Former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, now running in a crowded Republican primary field to challenge Democrat incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in 2012, unveiled his team in Palm Beach County on Thursday.

Circuit Judge Alan Dickey advised attorneys for the Republican Party of Floridathey must schedule a full hour for a hearing at a later date as they asked Thursday to have former chairman Jim Greers lawsuit thrown out.

From his perch on the Foreign Relations Committee, Florida Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio offered a bill to reform the United Nations.

A Tampa couple has pleaded guilty to their involvement in an $8.8 million mortgage fraud scheme, the attorney general's office announced. David Barile, 44, and Melissa D. Barile, 35, were among five arrested in April for their involvement in 50 fraudulent mortgage applications involving 33 properties in Pinellas, Pasco, Hillsborough, Hernando, Osceola, Seminole and Orange counties.

On a day when the Dow tumbled nearly 400 points, Republican presidential candidates at the CNBC debate were asked how they would "restore faith" in the stock market. Rick Perry and Ron Paul focused on government interference and picked up on the "crony capitalism" critique issued by Michele Bachmann earlier in the debate. Perry, who has been criticized for coziness with large corporate donors as governor of Texas, assailed a "culture in Washington, D.C., with corporate lobbyists having cozy relationship with the people that are supposed to be regulating them."

Michele Bachmann refused to follow the crowd on the GOP debate stage Wednesday calling for a cut in the payroll tax. While her rivals supported President Obama's proposal to extend the payroll tax cut, Bachmann said that would be a mistake, since that tax is the primary funding source for the Social Security trust fund. "It would just blow a bigger hole in the Social Security trust fund," the congresswoman said.

Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich slapped down questions about student-loan debt. Paul said he would kill the federal student loan program, saying, "Any time government gets involved in delivering a service, it brings higher prices, lower quality and creates bubbles." When asked how students would pay for their college education, Paul responded: "Like they do for cell phones and computers." Newt Gingrich said government's role in student loans "merely expands the ability of students to stay in college longer because they don't see the cost."

Rick Perry stumbled on the debate stage again Wednesday night when he failed to remember the third of three federal agencies he has vowed to abolish. The Texas governor listed the departments of Commerce and Education, but, after a long pause, said he could not recall the third Cabinet-level agency he has pledged to shut down. After prompting by the CNBC questioners, Perry still couldn't come up with the name and apologized for the lapse.

Gov. Rick Scott will be going back to school. Scott will teach elementary, middle and high school students in Immokalee Thursday for his sixth Lets Get to Work day. School is scheduled be at Immokalee High School appearing before students in honors American government, honors economics and an American government class starting at 7:10 a.m. He will head over to Immokalee Middle School to have lunch with teachers after visits to an eighth-grade U.S. history class and a seventh-grade geography class.

Republican presidential candidates on Wednesday debunked the idea of government programs as the salvation for a floundering U.S. housing market. "When you have government play its heavy hand, markets blow up," Mitt Romney said. "Let the economy reboot." Romney and Rick Perry echoed Michele Bachmann in attacking the Dodd-Frank financial regulations for pumping up the housing bubble.

Republican presidential candidates called for lower, flatter tax rates during a CNBC debate Wednesday night. But Michele Bachmann took a slightly different tack by stating "Everyone should pay something ... even if it's the price of two Happy Meals." Noting that 47 percent of Americans pay no federal taxes, the Minnesota congresswoman declared, "Freedom isn't free." Ron Paul turned the tax question on its head, and went after government spending. He vowed to cut $1 trillion in federal spending in the first year of his administration.

Backed by powerful members of the Florida Senate, the Polk County campus of the University of South Florida moved closer to independence Wednesday despite opposition from faculty, staff and other state lawmakers.

CNBC questioners were booed and Herman Cain was lustily cheered Wednesday as he answered questions about sexual-harassment allegations against him. Speaking at a GOP debate at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., Cain reiterated that he did nothing inappropriate with female workers while serving as chairman of the National Restaurant Association. Mitt Romney sidestepped the subject, saying it was a matter for the public to decide, and CNBC moderators quickly returned to the economic questions that were billed as the topic of the evening.

On a day when Italy teetered on bankruptcy, GOP candidates said the United States must put its own fiscal house in order. Mitt Romney and Herman Cain said that only a robust U.S. economy can lift the global economy. Seeing trouble ahead, Jon Huntsman called for "properly sized banks" and Ron Paul reiterated his belief that public debt must be "liquidated" and that troubled institutions must be allowed to fail to "allow the market to determine the real value."

Former Florida Rep. Thomas Tommy Stevens Sr., a citrus grower and an insurance executive from Dade City, died Sunday, the Housespeaker's office announced. Stevens, who represented parts of Hillsborough, Citrus, Pasco and Hernando counties from 1962 to 1972, was 80. The family is receiving friends today from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Bevis Funeral Home in Tallahassee.