Welcome to Wednesday. Let's talk about Tuesday.
Florida Governor and in no way undercover pre-invasion alien spy Rick Scott gave his final State of the State Address, mentioning the environment and sexual harassment and a vegan bakery in Miami run by immigrants and generally trying to sound thoughtful and reasonable and people-pleasin' enough to, say, deserve a win in any as-yet unannounced run for the U.S. Senate against a popular Democrat incumbent. He might do better to just crank his old conservative, plutocratic Tea Party persona up to 11 and add the tagline "All This and No Troubling Touchy Stuff!"
In other Rick Scott news, the Trump administration walked back its recently announced intention to try to open waters off Florida's coast to oil drilling after a meeting with the governor yesterday. Scott is one of the GOP's best chances to (re)gain a Senate seat in this year's elections. This couldn't look any more obviously like political theater if it came with a program and a Tony nomination.
A Hernando County sheriff's deputy with more than a decade on the job was taken into custody peacefully after an 11-hour armed standoff in Brooksville. Sleep tight, citizenry.
And finally, some New Tampa residents are a little bit concerned about the DIY shooting range somebody set up on private property adjacent to their homes. Evidently it's somehow legal to throw one together there if it's up to certain standards, yet illegal to knowingly discharge a firearm for the purposes of recreational target shooting in areas of a certain population density. We should all have a long talk about this around a table at which everybody is armed, and therefore, obviously, no one can get hurt.
This article appears in Jan 4-11, 2018.