A fired Florida Highway Patrol trooper is accusing his former agency of promoting an unwritten policy of not issuing traffic tickets to state lawmakers, even when they deserve them.

Trooper Charles Swindle was fired over the way he handled a traffic stop involving state Rep. Charles McBurney, R-Jacksonville.McBurney was traveling to Tallahassee last November when he was pulled over for speeding.

Swindle decided to issue a warning ticket. He claims the Highway Patrol does not ticket lawmakers because they control pay raises and other funding.

Are Republicans no longer the party more inclined to military interventions and an assertive foreign policy?

It's a question raised by the enthusiastic response to Sen. Rand Paul's 13-hour filibuster and to his not-very-interventionist foreign policy.

It's raised also by House Republicans' willingness to accept the budget sequester, which includes defense cuts that former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called "devastating."

It could be good news for Gov. Rick Scotts re-election efforts: Floridians feel better about the economy.

Consumer confidence among Floridians ticked up three points to 76 in March from February, according to monthly tracking numbers from the Bureau of Economic and Business Research, a division of the University of Florida. Four of the five units that comprise the index improved, with the last going down.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, speaking to the press in Tallahassee Wednesday morning, said its finally time to get to the truth about the mysterious deaths that happened at the former Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.

Nelson, D-Fla., is trying to secure grant money from the U.S. Department of Justice to help University of South Florida scientists in their effort to exhume bodies from the old reform school, which shut down in 2011.

The USF researchers discovered nearly 50 unmarked graves on the schools property, using ground-penetrating radar and analyzing soil samples.

If any bill in the 2013 session has disaster written all over it, it's the terrible twins, HB 1279 and SB 1164.