Best Of The Blogs: Doubling Down

Progress Florida Education Center’s Best of the Blogs for the week ending 4-19-13
Best of the Blogs is featured weekly as part of Progress Florida Education Center’s popular free Daily Clips service.

Marco Rubio To 91% Of Americans: Take Your Freedom Of Speech And Shove It
By Martha Jackovics
Beach Peanuts
After cowardly threatening to filibuster any debate on gun legislation and refusing to take calls from the daughter of a Newtown victim, Marco Rubio proudly put his vote where his mouth was to vote against a debate on guns laws in the presence of Newtown victim families on the Senate floor today.

Florida Republicans Push Legislation Targeting Non-English Speaking Voters
By Scott Keyes
Think Progress
Non-English speakers could soon find it more difficult to cast a ballot in Florida, despite federal protections for those citizens who speak another language.

Florida House health plan an anti-Obamacare Hail Mary
By Daniel Tilson
West Palm Beach Liberal Examiner
Anti-Obamacare political posturing trumped practical policy-making in Tallahassee Thursday, as conservative Republicans in control of the House of Representatives released an improbable “alternative” plan for insuring Florida’s poorest citizens.

Florida Democrats Need To Retire “Swing Voter” Myth: No Diet Republicans Needed in 2014
By Kartik Krishnaiyer
The Florida Squeeze
With buzz around the state focusing on Governor Charlie Crist and his Gubernatorial prospects, we once again hear from different quarters that Crist needs to be nominated because “he can win,” and that the only current announced Democratic candidate Senator Nan Rich is “unelectable.”

FL GOP Want to End Local Control of Schools; Except When They Don’t to Get Parent Trigger Passed
By Bob Sikes
Scathing Purple Musings
So Republican Altamonte Springs senator David Simmons has crafted an amendment to Parent Trigger which he says was inspired by a letter from education commissioner Tony Bennett.

Notes from the vomitorium
By Gimleteye
Eye on Miami
Economists use “digestion” as a metaphor describing years of slack growth and difficulty of absorbing excess housing stock from the housing boom and bust.