The Florida Senate isn’t confident that the eight counties in the Florida Panhandle impacted the most by the 2010 BP oil disaster can be trusted to properly handle the millions of BP funds that are expected to come to Florida. And they have a point.
For the past two decades, counties, particularly Escambia and Okaloosa, have been synonymous with corruption. Four county commissioners in Escambia County...
When USA Today did its city-by-city rollout in 1982, Atlanta was second on the list, and Al Neuharth jetted in for a big news conference.
I'm sure the CEO of Gannett Co., who died last week at his Cocoa Beach home at age 89, had several different modes -- big business executive, manager, columnist, flamboyant public figure -- and on that morning, he seemed to revert to his 1960 Miami beat...
"In God we trust" may be the planet's most familiar national motto, appearing on trillions of U.S. coins and treasury bills circulating everywhere. But perhaps the time has come for a new one, more reflective of how the rest of the world sees us:
"In guns we trust."
If the NRA continues to have...
It was one of those weeks of revolting paradoxes, with mayhem to match.
On Monday the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, initially killing three people and wounding 170. Two days later, a different sort of bomb went off when the U.S. Senate voted down the skimpiest of gun control legislation: making background checks universal, banning high-capacity gun magazines, and banning assault weapons, three...
Florida's Medicaid waiver program for persons with disabilities, iBudget Florida, has hit multiple snags and as many lawsuits during its slow implementation since being created by the Legislature in 2010.
The program was intended to give clients better access and more choices in the services they receive, providing the potential to lower spending, and thus creating an opportunity to reduce the number...
Paulette Wilson paid for her own health insurance policy before the economy tanked and she had to let it go.
The self-employed cosmetologist from Miami Gardens, who suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, earned about $13,000 last year.
She relies on neighborhood clinics for a...
It’s a pleasant Sunday in Lakeland, not too hot and not too cool. It’s a comforting end to a very long walk for about 150 farm laborers, who marched 200 miles from Fort Myers last month to put pressure on Publix Super Markets.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the closest thing to a union that these impoverished, mostly immigrant tomato pickers have, has been trying for years to get Publix to...
Two steps forward, one step back. That’s how you could characterize Florida’s strides to elect openly gay men and women to public office. Just as the tally kept by the Gay & Lesbian Victory Institute was nearing two dozen, the number moved back again.
Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe, a Democrat first elected in 2010, suffered a bruising loss Tuesday in a run-off election for his second term. Former...
It’s always been a lonely fight as a Republican in the Florida Legislature when it comes to environmental policy. Only a few Republicans see the value in preserving our natural resources and ensuring a clean and adequate water supply.
It’s hard to fathom, as our economy is dependent on these resources for our top three economic drivers: tourism, agriculture and development.
...
The bane of my existence is the driver ahead of me who misses the light change because he or she is texting away while stopped. These are the drivers so engrossed in their texting that they don’t see traffic move ahead of them through the green light. And then, as it is turning yellow, they speed through, leaving me stopped.
Talk about road rage.
...
