"Tuesday's gone with the wind," sang Skynyrd. Well, thank god for small favors…
Republican Florida State House Speaker Steve Crisafulli ended the House's legislative session three days early over the impasse between the House and Senate's state budget bills. Like a spoiled six-year-old at a birthday party for a hated classmate his parents forced him to attend. Professional!
Before running away from its responsibilities to the citizenry and blaming everything but itself, however, the House did manage to approve a bill that would begin to pave the way for online voter registration in Florida. Awesome. Soon the Florida technology of the 2010s will have caught up with technology of movies made in the '80s about hackers in the '90s.
Due to the, er, situation in Baltimore, this weekend's Rays-Orioles series will be relocated to the Trop. "This is the worst thing that's ever happened," said a few white sports fans in Baltimore who should probably be fed to the crabs.
And finally, the University of Florida has moved to close the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity on its campus, a week after the frat was suspended over allegations that its drunken bros harassed American military veterans while both factions were at a Panama City Beach resort. The allegations included spitting on vets and pissing on an American flag.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2015.