Iowa wept. A lot. So much weeping. The best weeping.

“Crying, crying,” said the president of his reception at a rally 72 hours after Alex Pretti was left to bleed out on a Minneapolis street. “Half of them were crying. One woman, her tears are pouring all over my beautiful suit. I said, ‘Don’t cry. Be happy. Be happy.’”

A few are. Many aren’t. Though, from a distance, our hysterical laughter could be interpreted as such. Others weep profusely. Quite a few of us are doing both. At the same time.

This makes it hard to see the keyboard.

Pat Beall is an editorial writer and columnist for the Sun Sentinel, focusing mainly on Palm Beach County issues.

But these are the days that bold patriotism and waterproof mascara are made for. So time to man up, as no one ever in a million years said to Donald Trump, and welcome new additions to the Florida Bar Hall of Ain’t-Been-Misbehavin’ Fame.

Now, other states know U.S. Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi by that crick in her neck brought on by a year of reflexive genuflecting.

They would recognize the former Panhandle Congressman Matt Gaetz by his high, taut forehead, last seen shining under the lights at the Republican National Convention.

But we in Florida know they are so much more than the sum of their soulless assaults on the rule of law and the appropriate use of Botox. They are proof that once you have a Florida law license, there’s nothing you can do to shake that puppy loose.

Unless of course you are Daniel Uhlfelder, a North Florida lawyer without a noteworthy forehead — just a Grim Reaper costume he wore to insult Gov. Ron DeSantis and a lawsuit that did the same. His Bar investigation is heading into year five.

But not Matt Gaetz! Confronted with a congressional committee’s “substantial evidence” that he had sex with a 17-year-old, used illegal drugs, paid thousands of dollars for sex and accepted gifts galore, the Florida Bar first tried to avoid investigating, the Florida Bulldog reported, and when that didn’t work, said “Meh.”

More accurately, what the Bar actually said this month is that substantial evidence of having sex with a 17-year-old, using illegal drugs, paying thousands of dollars for sex and accepting gifts galore does not mean you are a bad Florida lawyer.

Maybe a bad Chicago lawyer. Maybe a disbarred Canadian lawyer.

But an Okey-Dokey Florida lawyer.

There are “offenses of personal morality or alleged crimes which do not have a connection to fitness for the practice of law,” the Bar primly explained. Instead, it advised Gaetz to spend time thinking on his naughty ways.

I doubt he has to be asked.

Pamela Jo got a get-out-of-Bar-jail-free card, too.

Last year, former state Supreme Court justices, law professors and dozens more filed a Florida Bar grievance accusing her of politicizing DOJ.

You have no right to even ask her to be ethical, chided the Florida Supreme Court. Maybe that’s why Bondi felt free to take Trump’s public marching orders and indict former FBI Director James Comey and tell a federal judge this month that DOJ would release the Epstein files when they get around to it.

And last week, in a preview of midterm elections to come, raid Fulton County, Georgia’s elections center in Atlanta to seize 2020 voting records.

Not that Bondi didn’t cry about it. She might have! But she certainly didn’t do that with me.

Back when she was state attorney general, she waited until a story I wrote about a fat ethical lapse published, then hastily threw her staff under the bus. For all I know, they are still there, along with Border Patrol ogre Greg Bovino, newly exiled for following orders; and soon Kristi Noem, who said Trump made her do it; all of them weeping, big tears, the biggest tears, over how life could get so unjust, so hard, so vicious, so fast.

Just ask a Minnesotan.

Pat Beall is a Sun Sentinel columnist and editorial writer. 

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/02/01/cry-me-a-river-pam-bondi-pat-beall/