Think long and hard about giving felons the vote

Last month, a federal court of appeals rightfully agreed that the state of Florida does not have to willy-nilly grant voting rights to every felon who completes their prison terms. It will now be in the hands of the voters who, one hopes, will look hard at the crop of potential voters they would enfranchise. Truth be told, it may not matter as there has never been any accurate measure of how many of these model citizens ever took the time to cast a ballot. We guess they were too occupied with peddling drugs, stealing cars or counterfeiting bills. The silver lining is even if this improvident measure passes, murderers and rapists (at least those who could not bargain down their crimes) will still be barred from the ballot box. The not so silver lining is Florida would be adding 1.2 million people to voter rolls who have demonstrated little regard for the law.

Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. Floridians will soon smoke medical marijuana. Oh goody, that will make our roads so much more interesting.

2. This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the last biennial legislative session in Florida. Many observers feel we should return to every other year legislatures feeling less harm would be done if legislators meet only every other year.

3. Quote of the week: “I’d win in a landslide”. Blustery ambulance chaser John Morgan on what would have happened if he had run for governor. We think not.

4. 14-year-old Karthik Nemmani is this year’s National Spelling Bee champ. He should have been given the prize for simply spelling his own name. Without our meds, we occasionally have trouble with our name – the third most used first name and 25^th most common surname.

5. You’ve lived in Clearwater a long time if you ate at the Owl Diner on Park Street – now part of the footprint of the PSTA bus station.

Sports, media and other stuff:

6. Roseanne Barr was justifiably cashiered for her insensitive twitter last week. But the sad thing is that similar diatribes from the left appear every day on TV, the internet and elsewhere, and the lunatic fringe authors live to tell the tale – witness the consistently disgusting Samantha Bee’s latest.

7. We’ve prepared a treatise on what we perceive as the value and advantages of sabermetrics in baseball. It is attached at the end of this week’s blog.

8. Sports quote of the week: “The Rays keep playing for tomorrow and tomorrow never seems to come”- crack baseball analyst Ken Rosenthal.

9. NBA finals – our crack prediction team likes Golden State in seven – and hopefully before baseball’s All-Star break.

10. We continue our rundown of MLB franchises’ best player/pitcher since 1950. This week we feature another storied franchise – the Brooklyn/LA Dodgers and turn to a fellow baseball fan and friend since the third grade – not to mention a long time Dodger fan. His picks were the incomparable Sandy Koufax as their best pitcher and picking from a bunch of Hall of Famers on the offensive side like Campy, Duke, Jackie and Gil (who should be there); he picks their elite outfielder for 16 years – Duke Snider. And he votes an honorable mention to a non-player but certainly a Dodger legend – Vin Scully.

Induct Anka and Sedaka before they reach Rock n’ Roll Heaven

We feel it important to mention at least once a year the absence of Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The two men combined for 83 charted records and six number one hits – plus writing dozens of songs for others including Sinatra, the 5^th Dimension, Connie Francis, Captain and Tennille and Buddy Holly. There is a petition on the internet for Sedaka – probably one for Anka as well, but we can’t research it as we have been without internet access for two days thanks to the knuckleheads at Spectrum. These two guys are 76 and 79 respectively. They need to go into the Hall while they can still savor it.

UP NEXT: Giants’ best, Roku, Nelson’s weak memory

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