Fort Lauderdale lawyer and GOP money man Scott Rothstein just keeps gobbling up big-name investments. It apparently wasn’t enough for him to take over the well-known movers-and-shakers haunt Jackson’s Steakhouse on Las Olas, so he bought a controlling stake in the Versace mansion on Collins Avenue in South Beach. He had an audacious…
Let’s see if the Florida Bar is really about justice or just protecting the status quo. Last year, the Florida Bar, of its own volition, decided to go after Broward Attorney Sean Conway for calling Judge Cheryl Aleman an “evil, unfair witch,” among other choice terms, for her misbehavior on the bench. His words appeared…
The Broward Teachers’ Union is sending out the following video made by staff at the Embassy Creek Elementary School in Cooper City. Titled “Budget Cuts No Problem!” it shows the school’s principal, Bob Becker, and several staff members having chair races down the hall and feigning getting drunk. The BTU was left unamused, claiming the thing cost…
Let’s go back to late 2004. School populations were declining — but that didn’t keep school board members from jockeying for as many construction projects in their district as possible. It was like a $66 million competition, financed by the clueless taxpayers. That figure doesn’t include new schools, just classroom additions,…
Today is an important day in the current round of downsizing at the Palm Beach Post. The following is a comment from a recent post about the morphing of the three South Florida large dailes (click here to read the entire comment thread, it’s fantastic stuff): On Friday, they’re supposed to name…
My colleague Thomas Francis has a great post on the rather dubious public-private relationship that North Broward Hospital District Commissioner Rebecca Stoll has with the Museum of Science and Discovery in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Levine You have to read Francis’ post linked above to get the details. Basically, he writes about…
Les Paul knew what he had right when he invented it. Listen to this brief history of the man and then one of the first televised jams on the electric guitar of all time (with Mary Ford). Eddie Van Halen might have copied some of Paul’s moves right off the tape. …
According to state Rep. Evan Jenne’s financial disclosure forms, he made $60,000 in 2008 from a company that didn’t exist. Jenne created the company, Blue Banyan LLC, with the help of Scott Rothstein’s law firm, Rothstein Rosenfeldt & Adler, the same outfit that hired Jenne’s father, former Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne, when the elder man…
What do you do when the public overwhelmingly votes down an idea to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new courthouse? If you’re the Broward County Commission, you ignore the people and ram it down their throats anyway. After voters roundly rejected a referendum to fund a $450…
— Barbra Stern, Dame Judith’s daughter, made it official: She’s running for the District 91 state house seat being vacated by Ellyn Bogdanoff. Thirty-six-year-old Barbra (is Judy a Streisand fan?) can at least be sure that she won’t be slimed too bad. Her mother, after all, is the dirtiest campaigner…
This is a board of nine elected politicians whose campaigns have been largely financed by the construction industry and its lobbyists. During the past several years, they’ve wasted hundreds of millions of dollars to allow those same contractors to overbuild the district by 35,000 classroom seats, leaving the board broke and billions in debt in the process. It’s a disaster that will have…
Happened to catch HBO’s documentary film, The Nine Lives of Marion Barry, last night. I thought it might be mildly interesting, but it was transfixing. Following then-Washington D.C. Mayor Barry’s descent into alcholism, drug abuse, and womanizing is a wild journey. And every rung lower he stooped he took his city right along with him…
Embrace it, Dalia. That’s my advice to Dalia Dippolito. Via her attorney, she’s complaining about being tricked by the TV show COPS into signing a release after her arrest for allegedly hiring an undercover deputy to kill her husband. (The Palm Beach Post got the story, but it’s on the Sun-Sentinel site). So,…
Jason Wetherington, the young Republican staffer who boasted to numerous witnesses of having an affair with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and was recently featured in the movie Outrage, has been booked on felony charges related to a theft from the daughter of Pastor Larry Thompson, who leads the large and influential First…
Boy, they’re piling on Broward Clerk of Court Howard Forman right now. Chief Judge Victor Tobin seems to be leading a charge against the clerk and former state senator that is nothing short of cage match to the death. Both the Sentinel and Miami Herald have done a story about…
What do you do when the public overwhelmingly votes down an idea to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new courthouse? If you’re the Broward County Commission, you ignore the people and ram it down their throats anyway. After voters roundly rejected a referendum to fund a $450…
What the hell is going on? A U.S. senator does not resign. It’s one of the greatest jobs in the world. I’m not going to pretend like I know why Martinez is bailing, but I can tell you two things it’s not: 1. To do a solid for Charlie Crist. 2…
It’s already happened: The three large South Florida daily newspapers have morphed together. Now we just have to wonder when they’ll officially merge. I’ve received two communiques on the “content-sharing agreement” between the three newspapers run amok. And it’s starting to get a little weird, sort of like the photo…
(Thanks Ashley Harrell for the heads-up)…
Looks like Hollywood Police Ofc. Dewey Pressley did a little bit of Walt Disney in another DUI case. Pressley, the Hollywood officer who was caught on tape framing a woman for a car accident caused by a fellow cop, clearly lied under oath in a case involving a defendant named Steven Berglund. And, again, Pressley’s video cam in his…
Somebody’s lying in Deerfield Beach. – I’m afraid I may have jinxed the Marlins with a mention on Monday. Since then they’ve dropped two in a row to the lowly Nationals. But I’m not alone among South Florida media that may have failed the team. When I hear team broadcasters Tommy Hutton and Rich…
You’ve probably heard about the Hollywood cops who framed a woman in a car crash involving a fellow officer. And you’ve likely seen the video from a cruiser’s dashboard camera that shows the lead officer, Dewey Pressley, talking about his willingness to “Walt Disney” the facts and make up stories to protect…
