Everybody's a druggie except Rick Scott

When we let corporate criminals like Florida's fascist Gov. Rick Scott serve in public office, this is what we can look forward to.

Today, Scott ordered all current and prospective state employees to undergo a drug test. The state didn't pass a law or anything. Rick Scott simply decreed that it shall be so. I guess he thinks the governorship is supposed to be an absolute monarchy.

This occurs on the same day that Scott's allies in the legislature introduced a bill that would not only require welfare recipients to take a drug test but also make them pay for the tests out of their own pockets.

They make them pay for it themselves? My, how very Nazi of them.

Gee, how nice of the Republicans to get government off people's backs and - oh, wait.

It just so happens that Rick Scott owns a chain of drug testing clinics.

This after a series of other outrages by Scott, including his gutting of a rail transport program and his announcement that he was refusing to abide by an anti-gerrymandering referendum. A recall election cannot come soon enough.

The ACLU points out that most drug testing of state employees was already ruled unconstitutional in 2004. An ACLU official says the state can't drug-test without "evidence of illegal drug use" and without the worker being "assigned a safety-sensitive job." More to the point, drug testing for most workers is just a 21st century version of the loyalty oath. Plus, drug testing of people on welfare has been ruled unconstitutional too.

If nothing else, this story reams a colossal Bazooka hole plumb through the right-wingers' argument that they simply don't want welfare checks being misspent - because Scott wants tests for state workers too. And throughout the recent nationwide debate on welfare drug testing (which has been coordinated by the Republican National Committee), it's stunning how much the other side openly declares that valid court rulings don't apply. Their own stated position can be summed up thus: "Who cares about the Constitution? We're going ahead with this anyway." Last time I remember politicians openly expressing such contempt for the Constitution was a quarter-century ago when Marc Racicot complained that America had "genuflected at the altar of free speech far too long."

Public officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution. That they violate it openly makes them subject to impeachment. Impeachment proceedings must commence lickety-split.

(Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/23/2130397/gov-rick-scott-orders-random-drug.html)