Now Showing: Your Underpants

There ain't no justice in the world today. Take this little example for example: Pathetic but plucky loser gets nabbed for sticking his camera where it doesn't belong and gets ten days in the hooskow. Ten days! Evidently some of the fine courts of the Old Dominion have ruled that the unauthorized video taping or photographing of others is only prohibited when that person has "a reasonable expectation of privacy." Meaning, when you are in public, you don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy under your clothes. Got that? Such inanity clearly requires desperate measures to be taken so that Virginians everywhere will have a legal right to privacy in their shorts.

But hold on a second, just because I am granted a right to privacy to my underpants, does that mean I must exercise it? Well...yeah... it could. Virginia House Delegate Algie Howell has introduced legislation that would fine you up to $50 for intentionally exposing your underpants in a public place that is in any way "lewd or indecent." Now this might just seem like common sense to many, but Delegate Howell's bill has caused quite a stir in the halls of the General Assembly. If you haven't already guessed, the bill is being decried as designed to "hurt blacks." Delegate Howell, (who BTW is black himself), states that the bill is about "building character in young people." Walking around with your baggy pants around your knees, according to Delegate Howell, is "disrespectful." Needless to say, the ACLU is all over this like stink on cheese, claiming that it violates both the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and will result in racial profiling of young black men who most tend to sport the fashion.

I can't say that such criticism is not legally correct, but there remains something to be said about a culture where this and this may be considered both lewd and constitutionally protected, and yet some hairy-palmed jackass can stick a camera up your kid's skirt with impunity.