RETREAT IN RICHMOND: According to The Rule of Reason, nationwide public mockery has had a good result:

Virginia lawmakers dropped their droopy-pants bill Thursday after the whole thing became just too embarrassing.

The bill, which would have slapped a $50 fine on people who wear their pants so low that their underwear is visible in "a lewd or indecent manner," passed the state House on Tuesday but was killed by a Senate committee two days later in a unanimous vote.

Republican Sen. Thomas K. Norment said news reports implied that lawmakers were preoccupied with droopy pants. "I find that an indignation, which dampens my humor," Norment said.

The best response to that was by Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride:

You keep using that word -- I do not think it means what you think it means.

But back to embarrassments to American government:

The bill's sponsor, Democratic Delegate Algie T. Howell, declined to answer reporters' questions Thursday but issued a statement saying the bill "was in direct response to a number of my constituents who found this to be a very important issue."

He has said the constituents included customers at his barber shop who were offended by exposed underwear.

I am personally ashamed to share a last name with such an idiot. Worse, my father's family came from Virginia, so it is possible that this hair-cutter who wants to pull up people's pants may even be a distant relative. If that isn't bad enough, the Speaker of the Virginia House shares my entire name, though that Bill Howell is a Republican. Wardrobe malfunctions aren't his obsession, but he doesn't seem to be a nice person either.

Once, this was a storied name. Hywel Dda (in English, Howell the Good), ruled Wales (or at least Deheubarth, Gwynedd and Powys) from 940 to 950.

The only Welsh king to have earned the title "The Good," he is described in the great medieval history, "The Brut Y Tywysogion" (The Chronicle of the Princes) as "the chief and most praiseworthy of all the Britons."

He was remembered for his code of laws,

recently described as "the greatest intellectual achievement of mediaeval Wales".

How low the mighty have fallen, from storied lawgivers to officious underwear measurers.