Subject: Social Policy

• Gray Lady's Glass Chin

  January 15, 2007

• Response To Hospital District CEO's Goodbye

  January 10, 2008

• Waste-Case Scenario

  March 12, 1998

• Enough to Make You Sick

  March 26, 1998

• Night & Day

  January 21, 1999

• Give Us Your Huddled Masses... and We'll Throw 'em in a Cell

  April 8, 1999

• Letters to the Editor

  October 25, 2001

• Back in the Lion's Mouth

  December 20, 2001

• Letters for September 18, 2003

  September 18, 2003

• Best Scandal

  May 13, 2004

• Shadow Boxing

  Write me some comebacks, Mex

  November 8, 2007

• Mi Casa Is Not Tu Casa

  Protesters say illegals take our jobs, bring in leprosy, and, grrr, sell ice cream from bicycles

  May 8, 2008

• Bleeding Dollars

  A former Broward hospital CEO's trail of dubious expenses is just a drip in the bucket

  May 8, 2008

• Washed Up

  101 Haitian refugees sailed north full of hope. They got screwed.

  November 29, 2007

• Talking Up a Storm

  Radio host Joyce Kaufman wins fans by flaying a new enemy: undocumented immigrants

  October 25, 2007

• Slick Trouble

  The government's determination to deport old-school rapper Slick Rick knows no bounds

  January 11, 2007

• Jose... You're Next!

  David Caulkett wants your $10 to help Uncle Sam in the fight against illegal immigration.

  July 27, 2006

• War for What?

  Sgt. Cabadiana was the poster child for the Bush military. Then they took his wife away.

  September 30, 2004

• Forgotten 9/11

  The INS screwed up when it let in the September massacre's mastermind

  September 11, 2003

• Admitting Terror: Part 5

  When terrorists knock, the INS is more than likely to fall down on the job

  December 13, 2001

• Admitting Terror

  The immigration service's own describe how America failed to protect its borders from the September 11 terrorists

  October 18, 2001

• All Work and No Pay

  For two years single mothers have tried hard to switch from welfare to workfare. But the WAGES program keeps getting in the way.

  August 26, 1999

• Broward Health Chair Speaks on Cobo Case

  browardhealth.orgBroward Health Chairman Mike FernandezAfter allegedly mingling public responsibilities with private consulting work, Broward Health Commissioner Joseph Cobo faces an uncertain future. A week after those charges came to light, Board Chairman Mike Fernandez is seeking to protect the public health system from the fallout. In an interview this morning with Juice, Fernandez stressed Broward Health's quick response to the memo by former acting general counsel Tory Kishbaugh in which t

  May 12, 2009

• Well of Support

  June 11, 2009

• Bless This Mess: Is Miami-Dade Really Desperate Enough to Copy Broward Health?

  As the bearer of so much bad news for the North Broward Hospital District, we should acknowledge its recent note of favorable publicity. Despite recent scandals about the commissioners' ethics, their district is in far better financial shape than the public health care district in Miami-Dade, Jackson Health System, the subject of this Sunday feature in the Miami Herald.But while we're at it, we may as well credit George W. Bush for being a better ruler than Kim Jong Il, and Christopher Maury for

  July 21, 2009

• Hospital District: Why Wrestle a White Elephant When You Can Tackle a Red Herring?

  Flickr User: FrogMillerMidway through this morning's meeting of the North Broward Hospital District's board, Commissioner Robert Bernstein decided it was time to acknowledge the "white elephant in the room."A tantalizing prospect, because this room was positively teeming with white elephants. There was the pending criminal investigation of the commissioner seated a several seats to Bernstein's left, Joseph Cobo. A few seats closer was the white elephant issue of whether Chairman Mike Fernandez a

  July 22, 2009

• Wagging the Dog at the Klein Forum

  OK, so maybe it's not the most riveting video of this month's clashes between congressional Democrats and health care reform opponents, but this is a perfect illustration of the media echo chamber we've entered. Below, a woman shooting a video after yesterday's Ron Klein forum in Boynton Beach. And judging by the proximity of those still photographers swarming her you can probably see the woman's picture in one of your local dailies. They may curse the "liberal media," but these tea party p

  August 20, 2009

• Ohmygod Grandma Do Not Rap When the NY Times Reporter Is Around!

  nytimes.comArtificial hip-hop and health care hysteria: all the rage at Sunrise Lakes​They've still working do on destroying Obama's health care plan but in the opening moments of this New York Times video,  Sunrise seniors dealt a death blow to hip-hop. Chilling video here.The accompanying article is set in the massive Sunrise Lakes retirement community, and the writer remarks at how that area voted overwhelmingly for Obama, but that many of the seniors are now second-guessing that vote

  August 20, 2009

• Obama Reacts to Ted Kennedy's Death

  Flickr: diggz6873​A few moments ago, President Barack Obama released this statement about the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy: Michelle and I were heartbroken to learn this morning of the death of our dear friend, Senator Ted Kennedy. For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.I valued his wise counsel in the Senate, where, regardless of the swirl of event

  August 26, 2009

• Florida's U.S. Senators: Which One's Tweedle Dee?

  Flickr: Meeko_Your health care is in their hands. Feeling queasy yet?​At tonight's joint session of Congress, Florida will have two senators in the audience in a position to make good on a policy -- health-care reform -- that is the subject of tonight's speech and that was a major part of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, for which a majority of Florida voters cast a ballot.Mind you, those ballots are a far more recent expression of the state's political views than the 2006 ballots that wo

  September 9, 2009

• A South Florida Muslim Leader Refused to Be a Snitch, so the Feds Tried to Destroy Him

  October 8, 2009

• You Deserve a Laser to the Groin

  October 8, 2009

• In Overhaul of U.S. Immigration Facilities, More Will Resemble Broward's Facility

  Photo: geogroupinc.comThe Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach​The Obama administration has plans for kinder, gentler immigration holding centers to be located in nursing homes and hotels. This new generation of facilities will be less like a prisons, more like the immigration facility in Pompano Deerfield Beach:The New York Times interviewed John Morton, the assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Mr. Morton said that on Sept. 18 the agency began housing nonviolent

  October 7, 2009

• Swine and the Seniors: A Frightening Couple

  flickr user: Brent and MarilynnSwine fear has arrived.​South Florida's senior citizen population has had a rough few months. What with the fear-mongering about death panels in Obama's health care plan, and worries that cuts in Medicare will leave them penniless on bingo night, the news has not been good.Now comes the swine flu vaccine, a health care scare that elderly people can totally get behind. They don't mind waiting in line for the chance to inject a weird mist up their noses. They still

  October 21, 2009

• Let's Talk About Sex Education

  October 22, 2009

• Embattled Coral Springs Physician Refuses Settlement in Wrong Side Surgery Case

  Flickr: Alphafish​Last week, we told you about Dr. Bernard Zaragoza, the Harvard-educated surgeon who in 2007 operated on an 83-year-old man who had an inflamed gallbladder. Zaragoza was supposed to remove the gallbladder but took out the man's kidney instead.However innocent the mistake was, the original penalty seemed a bit light. Zaragoza was to pay a $5,000 fine, write a letter of concern to the Florida Medical Board, give a one-hour lecture on wrong-side surgeries, and perform 50 hours of

  October 28, 2009

• Lake Worth Commish Hopeful Scott Maxwell Tied to White Supremicists?

  Maxwell: The crusade temporarily suspended​The Lake Worth elections slated for November 3rd just get weirder by the minute. As if the flap about Mayoral candidate Rene Varela's role in the sales of wild dolphins to a marine park in Dubai weren't scandal enough, now the Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition is claiming that one of the candidates running for City Commission may have ties to West Palm white supremicist group Stormfront. Maxwell is one of the leading rabble rousers on illegal

  October 29, 2009

• Crist Walks Into Democrat-Laid Health-Care Trap

  ​Everybody's still talking about Crist gaffe-ing (lying?) over the Obama appearance, but this quotable moment is, I think, much more precious. Let's pull out a portion of that Sarasota Herald-Tribune article, which asked for Crist's opinion of a Senate Democrat health care reform package that would allow states to opt out of government-run health care -- the so-called public option."My view of it is that the public option I think may be sort of a Trojan horse to a government takeover of health

  October 29, 2009

• John DeGroot Digging Into Case of Gabriel Myers, the Foster Child Who Hung Himself

  I'm dashing off for Halloween weekend, but as long we're giving props to gritty journalists who've gone blog-happy, here's some fantastic, in-depth reporting, courtesy John DeGroot, about the case of Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old foster child in Margate who hung himself with a rubber hose in April.This story's not going away. The doc, as well as the state child welfare system, have some hard questions to answer. Let's hope by next week, the agency's secretary George Sheldon -- a former colleague

  October 30, 2009

• Debbie Wasserman Schultz Now a Lightning Rod in Party Politics Over Health Care

  Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the EconomyMove over, Alan Grayson. There's another Florida Democrat who's not afraid to ruffle Republican feathers -- West Broward Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In yesterday MSNBC segment (roughly 3:15 of the video above) she was given the chance to recant a quote that appeared in this Politico article -- the part about women being "repulsed" by the Republican Party.As you can see, she not only stood behind those words, she

  November 10, 2009