Welcome to Friday, your reward for not setting fire to any of the previous days of the work week, smearing your face with their ashes, and running amok in the streets, naked and smoldering. (We probably shoulda done that, though.)
The St. Petersburg City Council made some movement toward decriminalizing personal possession of small amounts of marijuana within the city. Maybe they'll, uh, make some more movement in that direction, um, you know ... later, or whenever. Things take time, you know? It's ... ah, wow, that squirrel's got a little squirrel-sized bag of chips. I wish I had a me-sized bag of chips.
A study found that homeless Tampa veterans aren't being helped as well or quickly as others in a "largely successful" three-year pilot program, at least partially because the area had more homeless vets, and fewer gainfully employed ones, going in. Read the Trib piece, and think again about how tax cuts for corporations and the super-wealthy don't really have any effect on people's lives down here on the individual level. Fucking shameful, is what it is.
A former OKC cop was convicted of 18 of 36 counts of rape, other sex crimes and assault, with the jury recommending a sentence of 263 years. On his birthday. Good. Happy birthday, shithead. (Oh, and it doesn't seem like unarguable video evidence was necessary for justice to be served in this particular case...)
Connecticut's governor said he'd sign an executive order barring people on federal terrorism watch lists from buying firearms. You'd think this would be a difficult one for pro-gun organizations to get all up in arms (Ha!) about, right? Wrong. They say the info about folks on the no-fly list is often incomplete or inaccurate, which I guess in their minds isn't better than, oh, say, having absolutely no info about a prospective gun buyer at all.
And finally, does Ben Affleck have a big-ass colorful tattoo of a phoenix covering his entire back? We're just interested, is all. He really doesn't seem like the type.