Columns

Welcome to The Dean’s List — an Ed Dean-style look at which Florida’s political leaders and issues who didn’t make the grade in 2015. What you see here is strictly my opinion, not necessarily the editor’s or the rest of the staff at Sunshine State News.

I strongly oppose any gun control laws that restrict or infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.

The New Year's execution by Saudi Arabia of the Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr was a deliberate provocation.

One of the things Donald Trump has accomplished is to get the media to drop all pretense of objectivity.

Mitt Romney got shoved out of the 2016 presidential race by Jeb Bush a year ago but he is now getting a little political payback against the former Florida governor. 

Welcome to The Dean’s List — an Ed Dean-style look at which Florida’s political achievers and issues were  major winners in 2015. What you see here is strictly my opinion, not necessarily the editor’s or the rest of the staff at Sunshine State News.

WASHINGTON -- Fractured and divided as we are, on one thing we can agree: 2015 was a miserable year. The only cheer was provided by Lincoln Chafee and the Pluto flyby (two separate phenomena), as well as one seminal aeronautical breakthrough.

To hear some folks in Riviera Beach tell it, redistricting is already a joke.

How shall we remember 2015? Or shall we try to forget it?

Marco Rubio is unfolding like a flower before American voters. It's a long, slow unfolding; little by little, easy does it.

With new leadership in the House of Representatives and an important return to regular order and a more inclusive process, the first Republican-controlled Congress in nine years ended 2015 by passing a number of substantial legislative achievements and conservative reforms that will benefit the American economy and the American people. More importantly, these legislative achievements were signed into law by a President who threatened to block much of this important progress.

There were few winners and too many losers in Florida politics over the past year as legislative dysfunction took over in Tallahassee and the state Supreme Court stepped in on redistricting. 

WASHINGTON -- If you look beyond Donald Trump's comprehensive unpleasantness -- is there a disagreeable human trait he does not have? -- you might see this: He is a fundamentally sad figure.

"I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here ... and ... around the world, that there is a 'clash of civilizations.'"

Some observations on the 2016 presidential race as we head into the dark period, i.e., the two weeks of Christmas and New Year's holidays in which no one has ever dared, at least in the past, to conduct any polls. Those of us who pick over poll results will have to fly blind until the week starting Jan. 4.