It's amateur night, so be careful out there and if you pass through a DUI checkpoint, because there will be DUI checkpoints, know your rights, but don't be a dick about it.
Thursday gave us quite the fodder for barroom banter, if you can hear each other over the four Dropkick Murphys songs that will blare incessantly through the night.
During a Florida House of Representatives Committee meeting, Republicans advanced a measure that would deny food stamps to 229,000 people, including seniors, veterans, children and disabled people by rolling back the eligibility to 130 percent of the poverty line. In making their case, they made use with a little help from their friends: asinine, racially-tinged welfare queen tropes and fear of a type of fraud that is so statistically insignificant it makes thoughtful, compassionate Florida House Republicans seem abundant. Get it? Because, like, they basically don't exist, just like food stamp fraud.
Another group of people filed another lawsuit involving the phosphate industry, this one being over a proposed expansion of a Sarasota County phosphate mine and charging that the federal agencies fast-tracked the permitting process for what could become Florida's next environmental disaster before too long. Are we seeing a pattern here? Yes, yes we are, and it's a busy one; radioactive wasteland here, contaminated water there. But can we interest you in a little game we play called Cancer Roulette?
At the federal level, the U.S. House of Representatives sought to make it easier for mentally ill veterans to buy guns. Because what could go wrong? No, seriously? Supporters reasoned that the measure would help remove the stigma attached to mental illness and help those who have served our country live full lives. Because apparently giving veterans adequate housing, food and fucking medical care doesn't honor our veterans nearly as well as a bunch of lip service during campaign speeches or unfettered access to a deadly weapon.
And, finally, at least Tampa City Council got one step closer to banning LGBT conversion therapy on Thursday. Unfortunately, for obvious First Amendment reasons, they couldn't include religious groups. But, hey, it's one more step in the right direction…until the state legislature decides it wants to ban LGBT conversion therapy bans just because it's feeling particularly douchey one day.
This article appears in Mar 16-23, 2017.