State Senator Caught Looking At Porn On Senate Floor 574
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.'"
Florida (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it is safe to say we earned our Fark tag the hard way.
Hardly qualifies as porn (Score:5, Insightful)
Doggie porn? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Hardly qualifies as porn (Score:3, Insightful)
being topless in most places is not an actual crime.
It only becomes a crime when women go topless for money in public.
You can show it for free in public, or charge in a private place, but you cannot charge if you're showing it in public.
Considering those laws I would say that that shot of women with their bikini tops moved to the side would not be porn, unless they were paid for it.
Re:Missing the Point (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy is not paying attention, yet will be voting on bills that will affect our entire country.
My question is: "Isn't his vote pre-decided by his political party?"
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have a filtering system that can identify pornography inside a video file inside a zip archive?
Re:Missing the Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why is it important that he pays attention?
Why is it even important that he actually goes to the voting?
He could simply send a memo saying "This year I vote whatever [party leader name] votes" with the exact same result.
Everything else is self delusion.
Re:Hardly qualifies as porn (Score:3, Insightful)
Not Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Hate to defend the guy. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, he's using Firefox. Are you guys really going to pick on him after realizing that?
Re:Not Porn (Score:3, Insightful)
Not when one is a Republican, the party of (check their anti-sex, anti-personal-freedom-other-than-Second Amendment) voting record before modding me) the Christian Taliban.
Re:Hardly qualifies as porn (Score:1, Insightful)
No, especially for senators. If they paid less attention to making new laws, we'd have far fewer problems.
Bingo (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:A setup (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I Don't Think So (Score:5, Insightful)
Lowering standards (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
PORN ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:A setup (Score:4, Insightful)
He's wrong for viewing pictures of girls in bikinis while on government time
Whereas reading Slashdot on a private employer's time is perfectly acceptable.
OMG America Can't Be That Uptight (Score:2, Insightful)
And besides, the more time politicians spend looking at porn the less time they have to fuck up the country.
Give the guy a break... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bingo (Score:3, Insightful)
If that were true, then there would never be any debates, and legislation could be done entirely by popular referendum.
Maybe it's different where you are, but around here, we vote for legislators not just for their currently held views, nor just for how well their views jive with our own, but also because they demonstrate some capacity to think, and be able to sift through thoughtful arguments and separate the insight from the crap, and then to act on our behalf.
Re:Bingo (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm hard pressed to imagine how listening to the senators from other districts is going to help him make a choice that represents his contributors.
FTFY. Really when it comes to abortion most people have their minds already fixed on a position... politicians even more so. This topic galvanizes people based on philosophy, religion, or affiliation lines. Like everyone else in the room he already knows how he will vote on the issue, and nothing short of the new "Mike Bennett Turnpike" will change his mind.
Re:Florida (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of Fark, I think this "News story" is somewhat beneath the standards of Fark.
A politician otes to invade our personal privacy? Zzzzz. A politician sides with corporate interests against the public at large? Zzzz. A politician makes a stupid incorrect statement about sciences, history, geography, or technology? Sometimes interesting. A politician is caught with his pants down in some way? ZOMG NEWS!
Leave that line of thinking with cable news and tabloids.
That's NOT Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
Just breasts.
Bloody puritans.
Re:Hardly qualifies as porn (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Republican (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bingo (Score:3, Insightful)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!! Heeeeheeheeeehee! Whooeee, that just made me laugh.
Re:Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
Defense (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Bingo (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm hard pressed to imagine how listening to the senators from other districts is going to help him make a choice that represents his constituents.
Easy. His lobbyists had already told him how to vote.
Re:I don't see what the big deal is (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, they're only "nude" if you consider a bikini nude.. in which case you are delusional.
The picture CLEARLY shows bikinis (even the ones that were partially black-boxed are obviously bikinis).
Re:Republican (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you're just wasting our time with the usual false equivalence between Democrats and Republicans, hyperbolically. Democrats (like all politicians) are bad, so Republicans, who are catastrophic, must be no worse than Democrats.
Republicans have indeed been working on a theocracy [google.com] for years. It's a core value of their Party, and the core value of a large fraction of its remaining members. Their theocracy would indeed send you to Puritan style stocks for a whipping for downloading porn at work. Both for the "morality" of the act, and for wasting your employer's time on nonprofitable activity.
No, this is not really hyperbole. The Republican Party is America's Taliban [google.com]. And fallacies like false equivalency is keeping them at work on their theocracy.
Re:I don't see what the big deal is (Score:3, Insightful)
Have/are, what's the diff?
The diff here is, dickless or not, what he did is against policy, may be illegal, and is certainly disrespectful of the entire state that is paying for his time and has to live under the decisions he participates in making.
Doesn't matter whether it was b00bies or reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm. When a State Senator breaks the rules it's as if he thinks the law means nothing, and that is the picture next to the entry for Hypocrisy in the dictionary.
Pure Fud (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Republican (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're just wasting our time with the usual false equivalence between Democrats and Republicans
What false equivalence? Democrats can't stay out of your wallet and Republicans can't stay out of your bedroom. I fail to see how accepting governmental intrusion into one part of my life offsets the removal of government intrusion from another.
Republicans have indeed been working on a theocracy [google.com] for years.
The Republican Party is America's Taliban [google.com].
That's real cute, linking to Google searches like that. Did you know that Barack Obama kicks puppies [google.com]? It's true.
Re:Hardly qualifies as porn (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it's porn if it is "evil", for some definition of "evil", from "pornos" meaning, you guessed it, "evil". Pornography means "evil writing", and I think it's reasonable to interpret "writing" liberally, in the same way that we interpret "speech" to include photographs, signs, the written word, artistic expression, etc. In fact, much of what many consider pornography is protected speech under First Amendment grounds.
But, that misses the greater point here: this man was not doing his job, for which he is paid by taxpayers.
Re:Republican (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Republican (Score:4, Insightful)
That false equivalence. 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.
You mean wars like Vietnam and deregulation like the Telecommunications Act of 1996 or the repeal of Glass–Steagall? Oh wait, those happened under Democratic administrations.....
And they invade your bedroom, too.
And Democrats invade my wallet, gun cabinet, phone records, radio stations, etc.
Democrats are not at all equivalent, even if they do also waste your money - but not nearly the vast, crippling magnitude of Republicans.
Careful, your bias is showing.
You Republicans have wallowed in false equivalencies for so long
"You Republicans"? That's interesting, I start out by pointing out that both parties suck and you leap to the conclusion that I'm a Republican. From my vantage point you have more in common with partisan Republicans than you probably realize.
Re:Republican (Score:3, Insightful)
Hyperbole much? That's like saying that the Democrats would happily send bankers to the gulag for short selling investments, while they short sold investments as well, if they could only get the full-on fascism they are striving so hard for.
From my observations of American politics, the Republicans are far, far more interested in implementing Fascism [wikipedia.org] than the Democrats are. Indeed, to the casual observer it seems that's their Raison d'être.
Re:Republican (Score:2, Insightful)
Liberals don't ever try to force THEIR morality on everyone else ... NO!!!!
(Health Care)
(Happy Meal Toy Ban)
(“But I don’t believe it was rape rape.”)
(global warming)
(Discarding Live birth after failed abortions)
One person's conscience is another person's theocracy. Just because liberals don't go to church doesn't mean it isn't a religion.
Re:Republican (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize that decrying homosexual marriage restrictions and claiming theocracy in the same post is hypocritical right? You realize that if it wasn't for a theocracy (Christian/Rome) the state would have no interest in a ... wait for it ... SACRED institution like Marriage.
MY view is that the state should have no laws either establishing or punishing people for their "marital status". It should not care one way or another.
But that would break all sorts of "social programs" (like the new Health Care Bill) liberal love so much and depend on.
Liberals, on the one hand, oppose the new Arizona law against illegal immigrants (no race specified in the law itself) because it is "racist", but on the other hand, they love to have all sorts of other laws that specifically account for race (Affirmative Action).
Liberals are just a bunch of hypocritical twits. Just like Conservatives.
Re:depends (Score:3, Insightful)
Politics is a game. It always has been, it always will be.
Anyone who plays apologist/propagandist for either party is nothing more than a useful pawn. My pointing out that both sides play these games is a simple statement of fact, nothing more. I even gave another example of the games these people engage in. Yes, the stakes of these games are incredibly high, but you have to recognize that it is this adversarial approach that ultimately keeps things in balance in the long run. The greatest threats to the liberties of the people come from the people elected to serve (regardless of those peoples' actual intentions).
Vote gridlock, every time, for the sake of all of us.
Re:Bingo (Score:1, Insightful)
It is his job to listen to both sides of the argument you moron. He is an elected official voting for laws that directly affect you and I. I want him to listen to every speech, every detail, every idea no matter what. How can he make an informed decision if he doesnt?
Re:Republican (Score:4, Insightful)
It should also probably be noted that most of the money we spent on TARP has already been payed back or is expected to be payed back in the near future. Also, we didn't end up spending even half of the $700 billion originally allocated to the program.
Re:Republican (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize that decrying homosexual marriage restrictions and claiming theocracy in the same post is hypocritical right? You realize that if it wasn't for a theocracy (Christian/Rome) the state would have no interest in a ... wait for it ... SACRED institution like Marriage.
MY view is that the state should have no laws either establishing or punishing people for their "marital status". It should not care one way or another.
But that would break all sorts of "social programs" (like the new Health Care Bill) liberal love so much and depend on.
Liberals, on the one hand, oppose the new Arizona law against illegal immigrants (no race specified in the law itself) because it is "racist", but on the other hand, they love to have all sorts of other laws that specifically account for race (Affirmative Action).
Liberals are just a bunch of hypocritical twits. Just like Conservatives.
I agree and even take it a step further. In order to not "break all sorts of "social programs"", the feds could convert all current marriages to civil unions. Problem solved.
I only say that because there are certain "benefits" that are afforded to married people like child custody, power of attorney, and so on. There needs to be federal and state recognition of the union currently called marriage. I believe everyone would be happy if you just changed the name. Civil Unions have no religious significance. If you want to get "married", go to a church, chapel or where ever you want and get married by whoever you believe is qualified to stand there and say, "You're married". It will just carry no legal weight.
Re:Republican (Score:3, Insightful)
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:
The country already is ruled by religious law to some extent: thou shall not kill and thou shall not steal. Murder and burglary are against the law. Why aren't you all riled up about that? Constitution doesn't say anything about murder or stealing but yet we have laws for them.
By the way, we know what the Bible says so including in your post "what they think their Bible says" is a transparent attempt at discrediting them. Nice try but it didn't work. Those Republican officials' views are shared by a vast majority of the country's citizens. It just goes to show you that despite what the minority don't believe in, the majority of the population still enjoy and prefer having religion as a large part of their lives. And the side benefit is that those who disagree are welcome to do so as long as the laws of the land are still obeyed by all.
Re:Republican (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Republican (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have any evidence for your claims? How does Democratic=supported regulation of industries that influence the fate of our economy in any way related to "fascism"?
Fifteen years ago, the assets of the six largest banks in this country totaled 17 percent of GDP. The assets of the six largest banks in the United States today total 63% of GDP.
Mussolini himself said "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Do you not see how the formation of super-large corporations and their increasing influence on government politics is equivalent to the invasion of fascism? Can you not see how the break-up or regulation of these extremely large corporations is akin to fighting the creep of fascism?
Who was it on the Supreme Court who voted to give corporations equal rights to people? What presidents in the last century attempted to break up giant corporations? From the Republican side only Teddy Roosevelt was anti-trust, and eventually he was shunned from his own party.