There has been quite a bit of hemming and hawing about the death penalty recently. Six states in six years — Maryland most recently, thanks to Esquire's favorite BFF, Martin O'Malley — have abolished it. Ah, but that's not to reckon with the great state of Florida, which this week will decide to grease the wheels of state-sanctioned killing, thanks to Governor Rick Scott, who really doesn't have fk-all to lose at this point.

Governor Bat Boyis poised to sign the Timely Justice Act — Somebody grab Orwell before he throws himself off a cloud — which will restrict the right of Death Row inmates to appeal their sentences. The bill was passed through the legislature with the usual cool reason that we've come to expect from Republican state legislatures since the voters of the several states decided to make monkeyhouses out of them in 2010.

"Only God can judge," Matt Gaetz, a Republican who sponsored the bill in the House of Representatives, said last week during House debate. "But we sure can set up the meeting."

You're an imbecile. Bite me.

And it's not like Florida doesn't already have its big old thumb on the scale anyway.

State Senator Darren Soto tried on Friday to raise the required jury vote from seven to 10 for death penalties. He said Florida is the only state allowing juries to recommend death by a simple majority of 7 to 5. He said Alabama is the only other state allowing non-unanimous death recommendations, which he said require 10 votes there.

So Florida elects a crook to be its governor, and he will now decide that the state can kill other criminals faster. This is nuts. I'm telling you, when the historians write one day about how and when this country went off the rails, the 2010 elections are going to look like the Black Death.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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