In diplomacy, always leave your adversary an honorable avenue of retreat.

More than $150 million has been spent already on the legislatives races in Florida this year, with a month left until the votes are tallied.

Another $50 million-plus was currently available for additional TV, print and Internet ads as October began, according to numbers released Monday by the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

The majority of the money has come through the political parties and electioneering groups that include super-PACs, which have collectively raised $168 million and spent $126 million before October began.

After a two-hour informal back-and-forth in his chambers Monday, Judge John C. Cooper of the 2nd Judicial Circuit Court of Florida denied motions by the Republican Party of Florida and two state senators to dismiss a lawsuit brought against them by disgraced former RPOF Chairman Jim Greer.

Greer resigned from the state party chairmanship in 2010 facing accusations of fraud and money laundering; he is currently facing criminal charges of having diverted some $300,000 from the party to his private company, Victory Strategies.

One of the more contentious measures on the Florida ballot this November implicates religious liberty, with supporters claiming the provision will strengthen a time-honored freedom and opponents insisting it effectively overturns church-state separation.

The Florida Religious Freedom Amendment or Amendment 8 if passed by a 60 percent supermajority of voters, would revise Article I, Section 3 of the Florida Constitution.

As it happens, this judicial independence business is all baloney. It plain doesn't exist.

When former Rep. Aaron Bean won a nasty Republican primary in August, it looked like he might have cleared the biggest hurdle in his bid to represent Northeast Florida in the state Senate.

But new campaign-finance reports show Bean still faces a challenge.

Democrat Nancy Soderberg, a Jacksonville Beach college professor and former national-security official in the Clinton administration, raised $32,589 between Sept. 15 and Sept. 28, the reports show. Maybe more importantly, her campaign shelled out $75,000 for television ad time.