Silvio Berlusconi has pulled an Ashcroft: the Italian prime minister has opted to cover up a bare-breasted piece of classical art (seen here), to conform to popular opinion that naked women are ugly, disgusting things and should never be seen. As with Ashcroft, the background boob seems to be photographed with intent to give subtle commentary; Ashcroft, to reference his censoring nature -- but for Berlisconi, as a reference to misogynistic comments he's made about women to the media.

The State of Iowa has ruled that stripping is protected speech, thus moving nude dancers from the 'obscene' column into the 'art' column. The story has a twist, though: the reason the strip club was in court in the first place wasn't a run-of-the-mill obscenity trial...a seventeen-year-old in the audience started taking it off, and -- oops -- she was related to the local sheriff. The difference between a nude seventeen-year-old being art versus being obscene had a huge degree of weight in the matter. The court's decision was that a strip club reasonably constituted a theatre, and as such the dancing is an artistic performance, thus excepting it fro! m the obscenity rules.

Mr de Pins has a talent: he combines adorably cute with deeply sexy, without getting all creepy about it. The art has an anime-like, cut-paper feel, Powerpuff-Girl-ish roundess and exaggeration, but it all works well together.