Political extremism, loose-cannon comments, and politicians who vaguely or directly imply violence in their rhetoric have occupied airwaves for some time, and finally, the media are calling out the geyser of intolerance for indirectly causing yesterday’s Tucson, Arizona, shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 11 others, a bloodbath that left six dead…
State Rep. Ari Porth agreed to speak this weekend at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America in Fort Lauderdale. But Porth bailed out yesterday, canceling his speech. Why? Because of pressure from a local extremist named Joe Kaufman put pressure on him, who told him that ISNA was linked to terrorists. The ISNA,…
You may not expect much drama and controversy out of a Coral Springs/Parkland Democratic Club meeting, but you got some last night. The night was meant for Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein, who gave a very successful speech, but the drama arrived in the form of Sheriff Al Lamberti and…
What do the people in charge of your property taxes do in their free time? One Broward property appraiser likes to tweet right-wing talking points, including his love for Allen West and Ronald Reagan.Juice reader Seth Platt noticed that some of Deputy Property Appraiser Bob Wolfe’s tweets were appearing during…
So Broward County Commissioner Ilene Lieberman won’t say why she’s gone AWOL from commission meetings, telling the Sun-Sentinel (the WofP, actually) that she is “dealing with some personal matters, and I’m not at liberty to discuss them at the moment.” Not at liberty? That implies that someone has forbidden her to…
In Part I of this article, I discussed two telling statements made by Congressman-elect Allen West during his campaign to represent Florida’s 22nd District. The first revealed West’s troubling inability to differentiate friendly, charitably minded American Muslims from jihadists; the second revealed West’s feelings for his ideological opponents, with whom…
Congressman-elect Allen West was interviewed on Fox News Sunday this weekend. He was surprisingly mellow. The barn-burning campaigner who called for an armed march on Lexington and Concord was nowhere in evidence. Despite interviewer Chris Wallace’s best efforts at incitement, West remained poised and polite, explaining that, yes, while it…
Marianne Moran is a lawyer in West Palm Beach and a member of Tea Party in Action and Balance Our Budget Now. Through her work on the Florida Senate, she met Randy Barnett, a Georgetown law professor who is credited with developing the argument that Obama’s nationwide health-insurance mandate is…
“What a week,” wrote Congressman-elect Allen West to his supporters yesterday, “as we draw closer to a very Merry Christmas.” On the evidence, Allen West defines “merry” a bit differently from the rest of us, for he spends the next 15 paragraphs griping about Barack Obama’s “attack” on “for-profit” universities,…
It’s an election season most of us would rather forget. But in the spirit of holiday cheer, here’s a quick trip down memory lane. The worst (or best?) political ads of 2010:5. Lizbeth Benacquisto’s rape ad. The Republican state Senate candidate used the ad to address her position on abortion…
Allen West is learning the ways of Washington.On December 7, Congressman-elect West committed his very first honest-to-goodness Washingtonian gaffe when, in an interview with the African American Conservative Radio Show, he called for the effective dismantling of the First Amendment. Yesterday afternoon, West attempted to minimize the damage with his…
Krystal Smith, 29, has been in prison for the past nine months, and in her first week of freedom, she is working toward a plan she mapped out while locked down — one that she hopes will result in her own business: a mobile chicken wing truck called Wing Fling…
I would say that Ilene Lieberman has left the building, but she never came in. Lieberman missed today’s Broward County Commission meeting again this week. She also missed last week’s meeting. And one before that. She doesn’t go to much of anything anymore and when she does, she’s quiet as…
Okay, so you’re tired of hearing about the Stacy Ritter and Russ Klenet campaign fund, but I just can’t quit it yet. Revelations keep coming to the surface. We already have the extravagant dinners, the family phone bills, the dinner in Manchester, Vermont, the bedsheets and pillows from Target, the nonexistent…
Brandie the dog has received the canine equivalent of a last-minute death row call from the governor. Rather than being put down for biting to death a toy poodle, she’ll be released to her owners later this week.That’s thanks to a deal cut last night by Broward County commissioners, who…
Back in 2008, Stacy Ritter was stumping hard for Barack Obama and looking for payback if he won a job in the White House. Perhaps to further both of those causes, Ritter donated $15,000 out of her own campaign account to a committee tied to the Democratic National Convention in Denver on…
Three South Floridians made uncommon waves with their opinions on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell this week. One worried about the military worrying about sex, one decided that male Lady Gaga fans must be gay (which is true, actually), and one worried about the free speech of chaplains. 1. Allen West…
Less than an hour into this weekend’s protest of Puppy Palace in Hollywood, there were already four Hollywood Police Department squad cars on the scene. And before the three-hour protest was over, the police would be called at least twice more. Store employees out counter-protesting said they felt threatened. The…
Well, we already know Broward County Commissioner Stacy Ritter’s 2008 political campaign stealthily reimbursed thousands of dollars in lavish dinners reimbursed to herself and her lobbyist husband and an unexplained $1,600 check to AT&T. Now we know that the Florida Election Commission discovered that about $6,600 in Ritter campaign checks paid to AT&T was used in…
The hits keep coming for lobbyist Russ Klenet. As if investigations regarding his work for Mutual Benefits fraudster Joel Steinger, a State Attorney’s probe into his Broward County Commissioner wife Stacy Ritter’s involvement with dirty developers Bruce and Shawn Chait, and civil charges stemming from dubious reimbursements he received from his…
Amerijet, the international cargo shipping corporation headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, is one of the few airlines that still transports research primates, specifically the ones used for controversial vivisection experiments. The company has done business with Primate Products, the South Florida-based research facility where several monkeys were photographed with severe –…
A recently released report from the Florida Elections Commission shows that Broward County Commissioner Stacy Ritter’s 2008 campaign was an utter mess, replete with bookkeeping errors, acceptance of excessive contributions from special interests, failure to report contributions and thousands of dollars in dubious “reimbursements” paid from the campaign account to…
