A split is developing between Republican leaders in the Florida House and Senate over university tuition next year.

The House wants to raise tuition 6 percent. The Senate is proposing no tuition increase.

House leaders argue Floridas tuition rates are below the national average and an increase would help universities keep pace with other schools around the country.

The average cost of tuition in Florida is about $6,200. Nationwide, its $8,600.

Gov. Rick Scott, meanwhile, is also making it clear that he opposes tuition increases. He compares them to tax hikes.

"President Obama has arguably established the authority of the president to intervene militarily virtually anywhere without the consent or the approval of Congress, at his own discretion and for as long as he wishes."

-- Jim Webb

The low-battery warning from your smoke alarm always seems to happen when youre trying to sleep or at some other unwelcome moment.

Too many people pull out the batteries when that happens, according to retired firefighter Rep. Ed Hooper, R-Clearwater.

Hooper, on the Insurance and Banking Subcommittee, is pushing CS/HB 47, legislation that would require long-life lithium batteries in new and replacement smoke alarms in Florida.

Hooper says these new-generation units last at least 10 years.

Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer, who pled guilty on the eve of a potentially politically salacious trial that could have aired the laundry of the state GOP and former Gov. Charlie Crist, will find out his prison fate Wednesday.

Greers pretrial guilty plea in February allowed him to avert the possibility of up to 75 years in prison for fraud, money laundering and theft when he again appears before Circuit Judge Donald Myers at 1:30 p.m. in Orlando.

Good morning, Gov. Scott: Begging your indulgence, sir, I offer a little advice.

The Republican National Committee has produced an "autopsy" on what went wrong in 2012, when the party failed to win the White House and lost seats in Congress.

Yet, the crisis of the Grand Old Party goes back much further.

First, some history. The Frank Lloyd Wright of the New Majority was Richard Nixon, who picked up the pieces of the party after Goldwater's defeat had left Republicans with just a third of the House and Senate.