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Capitol offenses

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published April 3, 2007

Misguided moral crusading

As if pregnant teenagers don't already face enough problems, state Sen. Ronda Storms would like them to answer to police. And if doctors or nurses or counselors don't turn those girls in, Storms would yank their licenses.

Storms, the Brandon Republican who made her name as a moral crusader on the Hillsborough County Commission, says she just wants to protect girls under age 16 who might have been raped. But her bill (SB 2546) is much more than that. It would require abortion clinics to collect DNA samples and turn health care practitioners into agents of law enforcement. It even explicitly removes "the privileged quality of communication" between a doctor and a girl under the age of 16. Do they deserve no privacy?

This is no way to catch a rapist. The more likely impact would be to discourage girls from seeking help if their boyfriends got them pregnant. Storms may want to poke her nose into the doctor's office, but lawmakers would be wise to keep this door closed.

A law on underwear?

Low beltlines have joined high hemlines in the daily dress code wars waged in modern classrooms, but Florida's school principals don't need a state law to help them draw their own lines.

A bill (SB 2780) filed by Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, would do just that. It takes aim at students who put their underwear on display and manages, in just 37 words, to capture the absurdity of the effort: "A student may not wear and expose below-waist underwear while on the grounds of a public school in a manner that exposes or exhibits one's covered or uncovered sexual organs in a vulgar and indecent manner."

Ban "covered or uncovered sexual organs"? Leave this one to the principals.

Fireworks safety (wink, wink)

The kind of "moratorium" the state Senate has proposed on fireworks is the kind that is imposed with a wink. Lawmakers are actually trying to stop cities and counties from enforcing the state's ban on selling fireworks for personal amusement.

This 10-month cease-fire (tucked inside SB 1372) would create a "Consumer Fireworks Task Force" that is supposed to study the fire and public safety issues surrounding fireworks. If you think the goal is to beef up enforcement, think again. At least three of the group's eight members would be fireworks industry representatives. Says industry lobbyist Pete Dunbar: "Fireworks are just plain American."

This bill is just plain political, as lawmakers repay their campaign contributors.

[Last modified April 3, 2007, 01:09:16]