For years, the fight over whether to expand school choice in Florida has been a bitter struggle waged by lawmakers, teachers unions and parents.

But its only part of a larger national struggle to give economically disadvantaged parents opportunities to take their children out of failing schools and into schools they cant normally afford, according to a New York City-based documentary film due out this week.

A glimpse of the ugliness and of the battle for expanded school choice can be seen in screenings of The Lottery in two Florida cities today.

Past and potentially future presidential candidates are gearing up to head to the Sunshine State to help Florida Republicans -- and perhaps their own prospects for 2012.

On Monday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the 2008 presidential candidate who has moved to Florida and become active backing Republicans across the Sunshine State, endorsed three more Florida Republicans in the 2010 elections. With these endorsements, Huckabee has now endorsed seven Republicans in Florida.

Drawing a bright line between himself and his two likely opponents in the race for U.S. Senate, Marco Rubio on Monday attacked federal "card check" legislation.

I oppose card check and any efforts like the Employee Free Choice Act to tip labor law in favor of unions through binding federal arbitration. I am concerned by labor unions unrelenting campaign for card check, which would eliminate workers right to a secret ballot in unionization elections," Rubio, the Republican nominee, told a gathering of the Associated Builders and Contractors in Fort Lauderdale.

Some 200,000 homeowners -- including thousands in Florida -- will share in a $108 million settlement announced Monday by the Federal Trade Commission.

Countrywide Home Loans, a subsidiary of Bank of America, agreed to pay to settle FTC charges that the company collected excessive fees from mortgage holders struggling to keep their homes.

Gov. Charlie Crist says he wasn't aware of Jim Greer's financial freelancing, but he apparently received plenty of input from two of his closest political advisers about the party boss.

On this matter of offering federal jobs to potential candidates to induce them not to run against Senate Democratic incumbents, this White House is drifting dangerously close to the falls.

Colorado's Andrew Romanoff has now confirmed that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina trolled three federal jobs in front of him, if he would desist and not run against incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet.

With Rep. J.C. Planas, R-Miami, retiring from the House because of term limits, a fight is shaping up to replace him with three candidates who have hit the ground running. Two Republicans and a Democrat sparring in the 115th House District have posted impressive -- even jaw-dropping -- fund-raising figures at the end of the first quarter of 2010.

By eliminating secret-ballot union elections, the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), or card check, would fundamentally violate the freedom of workers.

Congress comes back to D.C. today after a weeklong break designed to allowlawmakers to celebrate Memorial Day in their home states and districts.

While dozens and dozens of members of Congress fled the country on congressional fact-finding trips, known as CODELS (Congressional Delegations), the majority returned to spend at least a little time with the folkswho actually hired them to do their jobs.