Florida man vs Florida mosquito

"Rep. David Jolly Brings Florida Mosquitoes Onto House Floor to Discuss Zika" (video at the link)

"I rise with about 100 mosquitoes straight from Florida...mosquitoes capable of carrying the Zika virus," Jolly said, holding the container. "This is the reason for the urgency, this is the reason for the fear."

"It is our job to respond to the fear and the anxiety and the anger of a population concerned about a pending public health crisis, concerned about mosquitoes," he said. "You see, I brought these mosquitoes here today to convey that fear and that anxiety of millions of Americans and Floridians."

Link

Evie Hudak, gone

But not forgotten.

Third in a series of Colorado recalls by voters angry with unwanted firearms legislation and the heavy-handed disrespectful way the legislation was passed. Gone, but hardly contrite. Her resignation letter:

"Most Coloradans believe that going through a background check is a reasonable thing to do if it means we can keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals. Most Coloradans believe that the convenience of high-capacity magazines is less important than saving lives in tragedies like Sandy Hook, Aurora, and Columbine. Most Coloradans believe that people under restraining orders for domestic abuse should not be able to endanger those around them by keeping their guns. That's why I sponsored SB 13-197, a bill that takes guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and will save the lives of many women caught in abusive relationships. I am proud of what has been accomplished over the last year, and I believe these bills will make life better for all the people of my district and for all Coloradans.

By resigning, I am protecting these important new laws for the good of Colorado and ensuring that we can continue looking forward."

It was a close race. She won by 300 votes. The Independent candidate peeled off 3,000 votes from the Republican. She resigned so that a Democrat can slip into her vacated seat, if recalled her seat would certainly go to a Republican and with it control of the legislature.

Desperate people do desperate things like this:

That was cut from  a longer video, the host Jon Caldara speaks with guest reporter Todd Shepherd about how campaigners for the second recall Hudak attempt used i-pads to pre-verify signatures so that there was something like 90% accuracy or better, some remarkable figure, seems a simple enough thing to verify signatures before turning them in rather than after. They didn't need to come so close to what the law requires because so many of the signatures are solid. The point is they learned from the previous recall efforts how to counter a lot of these dirty rotten no good stinking filthy disgusting dith pickable low-down conniving underhanded activytahs that flow so naturally we've become inured and expect the lowest from them. 

Got Wood?

Trees use a rigid natural polymer called lignin* to stand upright against gravity. It's the arboreal analog of cellulose in plants -- the very molecular scaffold on which a plant hangs its inner workings. But lignin interferes with the extraction of sugars from trees for biofuels. A work around solution is to genetically modify certain trees to have less lignin and thus to be less rigid, according to a recent article in Science.