A Mississippi lawmaker really doesn’t want to see your underwear.
Tom Weathersby, a Republican serving in the state’s House of Representatives, has proposed a law that could lead to fines and even counseling for people who wear “sagging” pants, or a style in which pants hang so low that underwear is exposed.
“Personally, I like to see people dressed when they’re in public and I like to see people with their pants up,” Weathersby told Mississippi Today.
Weathersby’s bill, introduced last week, would make it “unlawful for any person to wear pants, shorts or clothing bottoms that exposes underwear or body parts in an indecent or vulgar manner.”
The penalty for a first offense of the noncriminal citation is a warning, and ― for juveniles ― notifying their parents or guardians. After that, fines begin at $20 for a second offense and run up to $100 for a sixth offense. That sixth offense would also include “psychological and social counseling by the Department of Human Services and the Department of Mental Health.”
Both departments have faced budget cuts and staff shortages in recent years. Weathersby’s bill does not increase funding for either department in order to counsel people who wear sagging pants.
Several other communities have banned saggy pants over the years, including Opa-Locka, Florida, and Wildwood, New Jersey. In 2015, four high school students in Tennessee were charged with indecent exposure ― and two were jailed ― for wearing sagging pants.
You’ve heard of the naked truth. But what about naked “alternative facts”?
That could describe the excuse offered by a Florida man accused of being naked at a car wash.
Police in Pensacola arrested 52-year-old Charles William Raulerson early Sunday after getting a call about a naked man in the car wash parking lot. Responding officers reported seeing Raulerson standing around without pants blaring music from his vehicle, according to the Pensacola News Journal.
When deputies asked Raulerson to put his clothes on, he gave a response worthy of any “alternative fact” dished out by the Trump administration: “They took off running by themselves without me.”
Deputies, suspicious that Raulerson possessed pants that could defy the laws of physics, asked him to sit in his car, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Raulerson then threatened an officer with a screwdriver, police said. When he tried to get out of his car again, the officer shocked him with a Taser stun gun, according to police.
Paulerson was charged with aggravated assault on an officer, a second-degree felony, according to WTSP.com. Jail records show he was held at the Escambia County Jail on a $500 bond.
It’s unclear whether his pants got away.
A teacher with the Dallas Independent School District is being investigated after video surfaced of her firing a toy gun at a projected image of Donald Trump and yelling “Die!” in front of her class.
Payal Modi is a teacher at W.H. Adamson High School, and CBS DFW reports that the video surfaced on social media following Trump’s inauguration.
In the eight-second YouTube video, a video image of Trump is projected onto a whiteboard. Modi is shown holding a blue toy gun that she aims at Trump’s image; then she pulls the trigger multiple times and yells “Die!” at the screen.
The school district said in a statement that Modi had been placed on administrative leave and the district has opened an investigation.
“This is a personnel matter,” the statement said, “and, as such, we cannot comment.”
According to CBS DFW, many people on social media have expressed outrage over the video.
From the video, it doesn’t appear that the teacher is making threats at Trump; rather, she appears to be expressing a popular opinion that many people have: the wish that he would just go away.
Nevertheless, she is a teacher, and how this will play into First Amendment-protected free speech versus her job as a public servant remains to be seen.
She is not the first person to make remarks about getting rid of the president through violent means. As CBS DFW notes, Madonna landed in controversy last week after comments she made during the Women’s March on Washington.
“Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House,” the veteran pop singer said. “But I know that this won’t change anything. We cannot fall into despair.”
PR
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