

But when states try to restrict the First Amendment rights of creators, manufacturers and users of video games, they need to rely on substantial evidence that video games cause harm -- something that, to date, has eluded the field of social science. As Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in striking down an Indianapolis video game ordinance, "The grounds must be compelling and not merely plausible."

The fact that these measures cannot stand up to a constitutional challenge doesn't seem to matter to the politicians who champion them. They're perfectly content to waste taxpayer dollars passing laws that courts will strike, if the momentary headlines will play well with constituents.

Any day now, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, is expected to sign into law a bill that is designed to keep "violent" video games away from minors. It won't. But it will cause headaches for the state's retailers who are charged with enforcing it.

The law is nearly identical to the other video game laws that have failed on First Amendment grounds. Both Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois legislature criticized the measure when the governor proposed it, calling it vague and "patently unconstitutional." Of course, fearing political fallout, they voted for it anyway.

After all, it makes for a good press release.