Morning Coffee Reading for April 17, 2012 (Yep, I'm Still Here)

OK, I have been a ridiculous slacker in posting here for the past two weeks. No, the blog isn't going away (as much as a few chuckleheads out there might wish that it might), I've just needed a little time to take care that whole "pack up my entire house, spend three and a half days driving to Massachusetts, and hit the ground running with a new campaign" thing.

1400 miles in a car? Yeah...good luck with that.

Moving always seems to be some sort of ritualized torture experiment, but I've settled into the new apartment (lots of thanks to some of my fellow Bielat campaign staffers for helping me move in!), the cat appears to have forgiven me (he does not like car trips, and by "does not like," I mean "howls like he's being lit on fire"), I'm mostly-kinda-sort of unpacked, the campaign had a solid first quarter,  and Sean was the first candidate in the district to qualify for the ballot, so that's all ticking along nicely.

Just think about how high the snow has
to be piled up for this to be necessary.

This area of southeastern Massachusetts is absolutely gorgeous, and I'm really liking it here, but I will admit I'm a bit worried about winter.

I've lived my entire life in a subtropical climate, and they get so much snow here they attach red-and-white painted poles to the fire hydrants so that when they're buried in snow, you can still know where they are with your car and not hit them (see photo at left). Yikes.

Anyway, I've got several posts I'll put up later this week, but just wanted to include a few links and tidbits here for you. I'm going to Charlotte, North Carolina at the end of the week for BlogCon, so stay tuned. Wonder if Charlotte's version of the Occupiers will come visit us like the Denver group did? That didn't turn out so well for them, but we got a kick out of it. Heh.

Consider this the revival of my morning coffee reading posts. Enjoy:

• Good decision by the RNC in hiring my friend Pablo Pantoja as their new Hispanic state director for Florida. 

• There's a bunch of chatter about Jeff Atwater considering getting into the Florida Senate race this week. Meh. I really like Atwater, but there's a huge difference between chatting about getting in, and actually getting in, a statewide race that will require millions of dollars just to survive the primary. Connie Mack still seems to be going full steam ahead, picking up an endorsement from the American Conservative Union (to be officially released this morning).

• A little birdie told me something interesting this week...apparently John Mica's Congressional campaign made a bit of a boneheaded move with their petitions for the ballot. Florida Statutes have strict requirements for what the form is supposed to look like, and you're not allowed to change anything, add anything, etc. Well, Mica spent a serious chunk of change printing out lots of petitions and mailing them to Republican voters around Central Florida. He even had a robocall to follow up with the petitions (I received one at my house before I left Orlando). Unfortunately, Mica's petitions had some sort of bar code they had added on the front page, violating the statute and causing all of the petitions to be thrown out. (For the record, I did call a local Supervisor of Elections and verify this story.) Bummer, huh?

• This has nothing to do with politics, but just cracked me up:

• Here's a WSJ article about Sean Bielat's race and the first quarter fundraising results.

• Good post by RedState's Erick Erickson about Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz. 

• For tax day (ugh!), here's a Daily Caller article by my Senator, Marco Rubio, about how today is a reminder about how broken our tax system really is.

• At 1:30 pm ET today, several conservative Republican members of Congress will be having a roundtable discussion moderated by the Heritage Foundation for bloggers and press called "Conversations with Conservatives." Participants from Florida will include Representatives Allen West and Sandy Adams. 

Topics will include tax reform, Obama's proposed “Buffett Rule,” etc. Questions can be submitted via Twitter with the hashtag #CWC. More information here.

Live embed of event (if the video below doesn't work, click here):

Live video from your Android device on Ustream

• Finally, I'd like to send a very appreciative thank you to everyone who voted for Sunshine State Sarah in the Orlando Sentinel's "Best Bets 2012" contest. I won "Best Local Blogger." I'm very honored by how many of you continue to enjoy my little corner of the internet here. Thanks. :)