Don't Eat This At Home

The menu of Florida Blogs this week offers an assortment of delicious goodies. They range from the ridiculous (the Chicken King translations) to the sub-slime (U.S. Senator Mel Martinez).

First, an un-appetizer. Inspired by news that Florida agriculture officials recently "seized a truck... that was carrying 16 tons of rotten, unrefrigerated meat headed to Chinese restaurants in Jacksonville," Gainsville Report serves up his own restaurant story. You won't want to try this at home.

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Food was on the mind of Steve Koppleman over at Hatless as well. He reviewed a Hallandale Greek restaurant and a Lauderhill Mexican hot dog 'sitio'.

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Speaking of awkward translations of English food colloquialisms into Spanish, Hatless also links to an amusing story from California's Reason Online about the late 'Chicken King', Frank Perdue, and his failed attempt to translate into Spanish the marketing slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken." The story is embarrassing enough to leave juevos en su caro -- another English idiom that translates rather vulgarly into Spanish.

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That new Florida Gun-Fights-In-Public-Places law we made fun of earlier this week is arousing comment from other Florida blogs, too. Bark-Bark, Woof-Woof thinks a local news source got the headline right:

Florida NRA Bill Would Allow People To Kill Others In Public

Why Now? predicts "Gunfights At the Ocala Corral."

Over at Hotwax Residue you can find a link to a South Florida incident showing just what kind of mayhem the new law is likely to unleash in "public places" like Pensacola Beach. Tourists who are gunned down in "public places" like a beach aren't the only ones who are likely to disappear from Florida, Hotwax says:

"This bill is a horrible idea ... .[I]t has helped me make the decision that, the minute I have my PhD in hand, I am outta here and shall not return."

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On the same subject of deliberate murder, Anger Management notes with disgust the international company we are keeping when it comes to the 3,797 'official' Government executions in the world last year, as toted up in the annual report from Amnesty Intenational. Texas leads the nation in the death derby, of course, and we in the U.S. team once again made it into the Final Four, along with other "culture of life" nations like China, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia.

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If the intentions of Hot Wax Residue are evidence that bad laws in Florida will cause a brain drain away from the state, Infomaniac has proof that the brains of Florida's newly elected U.S. Senator, Mel Martinez, already have thoroughly drained away.

The poor man admitted late this week that his office authored, and he personally distributed, the infamous Terri Schaivo "talking points" memo. The memo urged Republicans to use Terri Schaivo's then-vegetative state for political advantage against fellow U.S. Senator Bill Nelson.

Mindful of the fact that it took a confession from Martinez and a public firing of his aide before the media got mildly interested, Florida News hands the press an insincere compliment for the "great job on their coverage, like they usually do." Florida Politics wasn't impressed, either. No more, apparently, than the unnamed "Florida Republican strategist" who also gave our state's newest senator the back of his hand. For Martinez, he said to a Florida newspaper, "It's just so familiar. It's never his fault."

Interstate 4 Jamming finds a link between Martinez' guilty aide and Tom Delay, who is looking more and more... well... despicable, as Situation Room points out. South of the Suwannee has more to say about political interference in the Schaivo case.

Both Flablog and Sticks Of Fire link to a growing chorus of critical comments about Senator Martinez in Florida newspapers. And the Palm Beach Post lists other Martinez maneuvers that have aroused bipartisan disapproval.

Another one may be brewing -- the apology that wasn't. As the Palm Beach Post reports:

"[Florida Senator Bill] Nelson's communications director, Dan McLaughlin, said Thursday: "While he (Nelson) had not received a personal call from Martinez, he read in the paper where Martinez was apologizing (to Nelson), and he accepts his apology."

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Representative Baxley's Academic 'Freedom to Sue Your Professor Bill' is catching the attention of Floridians, too. Blogwood discovers a lot of the college horror stories being passed around by supporters of the bill turn out to be crude campus legends. Flablog found another myth.

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In unrelated blogger views, Walmart is beginning to get it from all sides for its employment practices, including Florida Blues. BayCiti says Tampa politicians no longer have a Plan B if MacDill Air Force Base should be closed. And Discourse.net wonders why Congress has been so 'supine' when it comes to secret CIA detentions of ... well, we don't know who, where, or why. That's the point.

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"Forget what the Whigs stood for in 1852?" asks Dred . He's found a web site for all you poli-dorks out there who want to know what the official political party platforms said, going all the way back to 1840.

In whatever it was the Whigs stood for there might be a lesson for all those timorous Democrats who voted for the Schaivo Bill, the Gun-Fights-in-Public-Places legislation, and the Sue-Your-Professor idea.

Maybe it's time for the voters to take them out for a power lunch. Say, to a Chinese Restaurant in Jacksonville.