BREAKING! LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST ANTI-HEALTHCARE AMENDMENT!!!!

Stop us if you didn’t see this one coming! Way back on April 22, the legislature approved House Joint Resolution 37, a wildly divisive bit of political hackery intended to save the great state of Florida from the evils of Obamacare. The bill, which passed both the House and Senate with more than the required 60 percent, allowed its main co-sponsors Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, and Sen Carey Baker, R-Eustis, to insert their knobby rhetoric into the general confusion of the “amendments” portion of this November’s general election ballot. To wit, “Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to ensure access to health care services without

Christian Rekers hates gay adoption, loves gay hookers on cruises!

See that blurry slice of HOT up there? That's super-Christian Dr. George Rekers, a sort of hate-stereotype-rolled-in-mustache-filings who has been featured in this paper before as one of the State of Florida's paid witnesses in its case against Martin Gill and gay adoption. Rekers, who lovingly crafted the creepy paperbacks Growing up Straight: What Families Should Know about Homosexuality (1982) and Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity (again, 19 ...

The education of Charlie Crist

This just in from the floor of the Florida House: Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, passed word that Gov. Charlie Crist has just vetoed Senate Bill 6, the education "reform" bill that brought such howls of protest from teachers' groups.

Crist is desperately seeking supporters in his U.S. Senate bid, but faces a gloomy Republican primary against Tea Party-approved Marco Rubio. A new poll shows Crist could pull off a narrow victory in November ... if he runs as an independent. Maybe he'll pick up a few votes by flunking his more radical fellow Republicans.
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Wow, that really is some tough shit.

CBS reports (via the Department of Labor) that 50,000 unemployed Floridians will lose their benefits thanks to this one knobjob from Kentucky, Jim Bunning.

That staggering number is second only to New York, where 55,000 are screwed.

So some guy halfway across the country says you're a bum and you should starve, jobless man/woman. Also? Bunning says, That's what Ric O'Barry told Weekly reporter Edward Ericson Jr. almost 10 years ago, in a story we ran about the last time SeaWorld's Tillikum took a life. If O'Barry's name sounds famliar, it should. He's the animal activist behind last year's stunning documentary, The Cove, and the guy who's felt bad about killing Flipper for a long, long time.

"They're bored," O'Barry said. "We literally bore them to death. It's like you living in the bathroom for your life." ...

Closer ... closer ....

Wonder if Blake Lorenz is finally getting nervous. The venerable Columbus Dispatch reports that Ohio-based figures in the Rifqa Bary saga are lawyering up in anticipation of possible legal charges.

Brian Williams, the preacher who drove Bary from her parents' house to the bus station last year, is rolling in the ultraconservative arms of the Thomas More Law Center as Ohio police continue to nose around. Bary, a teenager who converted from Islam to Christianity and claimed she feared parental retribution, took the bus to

WESH kills Feldman's MSNBC dreams, features goosing pelican!

Brian Feldman can't win! Everybody's favorite attention-seeking multimedia phenomenon finally escaped his patented tedium-for-tedium's-sake performance art racket for a bright-and-shiny (OK, slightly dreary -- video on our front page or here) foray into political theater on Friday, Feb. 12, marrying a girl he didn't even know at the Orange County Courthouse. Feldman and Hannah Miller (who utilized an eye-rolling "OK" in lieu of "I Do!" for the proceedings) tied the knot in ord ...

Won't you stay a little bit longer?

The feds are giving a big break to some Haitians �€“ those who had the good fortune to be in the United States when their hometowns were devastated by an earthquake Jan. 13. They'll probably get to stay here indefinitely, even if they sneaked in illegally to start with.

Those actually fleeing the devastation now, however, are still out of lu ...

Bary, quite contrary

In the nonstop back-and-forth over who said what to Rifqa Bary when and why, her Florida savior/kidnapper (take your pick, depending on who you believe) has weighed in again. In his affidavit filed Dec. 29 in Franklin County, Ohio, juvenile court, Blake Lorenz (middle name William), denies he was ever told he was breaking the law when Rifqa Bary fled for her life< ...

Beating baby elephants

This just in from our newest blogger, Jim Gaines, who doesn't have an account set up yet so I'm posting for him.

PETA says that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s Circus beats baby elephants. We’re still waiting to hear directly from the circus’ parent company, but they’ve denied to the Washington Post that the pictures being waved by the animal-rights group are as they seem.

PETA has the testimony and photos of S ...

Railroaded

Big doings downtown today as Gov. Charlie “Choo-Choo” Crist made a stop to celebrate the wonder that is going to be commuter rail. Platitudes fell from lips, onlookers looked on politely, hands got shaken, Buddy Dyer made a reference to the “rail renaissance,” photos were snapped and nothing really happened of any importance at all. The only thing that kept this one from being a total snoozer was the presence of a handful of folks waiving delicious-looking waffles and other breakfast foods, a reference to the n ...

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