Imagine a Super Bowl Sunday that parties on for four weeks.

Where late-to-work is forgiven with a smile and productivity slows to a crawl and not a single soul gives a hoot.

Thats the World Cup. And thats the power soccers grandest tournament has just about everywhere else on the planet but the United States.

The week starts, as the last several have, with a focus on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, with President Barack Obama planning to hit Pensacola during a three-state tour on Monday that acknowledges the effects of the spill go beyond Louisiana.

A mood swing swept Florida this week.

With the clock on the Gulf oil spill passing the 50-day mark, Florida officials jettisoned their measured response and began loudly airing frustration with British Petroleum and cleanup efforts, as tar balls, sheen, boom and skimmers became the vocabulary of a Sunshine State summer.

Congress is back from its week-long Memorial Day break trying to spend more money without paying the bills.

To probably nobodys surprise, Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a controversial bill Friday that would have required women considering abortion to have an ultrasound first. The veto of a bill that was a priority for Republican lawmakers further distanced himself from his former party.

The ghost of Jim Greer is coming back to haunt Bill McCollum.

Until the Republican Party chairman resigned last January amid a storm of controversy over his financial dealings, McCollum was one of Greer's most steadfast supporters. Now the GOP gubernatorial candidate, with his campaign sinking in the polls, can't seem to run away from him fast enough.

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Stranger than South Carolina's politics is the nearly nativist pride many take in its nastiness.

Not the good folks of the Palmetto State, but rather the politicos who work diligently to manipulate the sort of voters who, for example, would elect Alvin M. Greene to the U.S. Senate.

Who? Good question.