I have to admit, I was a little nervous when I looked out here. I saw all the TV cameras and a teleprompter. I figured President Obama must be here — giving another speech about raising taxes!

- Florida Gov. Rick Scott (GOPT), who actually read this lame quip from a teleprompter, according to a reporter in the room. The punchline was underlined to remind the governor to play it for laughs.

RUBIO: These programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government’s job.

Part of the series, Assault on Florida.
Who ordered Sumter County, Fla., deputies to prevent Democrats from attending GOP Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s budget-signing event in the public square at The Villages, a retirement community, on May 26?
And why did the deputies wade into the crowd assembled at the square and confiscate what a Miami [...]

Part of the series, Assault on Florida.
Last week, Florida’s already wildly unpopular new Republican governor, Rick Scott, issued an executive order requiring state employees to submit to drug tests at least four times a year.
Last night, Rachel Maddow cited Scott’s order to illustrate the wide gap between Republican campaign rhetoric about small government and the [...]

Part of the series, Assault on Florida.
It’s only been in session for three weeks, but Florida’s Republican Legislature is in full swing and our new governor is feeling his beans. Here’s a roundup of state politics from this week:

Gov. Rick Scott signed his first bill into law, eliminating tenure for new teachers and tying [...]

Part of the series, Assault on Florida.
This is the first installment in an ongoing series, “Assault On Florida,” that chronicles Rick Scott’s disastrous tenure as governor and the antics of the Republican-dominated state legislature.
Buried in an article in the South Florida Business Journal that ran Tuesday was a whole list of businesses that [...]