This week my daughter begins middle school. At 11, she has enjoyed more formal schooling than my grandmother. But as she begins another step on the way to an educated life, she is merely taking advantage of my grandmother’s legacy -- a fundamental belief in the value of education.
My grandmother never went further than the third grade before she dropped out to help raise her younger siblings, yet...
Tax refund schemes in Florida have become like a ghetto stimulus plan, putting millions of unearned tax dollars in the pockets of undeserving scammers.
The worst part is, many of these scammers already are behind bars.
In case you missed it, federal prosecutors in Pensacola recently...
Anyone familiar with the ritual of public scandal knew there was only one way this was going to end. The only question was when.
Seven months and three weeks after paramedics put drum major Robert Champion’s body into an ambulance, Florida A&M President James Ammons did what every sensible, detached observer expected. He resigned. Finally.
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In honor of Independence Day, let’s pause to consider a true patriot, a father who died before he ever held his newborn son, a warrior killed in the pursuit of a war started for reasons we have long forgotten.
Private First Class Steven Stevens II of Tallahassee died in combat in Afghanistan over a week ago. He was buried with full military honors on Monday. Instead of waving proudly on Wednesday, flags...
It’s obvious that Gov. Rick Scott is bent on discouraging minority voters from heading to the polls. The presidential election might be close this fall. Scott doesn’t want to leave anything to chance.
The governor has ordered Secretary of State Ken Detzner to purge voter rolls of people who are not citizens. In pursuit of this purge, the secretary of state has been naming names and has gotten hundreds of...
Last weekend I spent time with friends, an older, unmarried couple who had the fresh, excitement of young love. Each was married for more than 30 years before being unceremoniously dumped for someone else.
They found each other over coffee after church. They’re like high school sweethearts. Playful. Endearing. Theirs is a second season of love.
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I remember exactly what I was doing when I saw the news last week: President Obama endorses gay marriage in an interview with ABC.
My heart dropped. I was still processing the news from North Carolina, where the innate conservatism of Southerners made it obvious that a gay-marriage ban would become part of that state’s constitution. One diligent scribe reminded us that an earlier amendment to the Tar...
For five months, the Rattle nation held its breath and waited for the other shoe to drop. Last Wednesday, it did -- with a clatter, not a thud.
The Orange County State Attorney announced that 13 people were being charged in connection with the hazing death of Florida A&M University drum major Robert Champion. It’s called the biggest hazing case in the country’s history. It might just be....
My daughter and thousands of other public school students are stressing over FCAT. Their predicament makes me think of a recent Washington Post essay by a Georgetown University student who eloquently describes how he went to one of the best public high schools in Washington, D.C, but in college felt totally unprepared to compete against his private school-educated classmates.
He blames his teachers and...
The acronyms – USAID, DFID and CIDA – are emblazoned in my memory from having grown up in the Caribbean: United States Agency for International Development, the British Department For International Development and the Canadian International Development Agency.
For decades, these agencies were instruments for uplifting colonies and former colonies from poverty to progress.
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