The current drama in Tallahassee is obscuring something far more consequential for Floridians that came out this legislative session: what to do with the constitutional review committee.

Last month the House and Senate passed by pretty large margins a measure to get rid of the CRC. The 37-member Constitutional review Commission meets every 20 years to make proposals to change the constitution. These proposals can be virtually unlimited in scope, since they go to the voters in the same way that a constitutional amendment by petition would.

The abolition of this committee is less a partisan issue than it might seem at first glance. After all, the conventional narrative is that the GOP, since it controls the state and wants to maximize that control as any political party would, wants to abolish the committee so that it can prevent opposition leaders from governing by amendment. But SJR 204, the measure to abolish the CRC, passed with only 12 no votes in the Senate. Interestingly, the soon to be new Senate Democratic leader (Book) was not present for the vote. There are sixteen Democrats in the Florida Senate, so four agreed with this idea. That’s a quarter of the caucus.

The same is true in the Florida House: the measure to abolish the CRC only got 28 no votes, and there are 42 Democrats in the House.

Sure, it’s true that the CRC is a little vestigial. If there’s already a way for people to propose amendments why have a committee that meets every 20 years appointed by political elites propose its own amendments? And while there is some truth to that, politics isn’t about truth. Politics is about intent and timing.

First, the timing. the last time the CRC met was in 2018. That year the CRC proposed an amendment that created a whole new set of restrictions against lobbying. Included in those restrictions was a ban on lobbying for money by current public officers and former court judges or justices. It also specifically prohibits abuse of power for personal gain and creates penalties for politicians who do so. It mandates public disclosure of campaign contributions. It would prevent politicians from becoming lobbyists for two years after they leave office.

Not surprisingly, given all the good things contained therein, that amendment recommended by the CRC passed overwhelmingly in 2018 when it was voted on by the people of Florida. Two years after the people of Florida voted to force politicians to behave with a sense of decency, those politicians turned around and decided to abolish the commission that came up with the idea.

So don’t worry, there’s a new bipartisan consensus in Tallahassee: killing ethics reforms and punishing the people who bring them forward. Just in case you were worried nothing ever got done anymore.

You might have an opinion about Chad or about Hanging Chad’s. And that’s fine. But hey, at least we’re not the Palmer Report.

I’ve read some bad political takes in my day. I’ve read some sloppy editorial work. I’ve read, with increasing frequency in recent years, the crummy and crumbling merger of both of those things into a dumbass political soup that no one is satisfied with but everyone retweets like it’s gold.

But I have never read something as desperate as this. The “Palmer Report”, an LA-based-because-of-course-it-is progressive think tank pretending to be news, has announced that Ron DeSantis has a 70 percent chance of losing his re-election bid. Ron DeSantis. In case you were asking, I did check and I don’t think this is a crossover from a parallel universe situation.

This is the same Palmer Report that was convinced Ron would lose in ’18. So we know they know what they’re talking about.

Look, in case it needs to he stated yet again and it does appear it needs to be stated yet again, the Florida Democratic Party is on life support. Its story is both tragic and farcical. Someday I might do a full autopsy but for now just imagine someone shooting themselves in both knee caps and then insisting that they can still compete in the Tour de France. Better yet, imagine betting your house on a passing competition with Tom Brady and considering it a stroke of strategic brilliance. Now imagine buying a new house every two years and repeating the same wager growing more and more confident that if you just keep doing the same thing over and over you’ll win someday.

This is where the Florida Democrats find themselves. They have lost their registration advantage. Their infrastructure across the state is falling apart faster than AMTRAK. They have an unhealthy obsession with begging Charlie Crist to run for every open seat they think they can win. This is what the Palmer Report is betting their chips on. I’d call it sad, but truth be told they did it to themselves.

Look, it’s probably not all the Palmer Report’s fault. Even in very red or very blue states, there are still generally two functioning parties. The Florida Democrats simply do not function. But even if they functioned at optimal performance, that’s not the issue at hand here. They don’t have anyone who can beat Ron Desantis. Their best candidate isn’t running. Yes, anything can change, the last year has taught us that in spades. But right now, DeSantis is probably the safest governor in the country.

I don’t think we have needed a holiday more than this year, collectively, globally. We have not seen the kind of change we have seen this year in a century, and 2020 is probably just the start. This decade is bound to be one of transformation, but even so I think 2020 will stand out as something unique and terrible.

We lost something in 2020. Not because of a global pandemic or a tough election. We lost the concept that things can only happen to us with our consent. In a year that felt so much out of pir control it felt at times like all we were doing was watching a coked out guy in a Hitler costume drive us into the mouth of a volcano. We couldn’t control the pandemic, the hurricane season, the wildfire season, this election, even though those things were the result of collective decisions we made not to face our reckoning as a society until it came. As individuals we couldn’t control those things.

But we could, and can, control how we treat other people and how we show respect. The greatest tragedy of this year, the loss of a sense of what it even means to be an American, is reversible. All we have to do is start treating people like equals, like how we would want to be treated. It’s easy in these days of instant stereotyping to write off the millions of people who we disagree with as stupid, below us, not worth our time or our resources. But in doing that we are writing off fellow human beings who laugh, cry, love, suffer, bleed, and age exactly like we do. There is no fundamental difference in genetic substructure between us and the people we disagree with, and it’s time we accept that.

This is the Holiday Season. It doesn’t matter your beliefs, everyone wants the same thing when they see the rest of the world celebrating with family. They want to feel connected again to their own home. Especially this year, home is the common ground that if we weren’t so blind we would realize towers over our disagreements. So, go home. Smile more. Enjoy your holiday. Remember that people want the same basic things in life and that we are all part of the same species. And remember that no one can make you hate anyone else without your consent.

Most of us have heard about Keyontae’s collapse on the court over the weekend and the inspiring story that followed, where the team voted to keep on playing after the injury.

We’re picking up where that story, and too many stories about athletes cut down by injury, leave off. After the collapse Keyontae was rushed to a Gainesville hospital and underwent a medically induced coma. As of Monday afternoon the staff responsible for his care reported that he was “following simple commands” and undergoing further tests. Reporters had been hounding Johnson’s grandfather trying to get answers and updates and were told, unsurprisingly that no one is entirely sure what happened yet.

Keyontae started his care at Tallahasse Memorial before being transferred to a Gainesville facility operated by UF Health. It could be interpreted as a move to better protect his privacy, or to get him much needed specialist care. While Keyontae’s grandfather mentioned possible brain damage as a concern UF Health doctors also floated the possibility that Johnson could have suffered cardiac damage.

Keyontae was seemingly born to make magic happen on the court. We can’t vouch for whether this is true but we have seen it repeated in several places across the internet that he was born when his parents were on the way to a Florida State game. That’s almost written for a 90s feel-good sports movie. So was the scene on the court when his teammates cried and prayed for him in the huddle. Indeed the only part a movie would likely change is the outcome of the game itself.

Keyontae is a pretty private person and not active on social media with the exception of a Twitter account. For his sake we do hope that the public and the media respect his privacy, and we will do everything we can to bring you updates and uplifting facts about Keyontae from a distance, so as to respect that privacy.

We’d like to make a personal appeal to all of you reading this. With everything happening around the world this year it might seem like the last person who needs our love and support is a popular college athlete. But Keyontae is more than that; he is a beacon of hope in the UF community. He is proof that hard work and dedication can take you places, even in these times. And he was like family to the rest of his team. Please take a moment and pray for him, or lift him up in your own way, rather than letting his story get drowned amidst politics and pandemics. People like Keyontae are our nation’s future and we owe a debt both on and off the court.

How do you. It’s a serious question.

For millions of Americans and millions of Floridians, politics has become little more than cheering in the stands during a soccer game. If you’re a soccer fan or been to a match you know that possibly the most fun part about it is cheering like a drunken barbarian in the bleachers for the team of your choice. As an aside, I do notice that the less often people score in a particular sport, the more drinking and cheering is involved. But that’s neither here nor there. Politics has become exactly like that for too many people. Their party/candidate is their team, and they would rather die for their team than admit their team made an error to someone outside the community. But at the same time they are the most ruthless towards people inside their team.

That’s politics today. It’s more than tribalism. Study ancient tribal politics in most bronze age societies and you will discover a far more complicated and nuanced picture than you see in Florida in 2020. People treat politics like a spectator sport, and they think that if they cheer loudly enough they might just be able to change how the game is going.

So we’re back, to try and cover this mess. Chad’s head hurts just thinking about it. But when the game is over and the hangover comes, people are going to feel lost, and they will look to the internet for answers, because of course they will. And as long as that continues we want to be there to provide answers and ask questions that at the very least are not clinically insane.

So what will be covering? It’ll be an ongoing list, subject to change based on our resources. But we have a few things we want to explore on this blog and there is no better time than the end of 2020. We want to explore neuroscience and how that’s changed politics over the last decade, how foreign actors have neutered American politics on both sides of the aisle, new developments in Cuba and Venezuela, the continued sad saga of the Florida Democratic Party as it strives for 50th best state party in the country, and more as it becomes relevant.

Would we rather fade into obscurity? Maybe. Reality, however, demands that we do not. We are increasingly stuck between two political echo chambers