An Ohio high school senior class got an eyeful when a state lawmaker giving a computer presentation on the legislative process accidentally flashed pictures of a topless woman.
“It took me probably a second or so to look at it and say, ‘That’s not the Power Point,’” state Democratic Rep. Matt Barrett tells The Morning Journal He quickly closed the computer and removed the flash drive that contained the pictures. Later reports said a minor child in the lawmaker’s house downloaded the pictures. Barrett called the incident “an internal family matter.”
Who says chivalry is dead? Certainly not the Calhoun County GOP in Alabama. They awarded state Sen. Charles Bishop, a Republican, a trophy for punching fellow senator Lowell Barron, a Democrat, in the face on the Senate floor, an act caught on video. Bishop said he threw the punch after Barron called him a “son of a (expletive).” According to The Associated Press, the GOP group gave Bishop the trophy for his “defending of womankind.”
Four Democratic lawmakers in Wisconsin, the only state that hasn’t yet passed a budget this year, proposed arresting lawmakers who don’t come to budget meetings after July 1 if a state budget isn’t passed by that date in the future, according to The Capital Times (Madison). The punishment, though, isn’t jail, but something legislators might find only slightly more tolerable: forced attendance at these budget meetings that could eventually run 10 hours a day for six days a week.
A New Hampshire lawmaker is proposing to make public urination a misdemeanor — and he’s doing it for the perpetrators’ own good. One who urinates in public now can be prosecuted under a variety of state and local statutes, including those prohibiting indecent exposure, which is considered a sex crime and can result in landing on the sex offender registry. Democratic State Rep. Steve Shurtleff, who proposed the change, said that law didn’t seem a good fit for the offense of urination, the Concord Monitor reports.
The selling of sex toys is illegal in Alabama, now that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a constitutional challenge to the 1998 state law banning these devices. But sex toy store owners aren’t too worried. The law includes exemptions for “bona fide medical” purposes. The Love Stuff stores now require customers to sign a receipt saying they will use the toys only for legal purposes, The Birmingham News reports. “Customers can use these products to maintain or reach a healthy sex life,” said Love Stuff attorney Amy Herring. “Really all of this is for medical use.”
Contact Pauline Vu at pvu@stateline.org

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