There’s been a lot of talk this week about Florida students’ low scores on the FCAT Writing standardized tests. The grading system was changed to incorporate spelling and punctuation, and 73 percent of Florida fourth graders failed.While the legislators and education people will be the ones to figure out the…
While it’s not clear if a Republican can beat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in November, the fight for the Republican nomination has no shortage of interesting rhetorical maneuverings.The most recent spat between George LeMieux and Rep. Connie Mack started over a web ad the LeMieux campaign released that suggested Mack…
MAOS blogger and professional filer-of-complaints Chaz Stevens says he submitted a formal complaint to the Federal Elections Commission yesterday in connection with our coverage of Congressman Connie Mack’s illegal campaign mailer incident…
It might be fun for people to talk about Florida Sen. Marco Rubio getting picked to be Mitt Romney’s running mate, but one group that isn’t talking about it is… Mitt Romney’s campaign, according to an article from Politico.The article compares the Romney campaign to that of John McCain in 2008…
Birthday wishes are in order! Best start baking the cakes now — it’s cool, you can just get the money out of the federal treasury.Last week, we wrote about Rep. Connie Mack’s illegal mailers that he sent to 90,000 Floridians. The postcards said they were a “legislative update” to the…
Republican Senate candidate Connie Mack has had to deal with a bit of drama the past few days. And the check pictured above could mean that the drama isn’t over.The trouble started when Mack, who bills himself a fighter of liberal “spending sprees,” decided to spend a pile of federal…
There isn’t any evidence to prove that Rep. Connie Mack intentionally used $18,000 in taxpayer money to send political postcards all over the state, but there isn’t anything about the situation that makes Mack look good.If you haven’t heard about it already, all the recent hullabaloo is over 90,000 mailers that Mack…
Workers at the Mardi Gras Casino say management has been adopting illegal union-busting tactics with its workers, and now they’re planning a king-hell spectacle to bring attention to it.Event organizers say they have 500 “confirmed” participants for a rally tonight that will start at B.F. James Park on NW Ninth…
Republican Senate candidate George LeMieux released a sequel to his “Two and a Half Macks” campaign ad against primary opponent, Connie Mack, yesterday. While the first ad’s thesis was essentially “Connie Mack is a doofus,” this one takes a more specific route — the Lemieux campaign says Mack doesn’t live…
Former Broward County Commissioner Diana Wasserman-Rubin is accused of felony public corruption. Investigators say her husband made $1.1 million off of taxpayers for writing grants that she helped approve, which we first wrote about back in 2005.The affidavit that went along with Wasserman-Rubin’s 2010 arrest claims that “between 2003 and 2008, the Rubins paid for…
The Florida Senate race has gotten some national attention the past few days — two of the Republican challengers to incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson got endorsements from people who used to be running for president.Republican George Lemieux received an endorsement from Herman Cain over the weekend, according to the…
As the U.S. Supreme Court debates the Arizona law destined to make life miserable for brown-skinned people, advocates on both sides of the immigration-reform issue are freaking out. Senate Bill 1070 requires Arizona cops to detain immigrants they suspect are in the country illegally and check their status. Not carrying…
A Fort Lauderdale yacht company is being sued over an internal email accidentally sent to job applicant Diane Melton that recommended against hiring her because she was “black and over weight,” which would make customers who wanted to discriminate against both black and overweight people feel uncomfortable.The Luxury Yacht Group…
The ugliness has started. Sort of.Until now, Congressman Allen West has remained almost silent when it came to actually having an opponent in the race for the District 19 congressional seat — though Democrat Patrick Murphy followed him up there after West bailed on District 22 for friendlier demographics.But late…
Bill Koch, the Palm Beach billionaire who criticized his brothers’ support of libertarian causes and has long escaped notice on the national political stage, is emerging as a major supporter of Mitt Romney.Huron Carbon, a subsidiary of Koch’s West Palm Beach-based Oxbow Corp., donated $1 million to Romney’s Restore Our…
UPDATE, 3 p.m.: Added comment from Bob Hirsh, curator of the Mark Twain Project.The plan for a new Mark Twain commemorative coin includes the phrase “In God We Trust,” a phrase Twain made fun of 150 years ago.Twain had a complicated relationship with religion. In the quote-collection snippets attributed to…
Republican Rep. Connie Mack IV’s Senate campaign has hit a bump in the road — a bump shaped like an electorate that doesn’t want to vote for him. He’s come up short in poll after poll, and papers in Florida and elsewhere have pointed it out. Well, one person is…
Making the state’s poorest residents piss in a cup before qualifying to receive welfare benefits was going to save Florida up to $77 million, Rick Scott said when he was campaigning for governor. The goal of the drug tests was “to make sure we don’t waste taxpayers’ money,” Gov. Voldemort…
Update, 4/19: Got comment from Wasserman Schultz’s camp. Added to the story.Original post, 4/17:Between January and the end of March, South Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz donated $73,000 to Democratic campaigns across the country. It’s not surprising — she’s chair of the Democratic National Committee, and $25,000 of that cash…
Whenever anyone reports on Congressman Allen West saying something ridiculous, he likes to declare that it makes him “the number-one target of the Democrat Party of the United States of America” because they hate freedom, Abraham Lincoln, and people who tell the truth.But a Politico story yesterday revealed something quite different — not only…
A new poll of Florida voters was released yesterday with all kinds of juicy numbers about politicians on both the state and national level. The full report is included at the bottom, but there are more facts in it than one blog post could ever hold.The poll was conducted by…
Yesterday, we brought you the details of Allen West’s 2012 campaign contributions — how he’s pulled in more than $1.8 million between January and the end of March, with more than half of contributions from donors giving over $200 coming from outside the state.He has $3,334,632 left in his war…
