Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Destin, named former House Speaker Allan Bense, the father-in-law of current House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, to the board of trustees of Triumph Gulf Coast Inc., which manages funds won from lawsuits or settlements in the BP oil spill in the Gulf back in 2010.

Gov. Rick Scott signed the "Intellectual Disabilities" bill Thursday while co-hosting an Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) town hall meeting in Orlando. The Intellectual Disabilities Bill will remove the phrase mental retardation from state statutes and instead will replace it with intellectual disabilities. Mental retardation was once considered a valid medical term, but over the years it has become a slang term that promotes negative stereotypes of people with intellectual disabilities.

On Thursday, former U.S. Rep. Allen West continued to attack President Barack Obamas handling of the Middle East.

The Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) fired back on Thursday at the Florida Democratic Partys charges that attacks made on Allison Tant, the state partys chairwoman, and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., are "sexist."

In the wake of the highly publicized George Zimmerman trial, a Florida college is offering a new course that will be centered around the controversial Stand Your Ground law. The course is being offered this fall by the School of Public Administration at the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University.Program coordinator Richard Mangan says the national publicity surrounding the recent George Zimmerman trial helped spur the creation of the course, which is being offered as an elective.

Top education leaders around Florida will be meeting in Clearwater next week to discuss a variety of issues facing Florida's education system. Common Core State Standards, school grades, teacher pay, and student assessments can all be expected to be on the agenda. The meeting will run Monday through Wednesday.

Former Rep. Shawn Harrison is getting the support of some of his former colleagues in the Florida House as he looks to return to Tallahassee. Harrison is already running hard against Rep. Mark Danish, D-Tampa, who represents parts of Hillsborough County. On Thursday, Harrison announced Deputy Whip Elizabeth Porter, R-Lake City, Rep. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Shalimar, Rep. Ray Pilon, R-Sarasota, and Rep. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, were backing his campaign.

Rep. Cary Pigman, R-Sebring, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves and serving with the Florida National Guard, is back in the Sunshine State after a three-month tour of Kuwait. Pigman was there in his role as a physician, treating service members wounded in Iraq.

With news emerging that the NSA has mined more than 56,000 emails and other communications from Americans who are not under investigation for terrorism links, U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., pointed to a bill he filed two months ago as a needed reform.

Freshman U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., weighed in on the situation in Egypt on Wednesday. Yoho sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee as well as the Middle East and South Asia subcommittee and the Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade subcommittee.

Under fire for her role in backing Allie Braswell for state CFO, Allison Tant, the chairwoman of the Florida Democrats, is up in arms about the attacks coming from the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF). After jumping in at the end of last week, Braswell left the race on Monday after reports emerged that he had filed for bankruptcy three times. The short-lived candidacy raised questions and concerns about Tant and the Florida Democrats especially as Braswell appears not to have been vetted yet received the partys support.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is declassifying three secret U.S. court opinions showing how the National Security Agency snooped into as many as 56,000 emails a year over three years and other communications by Americans with no connection to terrorism. The opinions will also show how it revealed the error to the court and how it gathered Internet communications.

The Republican Party of Florida has continued to fire back at U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., after she attacked Gov. Rick Scott for standing in the way of implementing Obamacare. This time, RPOF Press Secretary Susan Hepworth is stepping up to bat to speak out against Wasserman Schultz.

The Republican Party of Florida came to Nan Rich's aid when she was snubbed by her own party over the summer, but the Florida Democratic Party has remained silent on Rich as of late. RPOF Chairman Lenny Curry, however, has a word of advice for the FDP and for voters across the state: Take Nan Rich seriously.

Florida students trail behind the nation in terms of being prepared for college after they leave high school, according to ACT college-admissions-test results released Wednesday morning.