— By Kate Sheppard. | Wed Jul. 13, 2011 9:59 AM PDT. Mother Jones
After propelling Republican Rick Scott into the governor’s office last fall, Florida tea partiers have found a new target: manatees.
My friend Craig Pittman of the St. Petersburg Times, a manatee reporter extraordinaire, writes today about how the endangered species has joined the list of tea-party targets, along with taxes, high-speed rail, and socialized medicine. From the story:
A Citrus County tea party group has announced that it’s fighting new restrictions on boating and other human activities in Kings Bay that have been proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“We cannot elevate nature above people,” explained Edna Mattos, 63, leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, in an interview. “That’s against the Bible and the Bill of Rights.”
Federal officials “want to restrict the entire bay,” she contended. “They don’t want people here.”