Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I think it is safe to say we earned our Fark tag the hard way.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
You liberal nerds are just jealous you don't have female coworkers sending you naughty pictures.
now available in SEC and Senator flavors.
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
...anyone else surprised that porn isn't blocked as per the IT policy for the Senate? Or am I expecting too much?
Living With a Nerd
Risque or naughty, maybe. Still, the guy should have been paying more attention to his job.
This ain't rocket surgery.
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.
I think the fact that it was "pornographic" is missing the point. This guy is not paying attention, yet will be voting on bills that will affect our entire country.
Looks innocent enough to me. If I were an American (or even a human being), I would be inclined to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, whatever else I might think of him. He's obviously not spending time trawling through hardcore sites - his friend just needs a NSFW tag.
The saddest part is that the repercussions of these actions wouldn't be the same if he was browsing any other, not job related, content.
This guy did something similar while they were debating the law that made it illegal for monkeys to piss in their own mouths.
...this is clearly a janitorial problem.
Live, in your Senate . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Its that he was doing personal activities while 'on the job'. He wants to watch porn, fine, but do it while on his own time.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What I find most interesting is that Florida State Senator Mike Bennett represents District 21. That district, encompassing zip code 342xx, still has laws that ban pornography.
More Twoson than Cupertino
...as a future SEC employee!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
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.
I disagree. If you zero reference the women from left to right, women one and three have no visible straps that would hold the top part of their bikinis up. While it's still possible they had something around their chests, I don't know what would be holding up so little material. I do agree that he was just opening up an NSFW e-mail sent him to him and it didn't look like he was "viewing" it as it seemed to be closed as soon as his brain registered what he was looking at. Three seconds and then closing the window is not really "looking at porn" in my book. Accident at best. Even Slashdot has embarrassed me at work.
My work here is dung.
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!
. . . but it looks like he might be telling the truth. The video doesn't let us see how long it was up or how he opened the picture, but when he closes the browser, you can clearly see Firefox's download window open. It certainly looks like he had opened the photo as an email attachment.
Plus, he's using Firefox. Are you guys really going to pick on him after realizing that?
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Bingo. It seems to me like the bigger "crime" is that he's not paying attention to doing his job. He'll then have to vote on that issue, and I'm hard pressed to imagine how watching bikini babes or dog videos is going to help him make an informed choice.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"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.'"
She sent it in response to his "tits or GTFO" text message.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
This was a *Florida* Senate session, not the USA.
About the most important thing they could discuss right now is that fucking sea-floor oil geyser.
They're pitching an abortion bill around - have been for twenty years. Bo-ring.. Bring on the state of emergency and the hardcore discussions about what resources to deploy to LA.
Also, I don't know about you, but I happen to find appropriately aged girls in bikinis extremely inspiring and rejuvenating, especially when they arrive unexpectedly during an 82-degree senate session.
Do you call that porn?
Come on, folks. We've got bukakke, DP, water sports and more. That photo isn't more than R-rated.
Have gnu, will travel.
you see, it's ok to kill babies that can survive on their own for days and have a will to live, but not to watch porn.
I am sorry, I know I am from Europe, where being topless is just the norm sometimes even in a park, but calling a picture of 5 topless women PORN is a little bit of an overreaction.
I am not saying, that everyone viewing your private crap behind you in congress, and watching this kind of crap on any meeting is right, but it is not PORN.
Besides, he is at work. How many of us looked at this article/video at work? Well, then I guess we cannot throw the 1st stone at him.
There was nothing on that screen that you would not see on any beach outside of the U.S. aside from the black censorship bar covering their tits.
And besides, the more time politicians spend looking at porn the less time they have to fuck up the country.
Hope is the currency of fools
Stop harping on the "taxpayer" thing. If he's your state Senator, and you think he is less effective because of it, work to vote someone else in. That's it. Spoiler alert: The replacement won't spend every waking minute advancing the interests of his district.
Every white collar organization has some level of waste. Guess what? They hire *people*. People aren't perfect. When you purchase a product, part of the cost of the product was the cost of smoke breaks. Or the cost of their marketing department surfing for porn (or Slashdot for that matter). Expecting every single individual in a government job to be 100% efficient at all times is expecting the impossible, because unlike Santa, we don't have the ability to enslave ceaselessly industrious elves to do all our work for us. Unusual levels of waste should be called out, but checking e-mail (and clicking a link sent to you) while a bill is endlessly rehashed on the floor isn't the same as ordering gold toilets for your office bathroom.
And FYI, I posted a nearly identical defense of the SEC. The staffer who was surfing for porn 8 hours a day should be fired, but for the other guys who did it once or twice a week for a few weeks should be warned and otherwise ignored (assuming no aggravating circumstances). Surfing for porn in a private office is no worse than occasionally browsing Slashdot. This isn't political for me, this is realism. Rejecting every person who occasionally takes a wasteful work break from government employment would mean a government with no employees.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
It looks like he opened up the mail and then closed it right away. That stuff happens, even at work. People have sent me NSFW things before without warning that I've opened up and -quickly- closed.
Also, since when is a row of girls wearing swimsuits (maybe a few are topless) 'porn'?
Give the dude a break.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I wonder how many legislators flip through their Bibles on the taxpayer's time. Worse yet, visiting religious websites with their taxpayer-funded laptops on taxpayer-funded broadband.
There's an amendment about the separation of church and state. There's nothing about leaving your testicles at the door of the capitol. So, what makes these photos inappropriate?
Have gnu, will travel.
> 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.'"
Great, so now we're going to have revelations about an affair? Why is the former ct admin sending him porn?
I think this speaks more to how meaningless these "debates" are, when speakers argue primarily on party lines.
To be fair though, I doodle and surf the web all the time during lecture. I'm just not stupid enough to surf porn in a room full of other people.
Problem is, it's wrong. Democrats weren't a minority party in the 90s until 95 (104th congress). Additionally, that Senate (since that's really where the bloc voting creates dysfunction and prevents governance) had a party line voting percentage of 80% for Dem, 88% for Rep. citation, And let's not forget what we took up most of that congress with: impeachment.
In conclusion, fuck you.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Can we mod the article TROLL. So far I see no pr0n. In fact most of us can usually name the performers given a face...
Slashdot: Politicizing Geeks, Hack Jobs that don't Matter...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Hehe. For those that are trying to make the case for filtering, who are you kidding. The Senate filtering their own activity? That's like asking your company president to abide by the same rules as the common worker, not going to happen. Tee time is at 2. As for the material, presumably opened without prior knowledge of the content, this story is nothing more than gotcha politico crap. Who hasn't opened something questionable on the internet before? Now be honest...
Every white collar organization has some level of waste. Guess what? They hire *people*. People aren't perfect. When you purchase a product, part of the cost of the product was the cost of smoke breaks. Or the cost of their marketing department surfing for porn (or Slashdot for that matter).
Well, sure, there is built in waste and inefficiency. But this wasn't taking a break from crafting legislation in his office, or seeing prostitutes in his spare time, or anything like that. This was taking a break during the most important part of his job, where the rubber meets the legislative road, where inattentiveness and just-phone-it-in mentality actually affects people's lives. This was an abortion bill, after all, not some honorary naming of a road. If you don't want to give your best effort when people trusted in you to do the right thing in their name, then go get a job doing something less important.
Poor judgment and poor leadership, in my opinion. I hope he does get replaced and that the replacement at least pays attention when it counts.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The video is edited, as it seems to be showing the same thing twice. Perhaps to make it appear longer? Considering he doesn't have a mouse, he seems to click the image and the movie away fairly quickly.
The image is harmless, well to a European anyway, although age might be a factor, the women are to blurry to judge but how old are they? It is clearly an amateur shot, so some under-aged going on?
What remains is knowing how this votes. Is he a Republican: do as we say, don't do as we do. Who vote against gay marriage yet cheat on their wives while they are dying of cancer? Or is he a Democrat: You are the president of the most powerful country in the world and you fuck THAT?!?
Calling this "watching porn in the senate" requires an extraordinary puritan mind. Or an American one. Same thing really. In Holland two politicians posed nude in the playboy on the seats of our senate. So what. Afraid a little skin will start earth quakes or something? No human being could be that silly.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The issue should not be if he is watching porn. He can watch whatever he wants to. What about the person n (second 12-13) that is texting? What about the two guys in front of him chatting? What about all the others who are not even there?
That should be the important discussion.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Some people would rather their Senators sit around and wank rather than pass ever more encumbering, convoluted, and generally pork-filled laws.
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.
--
make install -not war
It's an inappropriate picture, being looked at on a taxpayer's purchased computer, through taxpayer provided Internet connectivity, by a taxpayer funded lawmaker, and the floor of the State Senate. Call me a prude, but I don't appreciate this asshole using my tax dollars to ogle naked chicks at my office
Even if we accept that he wasn't actually doing his "job" (aka waiting while his peers pointlessly got up on a soapbox lecturing them all when everyone knew how everyone was going to vote the week before, and then voting how he said he was going to vote) then that wasted, what, $5 taxpayer money total?
If this guy hasn't wasted more than $5 taxpayer money an hour in his time in office, then he's probably still doing better than the average politician. That he wasn't using his time to draft up a subsidy to the sugar industry or some other pork project along those lines to me means he's probably doing a better job than most of his peers.
1. In this case, it looks like the guy opened a link from an e-mail and then closed it when he saw what it contained. No story here, move along. Yeah, meetings are boring and we all know that.
2. People tend to vote and speak out for morality that they think is good, not what they actually practice in real life. If the story were instead about a guy who was speaking out against pornography but had a terabyte of porn on his machine, we'd have some evidence supporting that people don't vote for what they actually think is right, but what they want others to think they think is right. If people were more honest with their likes and dislikes the world would be easier to navigate, but that's not the current reality.
RECALL HIM!
it was an email sent to him by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator.'"
Just breasts.
Bloody puritans.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I don't have any double standards. I don't have a problem with the SEC, or the RNC using funds at a bondage club, or this.
I'm a home-owning, full-time employed registered voter and taxpayer, and I have no problem if a government employee uses my funds to look at some sexually-charged pictures now and then. Our whole society needs to lighten the hell up.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
That somehow makes it okay? He should be working, not goofing off with email.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
If you really think that looking at a picture for seconds, not even a minute, derails then entire legislative process or shatters the ability of somebody to do useful work for the rest of the day, I have little hope for your rational perception of the world or the human actors in it.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
You can see things far more risque on certain public beaches. Anyone who seriously considers women in bikinis to be porn ought to move to Saudi Arabia, where they'll finally be happy.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
By the way, how few women could the abortion bill "disrespect" to get Gelber's support? I wasn't aware that right vs. wrong was a numbers issue. (Disclaimer: I'm an abortion rights supporter.)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Hi,
It goes against any emotional bone in my body, but i have to vigorously defend a politician.
By borrowing the headline unchallenged, /. is participating in a witch hunt. Even on this site i suspect several readers not to look at the material and to remember just the headlines. I hereby petition Slashdot to change the headline to "State Senator falsely accused of Looking At Porn On Senate Floor".
CU, Martin
Politicians think in sex all the time. this is why they screw us so often...
--- Illogical Spock
Point #1: There is no porn here. The women depicted, even with a blackout bar, are obviously wearing bikini tops. The blackout bar is an obvious attempt at misleading.
Point #2: The senator obviously opened something which he immediately closed. This has happened to everyone who has ever used a computer. You are sent something, you open it, and it turns out to be something not-safe-for-work.
Point #3: For those saying he should be doing his job, you are all guilty. Everyone, admittedly or not, has read email on their mobile device in a meeting or has, at one time or another, thought about something other than work while on the clock. To suggest that because this guy is a senator that he should be super-human to something of which we are all guilty is complete flamebait.
Good grief, cut the guy some slack.
I am Jack's smirking revenge.
Sure, the Democrats may not be much better, but the Democrats aren't the ones constantly harping on "traditional values and morality".
Here's what I want to know: who took the video? That's a huge part of the story here, and that detail is omitted. My knee-jerk reaction is that it's someone from the opposing party, trying to make the next election in Florida easier for them.
Personally, I'm more disgusted by the censorship (the black bar) than the original photo.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Does this even qualify as porn in 2010?
At least the models are human and at least 18 years old (I hope or we're all going to jail).
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I know that someone has a link to the image in question here.
Please provide a link so that we can judge for ourselves whether it is "porn" or not.
Abortion is far too polarized an issue for a speech on the floor to affect any legislator's vote. I don't know anything about this legislator, and even if I lived in his district, my opinion of him would not be affected one whit by this event.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
It only takes one hand to vote. He was probably still able to do his job.
Your an idiot to think every senator comes and listens with an open mind ready to decide which way to vote based on the arguments presented that day on the floor. Their staff are the ones who have done the leg work and research on the issues who summarize it for the senators who make their decisions well before hand. Everything on the floor is nothing more than procedure and record keeping so whats the problem that he's checking his email while some windbags enter their arguments into public record. Links he receives could be anything from his public appearance schedule for next week to two girls, one cup.
Looks like he's actively working to me. The non work stuff was only open for as long as it took for him to get the cursor over the close button. It's not like he was playing solitaire or actively browsing through porn sites.
Now, you can tell me, what actions does he need to be preforming to be considered working? Staring intently at who ever has the floor and talking? Have some little graphs n charts on opinion polls on his monitor? Shit I'm sure he has already seen dozens of times. Have word open so he can type notes, despite everything already being recorded?
How else do you prepare for a deposition with the SEC???
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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
You ?
The way I see it, propagandists should be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
That's why the cloture vote is the equivalent of the filibuster vote now; stopping debate stops the filibuster. Period.
The rest of your post is blowing smoke. . . we're aware that there are Dems (Lincoln, Halter, Nelson, et al) that are breaking ranks to get pork/are really corporatists/just want to fuck up our days/whatever but the bottom line is the Reps are voting as a block, consistently.
The thing that really burns me up is it's a cynical ploy that amounts to this: "The country is fucked. If the dems can't govern, it will get worse, and then we'll be back in power again!"
And that's disgusting, more disgusting than a rep looking at porn.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Luckily for him they were separate videos.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Unless you're a senator.
Someone needs to invest in one of those screen filters. They can just say it's for State secrets and pass it as a business expense.
"You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
Will it ever be possible to filter email attachments before they are opened by recipients?
If it were (putting aside the legal/political implications) could certain attachments be black-listed in the same way that websites are?
Just wondering.
Eerily similar to one of my favourite sketches from Brasseye
I'm not that surprised. Haven't you seen what the Florida state capitol building looks like? Check it out.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Or at least: the statement about Dems not keeping out of your wallet is the actual flamebait. This graph shows how, over the last eighty years, the Democratic Party has generated more wealth for the country than the GOP. Even if you ignore Herbert Hoover, it's not even close. When broken down by State as shown by this graph, eighteen states pay more in Federal taxes than they receive in Federal spending. Only one is Republican (Texas), and it doesn't even hit the top 15. The reason the Tax Foundation (a libertarian-leaning think tank) gives is that the more urban Blue states supplement the more rural red states. This shows through to the local level too. "What is most clear is that on a per capita basis the transfer of tax dollars through the state’s fiscal system flows from rich to poorer places and from urban to rural places. This is consistent with the results by analysts from other states who examine the distribution of state government finances" were the findings from this in-depth study (page B:7, 9 of 12, PDF). The urban Democratic areas are the ones paying out of their wallets, whether it's at the local, state or national level. If your opinion is different, then you believe in something that isn't fact-based. It really is as simple as that. The numbers don't care what your political leanings are.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
Cheesecake != porn.
?
This guy is not paying attention, yet will be voting on bills that will affect our entire country.
Speaking of people not paying attention.....I realize that you might not have read the article, but you could have at least read the TITLE, which said he's a state senator -- meaning that he votes don't affect the entire country -- just Florida.
The
Once again you're missing the point.
A minority party with less than 41 members cannot in any way obstruct the passing of any legislation or any appointee of the majority party. Failure to pass legislation or appointments in those conditions are effectively 100% on the shoulders of the ruling party.
They can declare a filibuster all they want but that doesn't make it so when the ruling party can simply vote not to have a filibuster. And cloture votes, while related to filibusters, are also used when the ruling senate party simply doesn't want to continue a debate, even if their are valid points still to be discussed.
As for Obama's appointees. Several have never been put up for formal vote because of the push on health care, even ones the GOP had no objections to, and some were so terrible even several Democrats were on record as opposing them so Reid knew there was no point in even trying.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
I've seen better porn than that in the pages of National Geographic!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
At least he wasn't looking at willies...
No sig today...
This was no porn. As the Senate heard, this was a CLASSIFIED about a CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED, that in lack of CLASSIFIED it was necessary to CLASSIFIED the CLASSIFIED before the CLASSIFIED could become CLASSIFIED.
Isn't it clear now?
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
or were others a little worried at work about clicking the link at the bottom of the post that said "Watch Video"?