Those Florida mug shots aren't always funny

Since 1949, Florida prisoners have been stamping the words "Sunshine State" on our license plates, despite most of our cities getting more annual rainfall than famously gloomy Seattle. These days, though, the Legislature should change our nickname to "The Punch Line State." We're constantly producing stories about kooky crooks, crooked politicians and other wackiness that get circulated worldwide.Friends of mine know how much I relish these tales, so they tag me on Facebook when they see one. One afternoon my buddy Bill in Miami tagged me so I'd see a story from South Florida about a guy caught prowling a strange neighborhood armed with brass knuckles and a knife. What made this funny was his mug shot. He had smeared dark grease all over his face and looked kind of dopey.I laughed about it, so I tweeted his picture and called it our Florida Mug Shot Du Jour. It was retweeted by other folks who found it amusing, and that was the end of it — or so I thought.The next day I got an urgent c...