No soup for you!
Granted, the lady is a loon, but even loons have a right to speak their piece. No, nobody is trying to shut down the airport, that's the big lie from Nick Carlucci and the VABA crowd. What council has been trying to do, unsuccessfully to date, is to extricate the economic rapists from the airport, which has the rapists crying foul. The Gondo has bought into this big time, and thus idiots like Katina Young stop taking their meds and get all kinds of worked up agita.

Nevertheless, even lunatics have fundamental free speech rights.

I'll say this for former Mayors Dean Calamaras and Fred Hammett, as well as ex-City Manager Marty Black -- as slimy as they could be, they at least could take the heat (with one notable exception that taught them all a lesson). As for our current mayor? Thin skin and a big gavel do not a happy marriage make.

When Young lashed out at council on January 28, 2009, as shown in the video below, there was a golden opportunity for Hizzoner to take the high road. He could have smiled benevolently through Young's surreal rant. He could have ended it by saying something like "Thank you, ma'am, may I have another?"

That would have been both classic and classy, a moment of comedy gold. Instead, Hizzoner did the unthinkable -- he stuck his boot up her ass. Can you say First Amendment?

But wait, that's not even the bad part.

The audio cuts out and back in and then out and in again in the middle of this clip. That's not my editing. City Clerk Lori Stelzer cut off the microphone feed on orders from Hizzoner. The missing audio portions are now permanently deleted from both the council's video and audio recordings of the meeting -- there now is no record of that portion of the council meeting.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOPS!!!!!! That's a big no-no. A really big no-no.

John Patten is the editor and publisher of Venice Florida! dot com and had previously worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.