Crafting a bill in Congress is tough. That’s true whether the thing you are trying to do is to start, stop or change something. Whether it deals with taxes, the economy or war and peace.

Legislating anything is difficult, but especially when it is something like sex. Especially sex at the office. Especially sex at a government office using government-issued equipment. It’s hard to get a handle on something like that. And yet …

Last year, and not for the first time, inspectors general at half a dozen federal agencies nailed a number of employees who were viewing and downloading porn on government time. In many cases, they were tipped off by coworkers who were angered or disgusted by what their colleagues were doing on the clock.

The cases ranged from the Treasury Department to the Federal Communications Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency.

At the EPA, the IG found the employee was viewing porn six hours a day It didn’t say what he did the other two hours. Maybe nap? Four months after his exposure (no pun intended) the Washington Post reported he was still on the job. So to speak.

After being caught red-handed, the FCC employee said he watched dirty movies, on government time, because he was bored. A Treasury employee who reportedly downloaded 13,000 porn images at work, on his government computer, also cited boredom.

What’s ironic, to some, is that when members of Congress tackle the issue of porn at the office they are sometimes ridiculed for their puritanical zeal.

After the EPA employees’ six-hour-per-day habit was revealed, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked if the agency had a porn cutoff, a time limit after which the worker would be terminated? People laughed. But at Issa. Go figure?

The latest member of Congress to take the anti-porn-at-the-office leap is Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). On Sept. 18, Meadows, a Republican, introduced the Eliminating Pornography from Agencies Act.

Meadows cited a number of cases, drawn from IG reports. Federal News Radio reported he said that downloading porn on government equipment poses a cyber threat. Many agencies have already been hacked, so that is not a far-fetched concern.

All of the above prompted a Missouri-based fed to comment:

“I do have a thought on the congressman proposing a law against feds watching pornography at work. Must be an epidemic I never heard of. How about a really useful law, like: ‘No sex in the Oval Office?'”

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID

By Michael O’Connell

Joseph Assheton Fincher of England filed the first patent for “Tiddley-Winks”. The game went on to become a popular craze among children and adults during the 1890s.

Source: Wikipedia

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