Palm Beach County state attorney candidate Dave Aronberg -- known a year ago as "Florida's drug czar" -- received almost $14,000 in campaign contributions, directly and indirectly, from a medical and lawyer referral service in February 2012 ... at the same time Aronberg's boss was investigating that service for deceptive and unfair trade practices.

In the final debate, liberal CBS anchorman Bob Schieffer did it right. He moderated without asserting his own political opinions. Indeed, if this was all you had as a compass, you'd never know where he leaned. It was a welcome change from the Raddatz and Crowley libfests.

When the news from Washington contains words such as million, billion and trillion, its all too easy for our eyes to glaze over. Numbers that big arent easy to grasp.

Florida will report in December that it has significantly reduced its outstanding debt for the second year in a row, and that continued refinancing of outstanding debt will save more than $1 billion on future interest payments, the state's top bond finance official said Tuesday.

A second year of lower debt appears to portend a reversal of a long trend. Two years of reductions follow about a decade of increasing debt loads and represent the first year-over-year drops in 20 years.