Norwegian Man Acquitted in Errant Erection Case

You just can’t make this stuff up. Norwegian television station Nettavisen reports that a Norwegian college professor was recently acquitted of exposing himself to two female students. According to the court, it was simply a case of having erection at the wrong place and time.

The 40-year-old man, whose name was not given in the report, was fired from his job after the students complained to police and a district attorney decided to pursue a criminal case against the man. The man was unanimously acquitted of the crime, however. According to Nettavisen,

According to witness accounts from students, the incident took place when the lecturer got an erection while he was lying on a work-out mat lifting weights. The court bases its decision on the fact that even if one of the women claims that she saw his penis, the majority of the people in court claimed that this was not his intention.

It is like that the erected penis may have been visible between the shorts and his thigh, and the fact that the lecturer can not be held accountable for this to any particular degree was given as a reason for the judgment.

Apparently, an open and shut case.

Source:

Lecturer acquitted for erection. Carin Pettersson, Nettavisen, September 2, 2003.

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Norway Proposes to Set Quotas for Women on Corporate Boards

Norwegian legislator Laila Daavoey has introduced a bill that would require Norway’s top 600 companies or so to create a quota system for filling board positions. Comapnies that fail to fill at least 40 percent of their corporate board positions by 2005 would face financial penalties begining in 2007.

This follows an announcement in November by Sweden’s Vice Prime Minister Margareta Winberg that Sweden would begin taking action against companies that failed to increase female representation on their corporate boards from the curretn 8 percent to 25 percent by 2004.

Daavoey offered up a saying which she apparently highlights the need for such drastic actions, but actualy does a nice job of pointing out the idiocy of such quota systems. According to Daavoey,

There will not be equality until you have incompetent women in the boardroom.

That certainly is a lofty goal worth fighting for.

Maggie Gallagher had a better comment on this proposed regimen in an op-ed,

In Europe, it appears that in the name of democracy, elites are pursuing an autocratic centralized power, seeking economic control and social regimentation. They seem to have no hesitation about using the law to forcibly suppress opposition. Call it Eurofascism, lite. Only they call it democracy.

Sources:

Norway eyes law to shatter glass ceiling. Lizette Alvarez, Contra-Costa Times, July 18, 2003.

Eurofascism, Lite. Maggie Gallagher, Yahoo.Com, July 15, 2003.

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