Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback will introduce amendments to "empower [the Federal Communications Commission] against indecent and violent television"—at least that's what he promised on Tuesday.

"Broadcasters should not be allowed to use the public airways to disseminate violent or obscene material," Brownback said in a press release. "The abundance of indecent material on television is one indication of the coarsening of our culture."

But it does not appear that the presidential candidate has offered the bills yet. Brownback is a busy man these days, campaigning in Iowa this weekend with Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schiavo, on a "Pro-Life, Whole-Life Tour."

Still the indecency amendment announcement received praise from decency groups irate over a recent appeals court decision that struck down the FCC's attempts to punish broadcasters for airing so-called "fleeting expletives"—dirty words said on the fly.

"If Senators are sincere about support for what Brownback's amendment would accomplish, why would they oppose it?" asked Parents Television Council President Tim Winter in a statement of praise for Brownback, a PTC Advisory Board member. "The Senate - and the public - are not in a position to wait around for the other committees to act. The recent 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that allows the f-word and s-word to be aired at any time of the day combined with the upcoming September hearing on the Janet Jackson case dramatically underscore the importance and urgency of this issue."

It isn't clear how exactly Brownback's proposed amendment will get around the Second Circuit Court of Appeals June 4th ruling, which threw out fines for Fox Television's broadcasts of Cher and Nicole Richie saying "fuck 'em" and "cow shit" at the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals noted that, in light of televised or public declarations by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the FCC's recent indecency decisions appear arbitrary and capricious.

The Second cited Bush's inadvertently televised remark to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to "get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit" and Cheney's "widely-reported 'Fuck yourself' comment to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate," in the court's words.

Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia has been threatening to crack down on TV violence too. He's promising to reintroduce legislation "aimed at giving the Federal Communication Commission the authority to regulate violent programming on broadcast, cable and satellite."

"For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we have a moral obligation to tackle television violence and arm our parents with the tools to make their children safer," Rockefeller declared in a press release, "Doing nothing is not an option."

But it isn't clear what doing something will accomplish either, given a recent FCC report on television violence that conceded that any attempt to regulate the problem will face serious constitutional hurdles, and that the links between TV violence and aggressive behavior are murky, in the view of some social scientists.

Rockefeller's bill won't get to the Senate until after the July recess, he says.