As a result of what has surely been one of the most frivolous pieces of legislation to pass Gov. Janet Napolitano's desk, UA employees can now be fired for surfing the Internet for pornography.

Lawmakers should pick their battles, and this non-issue should not be one of them.

It seems that Napolitano and the state Legislature have jumped on an opportunity to play the part of anti-pornography crusaders.

In politics, after all, who wants to be known as pro-porn?

Such legislation would be appropriate if porn viewing was a serious problem or if there was no preexisting rule in place to deter it, but neither is the case.

In fact, UA administrators from Pete Likins down have complained that this superfluous legislation will only create more paperwork and force researchers to ask permission to conduct research on such topics as breast cancer.

At best, the bill passed Friday is unnecessary, cumbersome legislation that will do little but annoy researchers and create more paperwork.

At worst, it is an example of state officials attempting to legislate morality reminiscent of recent attempts to keep campus dorms same-sex and to keep students from downloading anything not related to school.

Legislators say they don't want Arizonans' tax dollars going to pay for employees surfing the net for porn, but is it any better that they go toward paying the salaries of lawmakers who are wasting their time passing useless legislation?

No one is advocating tax-funded porn downloading, but because there is already a law that provides punishments for employing government computers for personal use, all this law seems to be is a morality merit badge for Arizona legislators.

Lawmakers should pick their battles, and this non-issue should not be one of them. This law does one thing: it illustrates that, instead of dealing with the pressing issues of the state (i.e. failing schools, unsafe borders and budget woes), our public servants have decided to eat up time with consensus-based, useless trash. Let us not forget that only weeks ago they voted to require all incoming government employees to sign an oath not to use weapons of mass destruction.

The UA and other state agencies should forget the porn law, just as our lawmakers almost certainly will, now that they have their new badge of honor.

Opinions are determined by the Wildcat opinions board and written by one of its members. They are Daniel Scarpinato, Jessica Lee, Jose Ceja, Jennifer Duffy, Brett Fera, Caitlin Hall, Jessica Suarez and Kendrick Wilson.