State Senator Caught Looking At Porn On Senate Floor

Everyone knows how boring a debate on a controversial abortion bill can get on the Senate floor. So it's no wonder that Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett took the time to look at a little porn and a video of a dog running out of the water and shaking itself off. From the article: "Ironically, as Bennett is viewing the material, you can hear a Senator Dan Gelber's voice in the background debating a controversial abortion bill. 'I'm against this bill,' said Gelber, 'because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.' Bennett defended his actions, telling Sunshine State News it was an email sent to him by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator.'"

Comments

A setup

[Rurik]

Purely a setup. Notice how the presence of a black bar insinuates that it's covering something offensive? If you look at the picture, there's all fully clothed, the straps to their tops are visible, including the top themselves under and above the bar.

He's wrong for viewing pictures of girls in bikinis while on government time... but there is no porn here.

Re:A setup

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, here is the original image (for all intents and purposes)
http://img157.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=00376_0460_ff2009-darksand1-3001_123_939lo.jpg

Very poorly made bikinis.

Re:A setup

[ChikMag777]

NSFW

Re:A setup

[Pigeon451]

Actually it's not the EXACT image, since the poses are SLIGHTLY off (look at the head tilts). But it is obviously from the same sequence of images. /pedantic mode

Re:Hardly qualifies as porn

[compro01]

Depends on your definition of "most places". It's illegal for a woman to expose her breasts in public (excluding for breastfeeding, which is protected in 47 states) in most of the USA. Exceptions are California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Ohio, and Texas.

Re:Not Porn

[The Angry Mick]

It doesn't look like porn to me. It looks like art. I know it's hard to believe, but pictures with nudity are not necessary pornographic!

I agree, but tell that to John Ashcroft, Jesse Helms, most of the GOP, and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who now wants to modify the State Seal, because the Roman goddess Virtus has a bare breast.

Re:I don't see what the big deal is

[lorg]

Nude? Where? Looks to me like they are all wearing some kinda bikini. Some of them might be or are possibly topless but atleast one of them isn't. Is this what is concidered to be porn in Florida these days?

Republican

[Doc Ruby]

Bennett is a Republican. His Republican Party would send us all to jail for watching porn at our own jobs. Indeed, Florida Republicans would have us all locked in stocks and publicly flogged by some priest for it, if they got the theocracy they're working on.

Re:Republican

[medcalf]

Bush certainly held the (absolute dollar, not inflation adjusted) record for overspending. Until Obama's first year, where he outspent Bush's 8 years in just his first. The rest of your comment is even less useful, so I'll just leave it at that.

Re:Republican

[Doc Ruby]

Except the facts show that Republicans, by a significant majority, want the country ruled by religious laws. Here's just a sample of their positions on issues ruled by what they think their bible says, rather than the Constitution:

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military?
Yes 26
No 55
Not Sure 19

Should same sex couples be allowed to marry?
Yes 7
No 77
Not Sure 16

Should gay couples receive any state or federal benefits?
Yes 11
No 68
Not Sure 21

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?
Yes 8
No 73
Not Sure 19

Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?
Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8

Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13

Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?
Yes 34
No 48
Not Sure 18

Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?
Christ 67
Other 15
Not Sure 18

But I wasn't even talking about Republican Party members, but Republican officials. If you read the many supporting pages to which I linked about "American Taliban", you'll see that those officials are theocrats.

False equivalence. There is nothing actually "Communist" about Democrats, nothing anywhere near as severe as the truth about the Republican Party and its actions. "They're both as bad" is a lazy judgment, when the facts show the difference between "bad" and "intolerable".

Re:Republican

[Idiomatick]

That time period you mention also happens to be Bill Clinton. With Bush on either side creating all time record deficits. Reagan before that terrible as well (obviously...). Jimmy carter didn't make anything better or worse. Ford sucked. Nixon didn't fuck anything up. Lyndon Johnson broke a bit above even.

Dems: 1 great, 1 good, 1 even
GOP: 1 terrible, 3 bad, 1 even.

http://www.thefreespeechzone.net/images/charts/bush_deficit_graphic.gif

Re:Republican

[swillden]

My country of birth has several political parties and I still don't understand how a country as big as the US can only have two.

Duverger's Law.

Re:Republican

[ArcherB]

That time period you mention also happens to be Bill Clinton. With Bush on either side creating all time record deficits. Reagan before that terrible as well (obviously...). Jimmy carter didn't make anything better or worse. Ford sucked. Nixon didn't fuck anything up. Lyndon Johnson broke a bit above even.

Dems: 1 great, 1 good, 1 even

GOP: 1 terrible, 3 bad, 1 even.

http://www.thefreespeechzone.net/images/charts/bush_deficit_graphic.gif

First, in defense of Reagan, you obviously don't remember the absolute mess the country was in when he took office. Maybe you weren't born yet. I remember mortgage rates well over 18%. I remember unemployment and inflation at double digits. I even remember something called the "Misery Index". Reagan's spending brought this country back from brink of becoming another Greece.

Now, on to the rest of it.
Congress controls the purse strings. Why not look at the deficit cross referenced by the party in control of Congress?

Also, I noticed that you conveniently left out the current administration that has the tripled the deficit spending of GWBush. It's incredibly staggering when you consider that it took Bush eight years to do 1/3 of what Obama did one.

Consider the following:

First off, know these crucial facts: The deficit under Ronald Reagan increased 35 percent, from an inherited deficit (from President Jimmy Carter) of $104 billion in 1980 to a final deficit of $141 billion in 1989 ...
President Obama inherited a record Bush deficit of $400 billion, but is generating a far worse $1.8-trillion deficit in his first year. (Source: Congressional Budget Office, March 20, 2009.)

So, if you think Reagan was "terrible", then you must think Obama is Satan himself. I'm really surprised you didn't mention it. Unless, you don't want to make your side look bad by presenting all the facts. So much better to only cherry pick the stats that back up your side.

Re:Republican

[ArcherB]

Republicans have spent much more of your money, and committed you to spend way more (in debt payments, in unfunded mandates, in catastrophic misadventures like wars and deregulation) than Democrats ever have.

Um, as a "Doc", you can read right? Go read The Constitution and report back to me with which branch of the government controls spending.

In the mean time, here is a graph showing the party in control of congress vs the deficit. It came from the article here (so you can check the references and data).

Re:Republican

[jwhitener]

Can you link to some numbers? That Obama's first year cost more than Bush's 8 years and two wars doesn't sound right.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/StockInvestingTrading/cost-of-the-bush-era-11-point-5-trillion.aspx

Under Bush, total spending appears to have been near 11.5 Trillion.

Some people, like the conservative heritage foundation, say Obama's total spending will be somewhere near 10.3 trillion, Over a Decade though. Not in one year.....
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54400

Were you perhaps thinking of total deficit rather than spending? That is true, the deficit right now under Obama is larger than it was under Bush. But that is because he inherited so much, and is betting that 'fixing' health care will lower the deficit over time.

Re:Republican

[ArcherB]

Nice job dodging the issue.

I haven't read the source link, but I'd assume that the question was probably asked in the context that McCain is likely to die before his term would be up. In that case, it's a very important question.

And even if that wasn't the context -- the belief that Palin is more qualified, when she can't answer hard-hitting gotcha questions like, "what newspapers do you like to read?" is hilarious. And there are people who really do believe this.

--Jeremy

And Biden telling a man in a wheel chair to stand up and take a bow was very telling as well. Not just because that Biden is a fucking idiot, but what kind of idiot picks him to make his campaign look better? And Obama was known for stepping on his dick every time he tried to speak without a teleprompter.

The point is that every politician stumbles on what should be an easy issue. On paper, both candidates, Palin and Obama have roughly the same number of years experience. The differences are that Palin's experience was executive at a local and state level while Obama's was legislative at the state and federal level. Which carries more weight, executive experience for an executive job or federal experience for a federal job?

I think of this way. You are hiring for an IT job. Who would you hire, a person from another company with IT experience or someone who already works for your company with no IT experience? Of course, that's my opinion. I'm sure yours differs. Either way, all experience weighted equally, Palin and Obama have roughly the same amount of experience. That's fact. Numbers don't lie. The difference, as I stated before, Obama was running for President. Palin was running for Vice President. I would say that Palin was more experience for her job than Obama was for his.

Re:Hardly qualifies as porn

[kramerd]

Depends on your definition of "most places". It's illegal for a woman to expose her breasts in public (excluding for breastfeeding, which is protected in 47 states) in most of the USA. Exceptions are California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Ohio, and Texas.

You must have studied math at the Barack H. Obama School for the Mathemagically Challenged (BHOSMC). I counted 54 states in your total (47 plus 7 exceptions).

Did we suddenly annex 4 new states I don't know about?

Nope, you are just illiterate.

California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Ohio, and Texas are the states in which it is not illegal for a woman to expose her breasts in public.

47 states protect the right to breastfeed.

Thanks for playing.

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

You allow your users to send and receive *.zip files?

Oh, don't get me started on annoying ultra-paranoid email administrators and their obsession with blocking every goddamn file type known to man.

Seriously, I'm so sick of it. I don't know how many times I've seen this email exchange between developers and clients:

Email #1: Can you send me your configuration file so I can try to determine what's wrong?

Email #2: Can you send me the file again, but this time change the file extension because apparently the mail server blocks XML files.

Email #3: Okay, one more time, but this time zip the file. Apparently changing the file extension doesn't work, because the mail server sees the contents as XML and blanks it all out.

Email #4: That didn't work either. You're going to have to send it one more time, but this time zip it and change the file extension of the zip file.

Email #5: Praise $deity, it finally worked.

Grrrr.

Incorrect etymology

[sbjornda]

from "pornos" meaning, you guessed it, "evil"

Wrong. It comes from porne meaning "prostitute". The etymology of "pornography" means "writing about prostitutes". You're probably thinking of the Greek word poneros. Writing about evil would perhaps be "ponerography" but definitely not "pornography".

--
.nosig

Re:Hardly qualifies as porn

[radtea]

from "pornos" meaning, you guessed it, "evil".

Nope. Pornoi were low-class prostitutes in ancient Greece. "Pornography" means "whore's writing", more-or-less.

Re:Hardly qualifies as porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Pornography does not mean evil writing. The root is porne/pornea, meaning prostitution. So pornography is writing or depiction of prostitution.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pornography

Re:Hardly qualifies as porn

[Anonymous Coward]

He's confused because you can't speak clearly.

Under obscentity laws, yes, porn MAY BE illegal. Not is, MAY BE.

What you said was that pornography is illegal because of obscenity laws. That is incorrect. Pornography MAY be illegal under obscenity laws IF that pornography falls under the category of "obscenity" which is spelled out relatively clearly considering how unclear it can be what is porn and what is art.

Pornography isn't by definition sexually explicit, but much pornography IS sexually explicit AND ALSO entirely legal. Softcore porn isn't sexually explicit. Softcore porn could potentially fall under the "obscenity" heading, but I don't know that for certain and it'd really take a lot. By "a lot" I mean "are animals or human waste involved".

In summation, porn is legal, sexually explicit things are legal, it's just obscene things that aren't legal.