Quick hit #7

Back on December 18 I wrote about the laughable-if-you're-not-the-one case of Joanne Webb, arrested in Texas in October for the heinous crime of selling a vibrator to two undercover narcotics cops.

Last week, local authorities announced they were dropping charges. According to the Dallas Morning News (registration required),

[BeAnn] Sisemore[, Webb's attorney,] said she suspects that Johnson County dropped the charges to avoid being part of a federal lawsuit filed in Dallas challenging the state's obscenity law. ...

Ms. Sisemore said her client is not entirely in the clear. She said there's no guarantee that the county attorney won't file the case again, and she was also told that the Burleson City Council passed its own obscenity ordinance that would be used to prosecute future cases.

That's the Heartland Of America, folks. The ones whose simple, decent values are supposed to be so much better than those of us city slickers. (By the way, the US Census Bureau says in the 1999 Statistical Abstract of the US that 75% of us live in urban areas and only 25% in rural areas. So where the hell do politicians get off telling us the hinterlands are the "real" America?)

Thanks to TalkLeft for the link.