South of the Suwannee

"The day we privatize our public roads and turn them over to private companies
is the day we start selling this great state off," said Rep. Jack Seiler,
D-Wilton Manors. "It's going to be a big mistake."

This in response to Governor Crist signing a bill that will allow private corporations to build and operate toll roads in Florida. The Florida Turnpike is exempt from a sell-off, but other state roads appear to be fair game.

How long will it be before the rush to reduce property taxes causes some lawmakers to see our state roads as a potential source of government revenues. Sure, Floridians will probably pay more in the long run, but this would be ready cash . . . now!

And best of all, they still can claim that they lowered our taxes.

Roy Edroso notes that teenage pranks are an endangered species:

It's too seldom mentioned that one of the most obvious bad effects of the War of Whatever has been the pressure it puts on young people -- or, rather, the excuse it gives to the sort of petty tyrants who always like to make kids' lives hell to go absolutely bonkers . . . .

Kids can get suspended these days for their MySpace pages or for holding up a goofy sign. They can get arrested for drawing cartoons.

I don't doubt that if today's students tried to pull a stunt like the one we did toward the end of our high school year -- picking up a teacher's Sunbeam Tiger and carrying it to the middle of the football field -- there would be charges of grand theft auto.

The Bush administration is making a new run at mandatory sentences for federal crimes.

In 2005, the Supreme Court declared such a program unconstitutional.

The administration, and Republicans who are looking for something to run on in 2008, will frame this initiative as a "tough on crime" bill.

It's hardly clear, however, if there is any real problem with the sentences currently being handed down by judges -- many of whom have been appointed by Republican presidents.

Radio station WIOD, AM 610, has been the official channel for emergency information from Broward County government for the past year. The County Commission, all Democrats, balked at renewing the deal Tuesday, unable to stomach the station also being home to Limbaugh's talk show.

If the commissioners can get as good a deal on another station, why not? After all, it's not like WIOD has that big a reach -- its audience size is ranked behind 14 other South Florida radio stations.

Another vapid column by the Sun-Sentinel's Kingsley Guy today -- He opines that the essential south runway extension at FLL took too long because everyone got their say. Not like in China, he states, where big projects get done fast.

Guy admits that, of course, we don't want to be like China, and we can't just ignore people's interest or the environment, but . . . well, there isn't any but; he has no suggestions or solutions.

Perhaps this column would have had some value if he had written it a year ago. It's a lot easier to say these things after the fact, however.

James Fallows recounts his recent medical procedure at the Shanghai Skin Disease and Sexually Transmitted Disease Hospital.

I watched parts of last night's Democratic presidential candidates debate, and got a little irritated (as did some of the candidates) at the "raise you hand" hypothetical questions posed by Wolf Blitzer.

As I believe Hillary Clinton pointed out, they didn't provide enough information for a president to make a decision (current president excepted, of course).

Seems to me that they fell into the same category as "If the Grand Canyon was filled with meat loaf, would you share some with the starving people of Africa?"

Lileks has a revelation about GWB:

What really irks me more than the Administration’s mulishness is their tone-deaf replies to the [immigration] bill’s opponents, and it really is Le Straw Finale.

Of course now that he's out of straws, Lileks lets loose with a few other pent-up complaints,

. . . to the list of lesser mistakes to which any administration composed of human-type people is prone, add the ham-fistery evident in their handling of those events, add the attenuated death of the Bush doctrine, interred quietly in the first bilateral talks with Iran since the war began almost three decades ago, and add the nagging, itchy suspicion that Iranian involvement in the Iraq conflict might have been turned away at an earlier opportunity with a judicious, gravity-assisted MOAB in a crucial industrial facility, and you have a general Throwing Up of The Hands on the right. Self-inflicted wounds, every one of them.

Ah, but who gave him the knives, Jimmy?