The Florida House of Representatives spent Wednesday in a mammoth full session, preparing for debate and a vote on its initial budget on Thursday.

While the Senate passed its first budget without any opposition and adjourned for the Easter holiday, the House plowed through amendments, reports from appropriation committee chairs, conforming bills and second readings of appropriation bills.

I do believe, or want to, that most teachers are dedicated professionals who care deeply about educating children.

Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government.

When the Republicans shocked the liberal media elite by winning back Congress in 1994, they had been demonized for months. But it took the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995 for Bill Clinton and all of his "objective" media devotees to really pull the violence card and smear that mass murder all over Newt Gingrich and conservative Republicans, blaming it on their "anti-government" rhetoric.

What a difference $2,000 in a lesbian bondage strip club makes.

Then again, the latest Republican National Committee scandalita (Press three for Spanglish: "Small scandal") is, alas, just that -- the latest in a string of problems plaguing the RNC when it should be stocking champagne for November.

Who are these goofballs?

Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer, whom Gov. Charlie Crist hand picked to lead the party, is the subject of a criminal investigation for authorizing a sweetheart deal between the party and a company in which he owned a majority interest.

On Tuesday, current RPOF Chairman Sen. John Thrasher, of Jacksonville, released an independent audit of the RPOF that he had ordered after taking over the state party.

Bowing to resistance from the Department of Corrections, Senate Republicans scaled back their prison privatization plans Wednesday.

But the DOC is still directed to open the new 2,224-bed Blackwater River Correctional Facility as a privately operated facility by the GEO Group.

GEO, which built the $110 million Panhandle prison per state contract, can operate the facility for $5.7 million less per year than the state, according to the Department of Management Services. Those savings are based on GEO's daily contract cost of $41 per inmate vs. $48 projected by the DOC.