When elected officials are charged with crimes, the governor suspends them from office until the case is resolved. But if a member of a key government committee or other government appointees get hit with, say, felony bribery charges, there is no such protocol to have them removed. That job, unfortunately, is left to the vagaries of local politicians…
If you thought Florida International University’s amazing bowl win last night had wiped away the seeming curse that the sports gods have placed on the school, think again. Trumping that news now is the arrest of FIU baseball hitting-streak phenom Garrett Wittels on rape charges in the Bahamas. The Miami Herald reports that Wittels…
Norma Goldstein just hung up on me. She said hello and I had barely got my name out when, bam, the call with Broward County Commissioner Stacy Ritter’s 79-year-old district aide went dead. I was going to ask Goldstein to confirm from sources that she was being swept into the State Attorney’s Office…
OK, so it’s different. For those of you concerned about IP addresses, they are now in the hands of Disqus, not New Times. The only time I ever used them was to try to smack down trolls anyway. Disqus also eradicates all spam, which makes Pulp’s life easier. Obviously the new system brings avatars…
Chip LaMarca is the only Republican on the Broward County Board of Commissioners, so you might think he would be the last one to spearhead a move to literally unleash known violent criminals back on our neighborhoods. But LaMarca was behind the undoing of the doggy death penalty ordinance that was put into place by…
When we stop to remember Michael Garretson, we should never forget that the late School Board construction chief led the spending of a billion dollars a year in what was one of the largest and most damaging school building booms in Broward County history. For those who wanted accountability out of the School Board, Garretson, who left the…
You know, every criminal investigation has its side notes apart from the nuts and bolts of the case, the stuff that fills in the dialogue when the story needs to be told. The Stephanie Kraft School Board corruption case has some of that. We know about the late School Board…
In this morning’s post, I published a copy of a Stacy Ritter campaign check that the Florida Elections Commission believed was signed by the candidate herself. But it wasn’t. It was almost surely signed by her lobbyist husband, Russell Klenet. In fact, it looks like Klenet, whose name was listed on the campaign banking account,…
Many of us are getting creative this year by trying a new holiday recipe or baking a special treat for the season. But if you’re a type-A, detail-oriented, holiday baker showoff, Williams-Sonoma has several ridiculous kitchen gadgets that may interest you. The specialty cookware store near you has a snowy…
Florida Elections Commission …
Hey — it’s still legal to dream. This winter, not only are friends back West gloating over their strains of Sour Diesel and AK-47, the legal pot dispensaries are also baking up cookies — chronic cookies, that is. Yeah. Talk about leaving Santa a little surprise snack when he comes down…
Did Broward County Commissioner Stacy Ritter use her campaign fund to help her gain sway with the Obama Administration in the hopes of getting a plum job in the White House? People forget that once upon a time it was supposedly a done deal that Mrs. Ritter was headed to Washington. And…
Some of the more suspicious expenses Broward County Commissioner Stacy Ritter and her lobbyist husband Russ Klenet ran up during her controversial 2008 campaign involve “unknown” dinner receipts. There are a few receipts that Ritter turned in to the Florida Elections Commission during its investigation that you just can’t read. One…
[jump] Whatever you think of the pardon granted to Jim Morrison by outgoing Gov. Charlie Crist or of Jim Morrison himself, that indecent-exposure case against him was a sham. And what a sham it was. I remember as a young kid, several years after the fact, hearing about Morrison taking out his Mojo…
Yesterday we got the first official whiff of it when eye doctor and felonious political operative Alan Mendelsohn told a U.S. District Judge William Zloch while pleading guilty that it was Klenet who showed him how to take gifts from clients and not report them to the IRS. More important, he claimed that Klenet…
Bruce and Shawn Chait paid off a who’s who of Broward County public officials to get government approvals for their controversial housing development on two golf courses in Tamarac. The father-and-son team bought since-imprisoned Broward County Commissioner Joe Eggelletion a golf club membership and gave him cash totaling $25,000 before Eggelletion voted…
There are few breaks in the house of chef Ingrid Hoffmann. If she’s not recording one of her shows, she’s making appearances on others. When that stops, she has meetings to discuss her cookware, books, the future of her mobile application, and a spices line. This Friday, she gets one…
If you’re wondering what kind of guy former star baseball player and recently acquitted Jim Leyritz really is, I think we now have an official answer. Leyritz, who was driving drunk in downtown Fort Lauderdale when his car struck and killed 30-year-old Fredia Veitch, yelled at New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser that…
It’s a question that keeps popping up: Is Stephanie Kraft cooperating with law enforcement? I’ve never seen anyone so disgraced try to retain such a high profile. She’s running around town, claims she’s going to beat the nails-hard case against her, and is trying to maintain a presence in schools. What…
Christmas is the most wonderful time of year for us gentiles and we love all of our holiday traditions. But one of our most sacred customs could be pissing off the second most important person of the season — our jolly ol’ Saint Nick. For hundreds of years, families across…
— Tamarac Mayor Beth Talabisco, a figure in the ongoing State Attorney’s Office corruption investigation, was released from Broward General Hospital on Sunday after undergoing surgery for a serious medical condition. The Pulp wishes her a speedy recovery to good health. What impact it may or may not have on her position in Tamarac…
When disposing of all the campaign cash she and her husband didn’t spend on dinners, family phone bills, and other luxuries, Broward County Commissioner Stacy Ritter decided to do the Florida Democratic Party a favor: As seen above, she contributed $5,000 to party coffers. Or so it seemed. Although Ritter claimed the donation…
