Pensacola man Brian Preskin (according to the May 17 Pensacola News Journal) was charged with using mirrors to look up a woman’s skirt the Pensacola Barnes & Noble. The charge was dropped on the ground Florida’s “peeping tom” laws hinge on people watching when there is “a reasonable expectation of privacy” and that doesn’t apply to someone in a public place.

Personally I think expecting people will not use mirrors or cellphones to peer up your skirt is a perfectly reasonable “expectation of privacy.” If the law doesn’t support that, we need to change the law, ASAP.

Found an e-mail when I got back to the office after Council. It shows photographs of a Muslim demonstration (over those notorious Danish cartoons of a couple of years ago) to prove how hostile Muslims are, announces that they are taking over England and that we’re fools if we think we can elect a “Muslim president” and not have America change.

Well, since there is NO Muslim in the race, that’s an irrelevant remark.

And let’s not forget, George W. Bush is supposed to be a devout Christian, and he’s been a disastrous president; it’s hard to imagine a Muslim doing any worse. Heck, I’ve heard more than one satirical argument that it’s Bush who should be considered the Muslim sleeper agent: In eight years he’s managed to severely weaken our military, inspired thousands of people to make war on us in the name of radical Islam, and let al-Qaida regroup to the point where (according to the last NIE) it’s as strong as it was pre-9/11.

Hmm, are we sure that’s satire?

Hurray.

One item has been pulled, we’re in public comment.

Some councilors didn’t realize the yes vote was for expanding the council to 17. So they’re taking it over.
And here we go … 4-3 to reject the expansion, with Weidenhamer, Destin and Bagby voting yes.
NOW the nominations will start.

No, not yet, still debating the number.
Bagby: “I thought the purpose was to serve, not to teach them that sometimes they get picked, sometimes they don’t get picked … these are high school kids who are willing to serve, and it just amazes me.”
Dewey Destin sides with Bagby: “We’re having a heck of a time finding people to serve on committees … I’d be happy if there were 30.”
Sam: “Then let’s change every single committee that we have. We can’t just do it for youth council.”
Wood: “What if we had 30 nominations, would we put 30 on there? I think not.”
Windes: “We’ve spent the entire evening with presenters who wanted us to bend or break the rules.” Maybe we should set an example.
4-3, with Trammell, Wood and Windes voting no.

Some of the members are reapplying. Before voting for any of them, she’d like to see how they’ve performed: Have they been absent a lot?
City Clerk Rey Bailey: They have equal numbers of absences. Trammell: Next time, please put that in the packet.

Jim Bagby proposes expanding the Youth Council to 17, rather than leave off three students from the 17 who applied.
Sam Seevers: If we get more next year, will we expand it? What about the ones we turned down last year? “That’s just the way it is, I could not support that … It’s fortunate we have 17 kids. Fort Walton Beach has the same program, they’ve never even gotten the same amount of kids to apply.”
Trammell: Agreed!

During the boarding-house debate a few weeks back, one resident said she’d made a complaint to the police and they’d taken 30 minutes to arrive. Dewey says he had Capt. Greg Gaddis pull the records, and none of the calls resulted in that long a response.

The speed limit is automatically 30 mph when there’s no sign up inside city limits.
Tom Weidenhamer: “Based on the speeds I’ve observed … that speed limit is not intuitively obvious.”