Puritanism Alive and Well in US
The claims and counterclaims in this case vary widely, but as it stands, Eric Williamson, of Springfield, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC is being accused of indecent exposure.
As a woman, who was walking her 7-year-old son to school tells the story; Williamson has shown himself butt-naked twice through the windows of the house he was living in.
Williamson, in turn says that he just got up and was preparing breakfast in his own house, totally unaware that anyone could see him.
It is also interesting to note that the accusing woman is a wife of a Fairfax County policeman.
Police showed up very quickly. One of the five cops who went into his house reportedly called Williamson a pervert and others looked through his belongings. They left but returned a short time later to take him to the magistrate.
A police spokeswoman would not comment on Williamson’s claim that officers entered his room without a warrant, but she did say “We don’t arrest people for being nude in their house.”
Williamson in turn, says Fairfax County police treated him “like an animal” at his home.
Considering the huge brouhaha about a sex-related show in Saudi Arabia and the sentences of lashes and prison for those involved (apparently now pardoned by King Abdullah), or the stoning and other punishment in Afghanistan and Pakistan, our domestic morals might not seem to be that strict. On the other hand, how does walking naked around one’s own house compare to miles and miles of nude people on many European beaches? Who could be considered more advanced from the cultural and moral point of view, we wonder…
Irish police have solved the mystery of a Polish recidivist who clocked up 50 traffic offenses on different addresses and who was never caught. For nearly two years, the Irish police were trying to locate and possibly apprehend a mysterious and incredibly hard to find culprit by the name of Prawo Jazdy.
Although the upcoming inauguration of President Barack Obama is a special occasion in many ways, including the fact that it is the first inauguration of an at least partly African American president, that it follows the disastrous tenure of George W. Bush, that we are engaged in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is raging seemingly out of control and the economy has taken a deep dive, the whole inaugural setup seems way overblown.
Also, why shouldn’t the new president be sworn in the House of Representatives chamber, instead of building still another, inaugural site from scratch. The huge platform on the west side of the Capitol takes months and millions of dollars to build, just to be torn down afterward. A totally unneeded, stupid and wasteful exercise in our opinion. After all, does it really matter how many privileged people will actually get to sit there feeling important about getting invited? After all, probably 99.99 percent of the Americans, who are interested, will watch the event on television anyway.
The latest plan formulated by the security weenies closes practically all of the bridges leading to the District of Colombia from Virginia, citing “traffic and security concerns” and so forth. The entire area, encompassing the National Mall and including of course the Capitol, the White House and the Lincoln Memorial has been declared a “security zone”. Sniper teams will be placed on the rooftops of buildings throughout the area. An e-mail for President-elect Barack Obama’s web site recently stated that this will be “the most open and accessible Inauguration in our nation’s history”. How do they figure that? I got a feeling that although they might want it to be that way, at this stage the Secret Service is really calling all the shots (no pun intended). Overall, it appears that Osama bin Laden has accomplished his mission quite well – by introducing so much paranoia, that the U.S. got terrorized through and through.
