The guy who Richard Nixon cheated out of the presidency is gone.George McGovern died Sunday at age 90. His loss in 1972 was the first presidential race I remember,. He was gonna get us out of Vietnam. He was gonna remake America. He wasn’t Richard Nixon.   I grew up in Minnesota,…

Preparing for the vice presidential debate Thursday in Kentucky, Paul Ryan was in Fort Lauderdale yesterday with his mom, Betty Douglas. Indeed, the 78-year-old made the campaign’s nine millionth campaign fundraising call. Well, I am sick and tired of moms in this election. Just a few months ago, after his plan…

A quarter century ago, my old, good buddy Mike Lacey came to Miami and decided to start a weekly paper. He wanted to move here, but a mugger and a prudent wife convinced him cocaine-fueled Miami wasn’t the place to raise a family.Today, Lacey bowed out. Along with his partner…

An FDLE report released Friday and detailed by Local 10 describes the sordid sexual escapades of former Broward School Board member Jennifer Gottlieb, who cuckolded her judge/husband, Ken — twice — with bankers. Worse, the bankers were doing business with the school board while she was sleeping with them. And she…

New Times Broward-Palm Beach staff writer Chris Sweeney received an honorable mention last week in the National Press Foundation’s Evert Clark/Seth Payne contest, which rewards science writing from young journalists, for his article “Coral Capers”. According to the contest organizer: :”The Ev Clark judges don’t usually award an Honorable Mention…

Hurricane Andrew at 20: Miami Herald Reporters Remember

See a full slideshow remembering Hurricane Andrew here. In a column published today, I gather memories of a phalanx of former Miami Herald reporters and editors. Here is one from Bill Rose, former editor of Tropic Magazine and now a visiting professor in Mississippi. The newspaper won a Pulitzer gold…

Around noon on a windy fall Sunday, the motorcade began forming. Dozens of African-Americans, ages 5 to 85, poured from the three-story New Covenant Baptist Church and into a coughing, 20-year-old bus, a cramped church van, and their cars. The caravan snaked down Rio Grande Avenue, turned onto Kaley Street,…

Five goombahs sweep into a closet-like suburban pharmacy in Plantation. One locks the door. Two others snag the arms of Jason Villano, a skinny, gap-toothed 29-year-old. The capo, Bobby, a stocky career criminal, starts. “I know everything about you. I know about your parents living down here. I know you…

On Sunday, I decided to do a tune-up run for January’s ING Miami Marathon. Problem is, I’m not in good enough shape to run 26.2 miles, so I signed up for the Palm Beaches Half Marathon, figuring to run 13.1 miles — slowly, ten minutes per mile or so. After…

Last night, South Florida’s two top weekly newspapers (said modestly), New Times Broward*Palm Beach and Miami New Times, donated $5,000 to Partners in Health, perhaps the most important charity in returning Haiti to normalcy after this week’s monstrous earthquake.And we are challenging alternative newspapers across the country to give more…

Beverly Sicherer lay facedown on the cold floor of the hallway outside her father’s Aventura apartment. Enraged, she beat the floor with her fist and then her forearm. She did it again and again until thousands of tiny blood vessels burst. But Beverly didn’t feel the pain. Just seconds before,…

Beverly Sicherer se quedó boca abajo en el piso frío del pasillo fuera del apartamento de Aventura de su padre. Casi loca, golpeó el mármol con sus puños, luego sus antebrazos. Lo hizo una y otra vez hasta que millones de pequeños vasos sanguíneos se rompieron. Pero Beverly no sintió…

Three dusty skulls lay in the dust beneath silvery buttonwood leaves. Two were covered in rotting flesh. One had been severed by a hacksaw. That was December. A month prior, a truck driver had swerved off the road to eviscerate an endangered key deer, spreading her organs over 30 yards…