The Florida Legislature is kind of like that family friend who comes and crashes your pad for two weeks, rearranges everything in your cupboards, tells you exactly what kind of person you are, and then leaves so you can live in the mess they just created.
After two more quick months of politicking and haranguing, the Florida legislators have disappeared once more -- just like that -- into 10 more months of hibernation. Will we miss them? Likely not.
But do they deserve self-congratulation? Is there a profound sense of accomplishment? Are we, as a state, proud of the work done? Answer: This is the Florida Legislature.
See also: - The Nine Most Attention-Grabbing Bills in the Florida Legislature
For an institution more defined by dysfunciton and failure than by progress of thinking and success, here are the most profound screw ups served up by our boys and gals in Tallahassee.
5. Revenge Porn Earlier this year, state Rep. Tom Goodson proposed criminalizing revenge porn so Floridians couldn't smear their exes by posting naked videos and images of them on the Internet. It would have been a felony to post someone's personal information alongside photographs of them naked. Passing this one seems like common sense, right?
Not so for Florida's vaunted Legislature. Along came Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fort Walton Beach) who offered three amendments which would have made the bill ineffectual. He wanted to make the offense a misdemeanor, give offenders 48 hours to remove the photograph, or exclusively punish offenders who obtained the photograph's surreptitiously.
Ka-plow. Goodson (R-Titusville) rejected the amendments, and the bill stalled.
