Block That Vote: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared on Fox News yesterday, the house organ for  the Republican party, to sign a bill that will make it harder to vote in his state. All other press and media were excluded from the event.

  Despite earlier declaring that Florida staged a clean and transparent vote last November, DeSantis signed the bill that has stricter voter ID requirements for voting by mail and limits on who can pick up and return a voter’s ballot. 

  “Me signing this bill says: Florida, your vote counts, your vote is going to be cast with integrity and transparency and this is a great place for democracy,” he said.

  A voting rights group has already sued to kill the new law.

  Republican legislatures across the country are ginning up bills they hope will deter a repeat of the massive Democratic turnout last fall. They say they’re fighting election fraud, but for some of these Republican-controlled legislatures, a fraudulent vote is one cast for a Democratic candidate.

  The Texas legislature is moving forward with a bill that would  give power to partisan poll watchers and prohibit election officials from mailing out absentee ballot applications. It’s a solution without a problem, but Briscoe Cain, the Republican sponsor of the bill, said he had filed it “to ensure that we have an equal and uniform application of our election code and to protect people from being taken advantage of.”

  Meanwhile in Arizona, which famously went for Joe Biden, a private company commissioned by the Republican-controlled legislature is conducting a recount of the vote in Maricopa County, and the Justice Department is worried about it.

  A letter from the Civil rights Division to the state senate president says the state putting  2.1 million ballots from the state’s most populous county in the hands of a private contractor might intimidate voters as well as being a breach of federal law requiring ballots to remain in the control of elections officials for 22 months.

Viral News: Cases of Covid-19 have reached a peak — in the Himalayas. A handful of adventurers have been evacuated from base camp on the Nepali side of Mt. Everest.

  Nepal reported 8,605 new cases of Covid-19 on Wednesday.

  It is far worse in neighboring India, which had just shy of 4,000 deaths yesterday alone. The country has reported nearly 21.5 million cases and more than 235,000 deaths.

  Here in the US, a new study estimates that the actual number of people who have died of Covid-19 is more than 900,000, a number nearly 60 percent higher than official figures.

  Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation reached that conclusion by comparing excess mortality from March 2020 through May 3 of this year  to a non-pandemic year. 

  They also say they believe the death count is also low by about 400,000 in India, Mexico, and Russia.

The Twinkie Defense: The lawyer for a man charged in the Capitol insurrection argued in a hearing yesterday that his client’s thinking became distorted by watching too much Fox News. 

 In the six months leading to the insurrection, Anthony Antonio binged on Fox News,  actually making him ill, his lawyer told a DC federal magistrate. 

His ailment? “Foxitis,” his attorney said. “He became hooked with what I call … ‘Foxmania.’ ”

Gunplay: A sixth grade girl in an Idaho middle school faces possible charges of attempted murder after pulling a handgun from her backpack and wounding three people before a teacher disarmed her.

The Spin Rack: In Brazil, where police routinely shoot to kill, 25 people died in a gun battle during an anti-drug operation in Rio de Janeiro. Some witnesses claim people were executed after they were captured. — Over 45,000 hunters have applied to the  National Park Service to be among a dozen “skilled” shooters to reduce the buffalo herd in the Grand Canyon. — Bill Gates’ wife Melinda said in her divorce petition that she won’t need spousal support. Bill is worth $130 billion. — A condominium complex in West Palm Beach, Florida has stripped Donald Trump’s name from the building that was “Trump Plaza.”

Ready, Aim: South Carolina is on the brink adding a firing squad to its methods of execution. With a nationwide shortage of drugs used for lethal injection, the condemned might have to choose between the electric chair or firing squad. Of course, maybe there could be a third hideous option; life in South Carolina.

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