#113 of My Stupid State
It's not like the tea party hasn't been able to do plenty of harm to my stupid state. If you read my stuff, I don't have any shortage of things to write about. Our governor is as corrupt as the they come. The legislature is filled to the brim with teabaggers who try to pass as many laws to harm us as they can. Pam Bondi, our crappy AG, is the most hyper-partisan official according to the national and Florida bar.
The only branch that has saved us from devolving into complete tea-laden anarchy is our Supreme Court.
Rick Scott and his minion lawmakers have been OBSESSED with kicking off the three liberal justices on Florida's Supreme Court: the last thread of sanity in our state.
Right now, the Court is balanced. Despite cuts to their funding and repeated professional and personal attacks, the brave souls have been able to thwart the worst of the worst (the minority voter purge, the craziest of gerrymandering, outrageous constitutional amendments that outright lie, the repeated assault on our teachers, etc., etc.)
And boy they have suffered for it.
Rick Scott and his friends tried an insane witchhunt to throw those three justices off the Court. They even abused law enforcement resources in doing so.
It failed.
They tried a bizarre ploy to split the Court into two... putting the liberal justices on a new "criminal" court and leaving all legislative matters to the conservative justices.
That failed.
Then there was the unprecedented partisan assault during the three justices' merit retention last year. The Koch brothers used AFP to spend millions attacking these justices.
That failed too.
Last year, another ballot measure they forced upon us would have amended our state constitution to require that the state Senate interfere with judicial appointments.
That failed as well.
Four times. Four failures.
And here we are, just four months later, fifth time being charm, they FINALLY may have done it:
The Florida Senate passed a bill this week that could raise the stakes of this year’s gubernatorial election.
The bill, S.B. 1188, would allow the winner of this year’s election to appoint three new Florida Supreme Court Justices—replacing three of the state high court’s most liberal members.
According to The Florida Current, the bill passed in the Senate along party lines on Thursday, 26-14.
The House (which is also packed with teabaggers) will likely follow according to their leader, Will Weatherford.
Despite Scott lagging in the polls by a few points, the legislature is confident of a Rick Scott win (along with the amendment passing) due to traditional Democratic apathy in the midterms and their four-year, nonstop voter suppression efforts. To be clear, the goal here is to turn our independent judiciary into another partisan wing of Teapartistan.
No rest here, folks. Sh** just got real.
Rick Scott HAS to lose. No governor should get to pack the Court... let alone a criminal one. We've managed to defeat these underhanded bastards four times. We have to defeat them one more time or there will be no one to stand in the way of the brazen assaults on those with no special interest power.
Democrats, I know this a mid-term election. But if you think its bad now, imagine a Rick Scott with NO upcoming election and every branch at his disposal.
Don't get scared. Get active.