If a new Florida Senate bill becomes law, the Sunshine State will finally have a legal definition of “sexting” – sending sexual advances or photos via text message. That may sound like a silly thing for the state legislature to be working on during a period of such economic uncertainty…
What you’ve just seen is an advertisement from a Democrat named Patrick Murphy, a 28-year-old small businessman and CPA who’s running to represent Florida’s 22nd district in 2012. Of course, we’ve already got somebody occupying that seat: Rep. Lt. Col. Allen West. Rep. West is arguably the fastest-rising star in…
This week, Rep. Col. Allen West denounced a report by the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, which found that 77 percent of active-duty senior officers are white and 84 percent are male. Rep. Col. West didn’t attack the report’s findings, exactly. In fact, he didn’t seem entirely certain what the report…
Calling Allen West a “Defender of Israel” is a little like calling Fred Phelps a “defender of Christianity.” West thinks he’s a defender of Israel, and he sure does seem to like the place, but his net impact on that country probably isn’t so good.I made this point to a…
Update 3/11: The fake Rick Scott account (@FLGovRickScott) has been suspended by Twitter with no reason given. Joel Kodner is currently appealing the suspension.On January 20, new Gov. Rick Scott decided he was going to answer political questions from his Twitter account.Thinking that was a dumb idea, one local man…
Remember the 2000 election debacle, when Florida became the laughingstock of the nation? It wasn’t just punch-card ballots that caused our fair state such embarrassment. It was the wrongful purging of thousands of voters from the rolls because they were misidentified as felons.That mishap brought to light the painful fact…
Sen. Marco Rubio offered this statement early this week, re: the legislative branch’s decision to challenge the Obama administration on its decision that DOMA isn’t worth defending:I want to thank Speaker Boehner and the House Republican leadership for taking action to defend this critical law that was enacted by a…
Here are some questions I hope to answer in the next several days: — Who is the Broward County School Board member who, prior to his or her election, was accused of making a racial slur at work? Specifically the member was talking about attending an Orange Bowl game in the…
When will the crazy stop? Rep. Allen West is a man — a two-hundred-poundish, handsome, intelligent man, with his own ideas, experiences, memories, loves, dislikes, hatreds, prejudices, whathaveyou. He is not a canvas.Yet that’s what lots of people want him to be. Since he first hung up his dress uniform,…
In a perfect world, we’d have no reason to pause over the language of Florida’s Senate Bill 1854, which reads, in part:Members of the instructional staff of the public schools… shall teach efficiently and faithfully… the following: (a thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution.”Critical analysis”…
It was fodder for Florida columnists all week. By Saturday, the hypocrisy and intellectual ineptitude of Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos was on national display via the New York Times’ op-ed page. Last week, the AP reported that Haridopolos, a so-called fiscally conservative Republican, received $152,000 from a community college…
There’s a mysterious force at work in the Plantation City Council races — and they call him the Jedi.The Jedi is being blamed for a recent negative ad on council candidate Lynn Stoner, who is getting backing by certain Republicans. The ad, which attacks Stoner’s dismal voting record, comes with…
You know, Sun-Sentinel, there’s a certain art to these things.I thought it was cute bordering on precious when, a couple of weeks ago, you tried to emulate the cattier elements of big media by having dueling columnists thrash it out over the merits of Florida’s putative (and now aborted) high-speed…
A former Broward deputy has filed an ethics complaint with the State of Florida against Sheriff Al Lamberti, alleging he violated state law when he engaged in a “fraudulent scheme” to bring his 15-year-old son with him on a security detail at last year’s Super Bowl. In the complaint, ex-deputy DiPerna…
It’s not often that a government official bothers to read — much less publicly praise– this rag. Politicians usually construct dart boards out of our cover stories and grumble about needing extra security to protect them against columnist Bob Norman.But a recent issue of The PIP Source — an unabashedly…
After Charlie Sheen injected tiger blood and seven-gram rocks into the national discourse this week, you may be numb to subtly absurd political gaffes. But let’s take a few minutes to look at the congresswoman currently visiting Florida, who is known for purporting falsities and misinformation. Later today, Rep. Michele Bachmann…
Last week, Rep. Allen West was confronted at a town hall meeting by a “Qur’an-wielding” Muslim who wished to talk to the congressman about his attacks on Islam. He was shouted down. That man, Nezar Hamze, is executive director of the Miami chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or…
There is no bigger believer in the power of activists in Broward County than the Pulp. When watchdogs in the media fail (which happens more frequently than you can imagine), their hard work and perseverance have helped to bring one scandal after another to light. Activists and their less-influential and often…
If RuPaul were still in high school, guarantee he’d want to be in Broward County — now Florida’s largest school district has added “gender identity and expression” to its nondiscrimination policy.With its unanimous vote Tuesday, the Broward County School Board became one of the first school districts in the state to…
As of this writing, Rep. Allen West of Florida’s 22nd District has been in office just shy of seven weeks. He was famous before he arrived. He gave Rep. Ron Klein a righteous stomping in the November elections, and before West took his first breath as a congressman, an anarchic…
At a town-hall-style meeting February 21, Nezar Hamze stood to ask Allen West a pointed question. Hamze, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, asked West why he keeps claiming that the Qur’an instructs Muslims to attack America (read more about that exchange here). West cut Hamze off…
[jump] He is Mladen Antolic, a seemingly mild-mannered physician in Orlando who has been charged with unlawfully dispensing pain pills. But that’s just the start, according to the Orlando Sentinel: “By night, authorities say, Antolic was hosting wild drug and sex parties at his 4,700-square-foot Hunter’s Creek home. The 55-year-old…
