A weekly look at the Tampa Bay area and national politics from a conservative viewpoint – plus a helping of sports and lifestyle items. Warning: not everything printed here should be taken at face value.

That troublesome Amendment Four

The most recent “victory” for Amendment Four backers isn’t really a victory. This mess promulgated by a sloppy constitutional amendment initiative will end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. When you are limited to a certain number of words, as are Florida constitutional amendments, you leave room for vagaries open for everybody’s interpretation – specifically the “complete the terms of their sentence” line in the ballot issue. The devil is in the details of what complete terms of their sentence includes. Is it all court costs and fines? Is it all restitution – which it should be? In the end, the nation’s highest court will decide this. In the meantime, felon’s voting rights, or lack of, will hang in the balance.

Great Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. It took about a New York minute for Mike Bloomberg to politicize a world-wide health epidemic. Disgusting.

2. TIA has announced some modest increases in parking prices. Unless another revolt occurs like it did a couple years back, it will soon cost more to park at the Clearwater Marina than at TIA – outrageous.

3. Uber announces that rides soon can be secured by calling a phone number. What a concept!

4. In honor of the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day, every automobile in the bay area is currently green – or is it the pollen combined with no rain?

5. Idle question - what percentage of remarks attributed to Mark Twain and Yogi Berra did they actually say?

Sports, media and other stuff:

6. It was one of the best pieces of fiction we ever read. Clive Cussler who started his string of successful novels with Raise the Titanic died last week at age 88. He authored over 80 novels in his career.

7. Suddenly our mornings seem a lot less phony – just saying.

8. Yes, we are as confused as you are about the future of Jameis Winston and the Bucs. NFL.com predicts that the most likely landing spot for the bewildering quarterback is …. The Bucs. The next likely teams according to NFL.com are the Raiders (wouldn’t that be interesting?) and the Colts. Stay tuned.

9. With baseball’s tradition of bobble head, T-Shirt and cap giveaways, our son has come up with the ultimate giveaway idea – a miniature garbage can lid with a small mallet for when a certain AL West team comes to town.

10. Our Remembering segment from last week reminds us that a lot of the younger folks attending Phillie’s spring games this year never attended a game at the revered Jack Russell Stadium. And there are an even bigger bunch of fans (your Humble Blogger included) who never attended a game at the original Phils venue – Green Field.

Now, there are six

With the National’s feel-good win of the World Series last year under former Rays coach Davy Martinez, there are now only a half dozen teams who have never won the World Series. They are the Brewers, Mariners, Padres, Rangers, Rockies and, of course, our Rays. The good news, according to Las Vegas, is of the six teams, the Rays have the best chance to win it all at 25-1 with the Brewers the second best chance at 50-1. The Mariners are the longest shot at 500-1.

NEXT UP: Trading careers; The 94^th; TBRR turns six

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