Legislating Love: Ecuadorian legislator Maria Soledad Vela proposed in April that the nation’s constitution express the public-health principle that women have a right to enjoy sex and not be mere breeding machines. Opponents ridiculed Soledad Vela’s “right to orgasm” that might lead to lawsuits against husbands.
In April, Tommy Tabermann, a member of Finland’s parliament, submitted a bill to require one week’s paid vacation a year solely for romance, to counteract the country’s alarmingly high divorce rate.
In April, Mayor Gonzalo Navarrete of the impoverished town of Lo Prado, Chile, ordered public money for funding up to four Viagra tablets a month to men over age 60, to improve “quality of life.”
The longtime elected clerk of court in Pasco County, Fla., Jed Pittman, admitted to WTSP-TV in May that he rarely comes to work and in fact has researched state law to learn that as long as he shows up once every 43 days, he can’t be fired. (The law provides for removal by the chief judge only if the clerk is absent for “44” consecutive days.) Pittman’s salary is about $136,000 a year, but he exploited another loophole in state law to “retire” in 2004, and then un-retire the next day, which brings him an additional $75,000 a year (besides the $362,000 lump sum he received on the day he “retired”).
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2008.