Former national Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean downgraded the tea party phenomenon the other day, saying: "It's the last gasp of the 55-year-old generation and not the first gasp of the new generation. ... This is the last gasp of the generation that has trouble with diversity and the new generation doesn't." The 62-year-old Dean, who hails from that oh-so-diverse state of Vermont, drew this riposte from Florida tea partier Phil Russo (age 29):

Rep. Rob Schenck, R-Springhill, who leads the Health and Human Services Committee in the Florida House cheered the news that six more states were joining Floridas constitutional challenge of federal health care laws backed by President Barack Obama.

Gov. Rick Scott spoke out in praise of the six states -- Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Maine -- that are joining Florida's lawsuit against the federal health-care law passed last year. Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a motion earlier Tuesday to add the states to the suit. Here's the governor's statement:

On Tuesday, Gov. Rick Scott named David Wilkins to head up the Department of Children and Families. Wilkins, who had been with Accenture Health and Public Service, was serving as finance chairman of the Florida Baptist Childrens Home. David's passion for child-care issues and the human services business, along with his decades of management experience in business and charities, will serve this agency well as it protects Floridas families," said Scott.

Rapper Luther Campbell says he will run for mayor of Miami if current mayor Carlos Alvarez is ousted in the recall election set for March 15. Campbell, the former 2 Live Crew frontman and onetime adult-film star, now writes a column for Miami New Times, where he laid out his agenda:

The State Board of Education set out $31.3 million in fines for public schools and another $355,000 for charter schools Tuesday for exceeding Florida's class-size limits, but the fines could have been much higher.

While all eyes are on Washington as congressional Republicans begin their push to repeal federal health-care laws backed by President Barack Obama, Attorney General Pam Bondi, continuing the constitutional challenge to these laws launched by then-Attorney General Bill McCollum last year, announced six more states are looking to join as plaintiffs.

Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers reports Tuesday that law enforcement agencies are investigating an threat e-mailed to state Rep. William Snyder, R-Stuart, author of an Arizona-like immigration bill that he has yet to file. The threat came to Snyder's Stuart legislative office an hour after the mass fatal shooting in Arizona that also left Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords with a critical head wound.

While he may have been in Congress for less than two weeks, Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross is making an impression -- being chosen to lead the Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce under the umbrella of the full Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Business leaders and charity organizers wrote to Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday calling for the elimination of hurricane taxes on insurance premiums. The leaders argued that Citizens Property Insurance Corp. and the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (Cat Fund) have failed -- with Florida taxpayers still paying off damages from storms back in 2004 and 2005.

Pro-life leader Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue who may be best known to Floridians for his role as the spokesman for Terri Schiavos parents and for his challenge of state Sen. Jim King in the Republican primary back in 2006, will announce on Thursday that he will run against President Barack Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries.

Mark Hinkle, the chairman of the Libertarian Party, offered lukewarm praise for President Barack Obama easing travel and financial restrictions on Cuba. The president has shown less-than-tremendous courage here, said Hinkle on Tuesday. I suppose it's a tiny positive step that our government will permit Americans to send $500 to a Cuban every three months. And churches will be allowed to arrange trips to Cuba, as long as they jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops first.

Lanny Wiles, a longtime fixture of Florida and national politics who most recently served on Rick Scotts team, has joined the Advocacy Group at Cardenas Partners. Al Cardenas, a senior partner at the Advocacy Group, announced Wiles was joining their team on Tuesday.

With 2012 looming on the horizon, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called on Tuesday for Congress to repeal the health care law passed last year with the support of President Barack Obama. Huckabee, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, offered strong support for repeal which will be pushed by the new Republican majority in the U.S. House on Wednesday.

Some numbers to ponder as you sit in traffic and contemplate the cost of high-speed rail in Florida: There are 448,800 feet in the 85-mile trip from Tampa to Orlando. The average passenger bus is 55 feet long. Placed end to end, it would take 8,160 buses to reach 85 miles. At an average cost of $200,000 per bus, the cost would total $1.632 billion (roughly half the high-speed rail's projected $3 billion-plus price tag)