Frederick Rick Knight has been named to the Hardee County Commission by Gov. Rick Scott. Knight,who also serves as the mayor of Wauchula, will complete the term of Terry Atchley who resigned. The term ends Nov. 19, 2012. Knight, who served on the Commission in the 1980s, is a real estate broker. This past week, Scott also appointed Andrew D. Clark to the board of Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services.

Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, chair of Space Florida, will take a break from her Thanksgiving vacation to join a large holiday weekend crowd watching the latest mission to Mars that will belaunched from Cape Canaveral on Saturday. The car-sized Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover, aboard an unmanned Atlas 5, is set to launch at 10:02 a.m.

While Mitt Romneys Mormon faith could hurt him in the Republican presidential primary, it's unlikely to affect his support in the general election. A new poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life finds that Romneys religion could hurt him with white evangelical Protestants an important voting bloc in the Republican primaries. Among the evangelical voters polled, more than half -- 53 percent -- said they don't think of Mormons as Christians. Asked for a single word to describe Mormonism, evangelicals are the most likely group to respond with the word cult.

On Wednesday, James Ammons, the president of Florida A&M University, announced that he had appointed a task force led by former Attorney General Bob Butterworth and Quincy Police Chief Walt McNeil to investigate the death of Robert Champion, a student who died in Orlando in Saturday after an alleged hazing incident involving the famous Marching 100 band.

The state government is now looking into the death of Robert Champion, a Florida A&M University student who was a drum major with the famous Marching 100 band, on Saturday in a suspect hazing incident in Orlando. While the bands activities have been suspended by the university as officials investigate, Gov. Rick Scott sent a letter to Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) Commissioner Gerald Bailey to work with Orange County officials in ivestigating the matter.

Gov. Rick Scott's office weighed in on the state's ongoing delay in issuing $119.6 million in recognition bonus money to "A" schools. Spokeswoman Amy Graham released this statement Wednesday: "Governor Scott appreciates the hard work and dedication of all Floridas teachers. The Florida Department of Education works diligently each year to provide public grades for elementary and middle schools as soon as possible following the end of the school year.

U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., announced on Wednesday that he is backing former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts for the Republican presidential nomination. Thune, who defeated then-Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle in 2004, had considered making a bid for the GOP nomination himself.

An American Research Group poll released on Wednesday, of likely votes in the Iowa Republican caucus, found that former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has moved to the front of the pack of Republican presidential candidates in the Hawkeye State -- while businessman Herman Cain and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., have collapsed there. Gingrich takes 27 percent in the poll, followed by former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 20 percent. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, places third with 16 percent.

Newt Gingrich, who voted for amnesty for illegal aliens in the 1980s, proposed a guest worker board to review the status of some 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. "Let's be humane and don't separate families," Gingrich said at Tuesday night's GOP debate. Michele Bachmann jumped on that point, declaring, "We should not make 11 million illlegal workers here legal." Mitt Romney appeared to side with Bachmann, saying that to "focus a debate on amnesty is a huge mistake."

Speaking of the budget deadlock on Capitol Hill, Rick Perry said, "We never would have gotten to this situation if I were president." "I would have worked day in and day out. We would have a 20 percent flat tax and a 20 percent corporate rate," he said at Tuesday night's GOP debate. Rick Santorum said a hyper-partisan and campaigning president "has poisoned the well in Congress." Putting the supercommittee's task in perspective, Michele Bachmann noted that the panel was asked to cut spending by $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

Mitt Romney's complaints about impending cuts in the defense budget were dismissed by Ron Paul at Tuesday night's GOP debate. "They're not cutting anything out of anything," Paul said of congressional budget negotiations. "They're nibbling away at baseline budgeting. People are going hysterical because spending isn't going up as fast as they want it to." Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, meantime, assailed President Obama for undermining U.S. security through ineffectual or nonexistent energy policies.

Ron Paul dismissed the idea of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran, and said the Jewish state does not need U.S. help. "They can take care of themselves. Why do we have an automatic program to send our money to Israel?" the Texas congressman said at Tuesday night's GOP debate. Rick Perry said he favors sanctions against the Iranian central bank to "shut down their economy" and deter that country's nuclear program. Newt Gingrich called for the "defeat of the Iranian regime with a minimal use of force" before that country gets a nuclear weapon.

Jon Huntsman's call for a drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan drew a rebuke from Mitt Romney, who said, "This is not the time to cut and run." Speaking at Tuesday night's GOP debate at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Romney said a "precipitous pullout" could draw the Asian subcontinent "into terror." Huntsman chided Romney for being overly solicitous to generals, reminding, "See what happened when the commander-in-chief listened to the generals in 1967."

Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry disagreed on how America should deal with a shaky Pakistan in the global war on terror. "Pakistan lies, but it also shares intelligence data on al-Qaida. We need to demand more," Bachmann said during Tuesday night's CNN debate in Washington, D.C. Rick Perry said, "Until Pakistan shows they have America's best interest in mind, I would not send them one penny." Bachmann called Perry's remarks "highly naive" and labeled Pakistan "too nuclear to fail."

Rick Perry called for privatization of the TSA at home and improved intelligence-gathering capabilities abroad. The Texas governor, during Tuesday's CNN debate on national security, criticized the Obama administration for degrading intelligence services. Rick Santorum said profiling is needed. "Muslims are people you look ... and younger males," he said. But Ron Paul condemned his fellow candidates for "careless use of words" in seeking to step up security.