Good news, everyone! According to some outfit called the John Locke Foundation, which is based in North Carolina and apparently doesn’t visit often, Florida is not only the state where half-senile olds turn out in droves to elect baldheaded, Medicare-frauding cartoon ghouls governor (twice), but also the “freest” state in the nation. Of course, as the good folks at Reason remind, this can only be so if you ignore all the bullshit our cops do (and, I might add, the fact that we fought like hell against letting the gays marry and voted down medical marijuana at the Reefer Madness-style urging of the law enforcement establishment). But that’s okay, because the John Locke folks don’t really give a fuck about civil liberties or any other such hippie nonsense. Nope, it's all guns and taxes and vouchers and hating on Medicaid for the poors — they seem like such nice people — and Florida kicks everyone’s ass on that stuff:

Besides, the John Locke Foundation bypasses civil liberties issues to focus on fiscal policy, educational choice, regulatory incursions, and health care freedom.

(Health care freedom’s just another word for being able to die penniless in a gutter.)

New York is the “least free” state. California is No. 48. Funny how every cultural or technological innovation seems to pop out of those two, and never from Florida. Huh. Weird.

About those Civil Liberties

Here’s a heartwarming story of a Florida cop slapping a homeless dude for the high crime of wanting to peepee in a bathroom.

A video is being shared online of what appears to be a Fort Lauderdale Police officer pushing a man to the ground before delivering a vicious slap -- all because the man wanted to use a public restroom.

In the video, which appears to take place at the Broward Central Bus Terminal in downtown Fort Lauderdale, Bruce Laclair walks slowly through the terminal while the officer follows behind, slipping on latex gloves. Officer Victor Ramirez then grabs the man's arm, and the man jerks away -- that's when the officer pushes him to the ground.

Ramirez, of course, forgot to mention The Slap in his police report. He arrested the homeless man for trespassing. Now Ramirez is on paid administrative leave during an investigation, which will surely be thorough and not any sort of whitewash.

We Do Support the Freedom to Die, Though

Meet Craig Wall, who -- like many respectable denizens of Florida -- has no use for the “scumbag liberals” who try to help vicious murderers escape the needle they so richly deserve. Which would be unremarkable, except that Craig Wall is one of those vicious murderers, though he is embracing the needle rather than fleeing it. In fact, he only plea bargained after prosecutors agreed to try to kill him.

While seeking a death sentence in court Monday, 39-year-old Craig Wall of Clearwater rejected the efforts of The Florida Capital Resource Center, a group that provides resources for defendants in capital cases, to have an independent attorney appointed for him. Wall said he didn't want the help of "scumbag liberals" who think he can't make his own decisions, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

You Are Not Free to Beat the Shit Out of Your Kids, and Where Is the John Locke Foundation Now?

This nice lady in Hernando County — don’t even ask us where that is, we do not know — decided to teach her middle-school-aged daughter a lesson. And so she sent her daughter to school with a T-shirt on which she’s scrawled comments (yes, of course, the mother can’t spell either — “I am not aloud to have a boyfriend,” etc. — it’s Florida) about how her daughter was a shithead student who got all F’s and now she couldn’t have a boyfriend because they’d probably get 16 and Pregnant rather than study. Fine. I mean, a bit extreme on the parenting. But fine.

Except that Mother of the Year here also wrote about how no one should help her daughter because otherwise she’d get another “good woopin” [sic].

According to the affidavit, the victim was hit with a "leather belt with holes with metal divots, which left clear impressions in several places to include both arms, neck, chest, back and legs."

The deputy and a representative from the Department of Children and Families concluded the marks from the belt "appeared to be excessive."

She was arrested. If there’s a god in heaven the judge will make her wear a t-shirt around town with Magic Marker proclamations about what a horrible human being she is.

Freedom, Like Happiness, Is a Warm Gun

We will pass this along without comment:

A man in Volusia County went to the hospital because he had a headache, but doctors found a bullet lodged in his head. … They said he walked into the emergency room complaining about a bad headache, and when doctors took a closer look, they found a bullet lodged in his head.

And Now an Update on Our Lovely Presidential Candidates

Lastly, we shall keep you abreast of the doings of fine gentlemen Marco “Polo” Rubio and Jeb!™ “Not My Brother, Shut Up” Bush, both of whom are probably running for president on the I Can Make the Browns Like Republicans Again platform, which is going over with the Tea Party crowd about as well as you’d imagine.

Over at The Ghost of Breitbart, for instance, they’re getting all pissy about Jeb hiring a gay in his pre-presidential operation.

Republicans told the left-wing BuzzFeed that Bush may be evolving on the gay marriage issue … . Like with his pro-amnesty views, there is “nothing but upside” for Bush to signal to donors that he may be evolving on gay marriage. As BuzzFeed points out, the “GOP donor class – heavily concentrated in secular metropolitan centers where the LGBT culture wars don’t rate – generally supports marriage equality, and finds pulpit-pounding activists embarrassing.” And on the issue of amnesty for illegal immigrants, the GOP donor base and establishment finds the conservative base to be even more “embarrassing” than on the traditional marriage issue.

So Jeb, who cannot stomach the idea of being the GOP’s “moderate” — it didn’t work out all that well for Jon Huntsman, after all — has decided to cozy up to the homo-haters. At the annual compendium of stupid known as CPAC, he affirmed to laser-eyed baby detector Sean Hannity that he does not support marriage equality, or at least he thinks it should be a state thing, and yeah it sucks that the courts are making us marry the queers but what can you do, let’s move on. And then he went and met with hate-group dude Tony Perkins, who thinks that gays are pedos who will bring on a new Holocaust of Christians, and who supported that Kill the Gays bill in Uganda.

Other fun thing we learned about Jeb this week: His wife likes to shop. A lot. Like $42,000 in jewelry IN ONE DAY a lot. And then she tried to hide it from her husband, even when that meant lying to airport people and almost getting arrested. This may perhaps interfere with Jeb’s quest to convince us that he, the rich-as-fuck son and brother of a president, is actually a Man of the People.

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And then there’s Marco, who did not do much to amuse us this week, sadly, other than the FREEDOM™ not-Obamacare health care exchange he set up a few years ago failing so fucking hilariously miserably.

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After a teensy taxpayer investment of just $900,000, Florida Health Choices managed to sign up, um, like 30 people, which is almost as many as the 1 million-plus Floridians who got Socialism crammed down their throats, or the more than 750,000 poors whom the Florida Legislature is right now denying Medicaid coverage because freedom.

That’s all for this week. And cut back on the freedom fries, would you, Florida, you pudgy bastard.