Face it, California: we'll never be able to match Florida in sheer dysfunctionality. We try to have a messed up election that the whole nation snickers at , and they come up with something so jaw-droppingly stupid that, well, our jaw drops. (And no, that's not a reminder of the 2000 "Thanks for George Bush" travesty. This is, though.)

We never expected their sports figures to top ours, though. Sure, we had the Shaq and Kobe debacle, closely followed by the Solo Kobe debacle. But at least Kobe never actually quit the team and then tried to come back.

If you're a Bruin fan, then you should remember Billy Donovan, i.e. that asshole who coaches at Florida and has beaten us two years straight. Well, if you've been paying attention to the losers of the Eastern Conference lately, you'd know that he signed a five-year, 27.5 million dollar contract to coach the Orlando "Hey, We've Still Got Grant Hill" Magic. But before you bring out the celebratory blue and gold, he, um, actually isn't going to coach there at all. That's right- after all the wrangling and deal making, three days after the freaking contract got signed, Donovan got all like, "Wait a minute. You guys lose on a consistent basis? Peace, yo." And then Drama tried to get Donovan to stay, but Billy's manager held Drama over a window...okay, I may be getting Billy Donovan mixed up with Saigon from Entourage. But the story lines are surprisingly similar. So now Billy's flown the coup and returned to his godless swamp pit at UF, and the Magic have hired Stan Van Gundy, the genius who was amazingly able to win a championship with Shaq and Dwayne Wade.

Bottom line: You're a helpless mess, Florida.

AP Photo by John Raoux

Max Hardcore aka Paul Little was indicted by the Feds yesterday on 10 counts of obscenity in a Florida court.

The ultra-hardcore (and downright violent) producer / actor / director was swept up in the actions of a post-9/11 administration who has launched an aggressive attack against adult entertainment. Little's Altadena studios were raided two years ago by the Feds which lead to these charges.

A Justice Department spokesman said the prosecution was an outgrowth of a government anti-obscenity initiative started in 2001 under former U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft.

"Whenever a new administration comes in, it has to make a decision on what resources to put where," Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said. "And one of the things they took a look at in 2001 was to investigate and prosecute these types of crime because of the expansion of the Internet."

The Bush administration has significantly increased the number of pornography prosecutions in recent years, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-gathering and research organization associated with Syracuse University.

Though the federal prosecution of white-collar crimes, gun offenses and police brutality cases is down nationwide, the number of pornography prosecutions has grown from 500 to 700 a year between 1999 and 2001, to 1,300 to 1,400 annually over the last three years, said David Burnham, co-director of the clearinghouse. - LA Times

LAist asks, of all of those cases, were any of them brought against former White House Press Corps visitor Jeff Gannon, who was allowed into the White House press room every day for a year under separate day passes until it was revealed that he was a gay male prostitute who solicited his illegal behavior... over the Internet?