Tragic Setback in the War on Thongs

Florida's state senate was set to debate a ban on schoolgirls showing their undies yesterday. Alas!

Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, agreed to withdraw his last-minute "Pull up your britches" amendment this morning in a Senate education committee.

But not until both he and former school teacher Sen. Larcenia Bullard, D-Miami, offered a lesson to a group of students in the audience.

Siplin said he was worried about the professional prospects of "ladies with g-strings showing and guys walking down the halls trying to pull up their pants with one hand and carrying their bookbags in another hand." Bullard said she was particularly horrified that the fashion extended beyond school to, she has recently noticed, church.

Any suggestion that Siplin was trying to distract attention from his mounting legal problems would be in bad taste. Also, why is it that the local powerbrokers cracking down on teenage hotness are all Democrats?