“Jindal’s virtually handed over public education in Louisiana to charlatans and Christian nutballs. Scott Walker’s going out marching in Fourth of July Parades wearing an American flag shirt made overseas a week after a Wisconsin company that makes American flags goes bankrupt. And Rick Scott is closing the hospital housing Florida’s only tuberculosis treatment smack in the middle of the state’s biggest tuberculosis outbreak in 20 years. And Rick Perry, who never met a big idea he wouldn’t cover with barbecue sauce and try to eat, has decided that he will fight federal intervention in his state’s ghastly health-care system by taking a stand that will guarantee that the federal government takes over even more of it.”

— Charles P. Pierce