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

Hardly qualifies as porn

[gyrogeerloose]

Risque or naughty, maybe. Still, the guy should have been paying more attention to his job.

Re:Hardly qualifies as porn

[d3ac0n]

The fact that it was sent via e-mail can easily be backed up with mail server records, which will be released if needed.

While this senator is obviously not the most technically astute, he does at least grasp the basic concept that all of his internet traffic is running through some kind of web proxy server:

When asked if he ever looks at pornography while on the Senate floor, Bennett responded, "You'd have to be insane to do that. It all goes through a server. I don't think anybody would be doing that."

And then there is the fact that he closes it within seconds of it appearing on his screen, and if you look at the application open immediately behind the image, it's quite obviously an e-mail client.

From the evidence available from the video, I see no reason to not give him the benefit of the doubt.

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

Hate to defend the guy. . .

[MagusSlurpy]

. . . 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?

PORN ?

[dindi]

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.

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.

That's NOT Porn

[Philip K Dickhead]

Just breasts.

Bloody puritans.

Defense

[mseeger]

Hi,

It goes against any emotional bone in my body, but i have to vigorously defend a politician.

• First: He has not been caught watching any porn. What he watches does not even approach event the most bigoted defintion of porn. If that should be porn, than i would have spent several vacations in a porn camp without noticing.
• Second: For doing something else during a boring speech, he has my complete understanding. This makes him do his job neither better nor worse. The speeches are no longer part of the political process. It is more important for a politician (in order to get elected) to kiss some babys or his contributors asses than to give eloquent speeches in parliament. The voters are even more desinterested in those speeches than the politicians.

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

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.