More on Virginia Madness

I feel vindicated by my post yesterday. Marc Fisher of The Washington Post wrote a great article about the Virginia House vote to impose a $50 fine on anyone found wearing pants low enough that a substantial portion of undergarments is showing (Washington Post registration required). Fisher was also on washingtonpost.com for an online chat earlier today. Some good questions including:

- Does Va.'s droopy pants legislation mean that plumbers can be fined for, um, exposing too much below the belt?

- When my one-and-a-half-year-old son crouches down, his diaper is clearly visible over the top of his pants. Will he be fined $50 for exposing his diapers?

- In today's column you quote Del. Brian Moran attacking those who voted for the "droopy drawers" bill. Yet Brian Moran himself was one of the 60 delegates who voted for this bill! He also voted to report the bill out of the Criminal Justice committee. Is Del. Brian Moran a hypocrite? How can he attack others for voting for the "droopy drawers" bill when he himself also voted for it?
The response: Moran and a number of other Dems were in a bind because while they thought the pants bill was ludicrous, it was sponsored by one of their own, Algie Howell, a Democrat from Norfolk. So while the Dems would surely have opposed the pants bill if it were one more piece of idiotic babbitry from the Repo right, the Dems impaled themselves on their own partisan rigidity (what an awful bit of writing) and voted against the low-riding pants.

Partisan politics at its worse.