YNOT – Evidently devoting taxpayer dollars to consuming adult entertainment on the job is not limited to employees of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A Florida legislator was busted last week viewing topless women on a state-issued laptop during a debate on the floor of the state senate.Adding insult to injury, the debate was about a controversial abortion bill. State Sen. Mike Bennett, a Republican from Bradenton, is a vehemently anti-abortion.
Apparently he is not vehemently against spending public funds on personal porn, though.
A reporter from Sunshine State News spotted the image on Bennett’s laptop screen while viewing feeds from cameras on the Senate floor. The news outlet hustled into action, posting a clip from the feed on YouTube and a story about the incident on its own website.
Ironically, as Bennett is observing the image on his screen, State Sen. Dan Gelber’s [D-Miami Beach] voice comes through loud and clear in the background: “I’m against this bill, because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.”
Bennett defended his action by telling Sunshine State News the image was embedded in an email he received from a female friend “who happens to be a former court administrator.”
“I was just sitting there, bored as they were debating the abortion bill,” Bennett told the news outlet. “I opened it up and said ‘Holy [expletive]! What’s on my screen?’ and clicked away from it right away.”
According to Sunshine State News’ report, “[We] could not verify how long the image of four bikini-clad women with their tops exposed was open before our cameras started rolling on it, but it was up for at least three seconds before it disappeared from the screen.”
State Senate spokesperson Jaryn Emhof later explained that Bennett believed the explicit image “was an email about an item being debated on the Senate floor.”
It is unclear whether Bennett assumed the other files he downloaded during the same session also related to the debate, but according to Sunshine State News, at least two of the files were videos.
Bennett declined requests to show the News the other files.
