Columns

WASHINGTON, DC -- Virtually all of the oxygen in Washington, DC went to congressional action on health care, and the Sunshine State played a rather dominate role in this legislative process. First, Florida received major TV airtime when the U.S. Senate was debating the health care bill last December. It was then that the "gator special" deal was born. That deal, negotiated by Sen.

Former Rep. Loranne Ausley, the frontrunner in the race to be the Democratic nominee for state CFO, is holding as many fundraisers as possible before the end of the reporting quarter on March 31. With two fundraising events already this week, Ausley will be in Miami on the March 22 and Jacksonville on March 25 to raise more dough for her campaign Meanwhile, state Sen.

Why did President Barack Obama choose to turn a gaffe into a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations? And a gaffe it was: the announcement by a bureaucrat in the Interior Ministry of a housing expansion in a Jewish neighborhood in north Jerusalem. The timing could not have been worse: Vice President Joe Biden was visiting, Jerusalem is a touchy subject, and you dont bring up touchy subjects that might embarrass an honored guest.

The Democratic leadership's struggle to pass the Senate health care bill in the House looks like a great case study for political scientists. They have many examples of the leaders of a party majority trying to push controversial legislation through a balky chamber. But seldom have the political incentives of the party leadership and the party's members been so differently aligned.

In early March, the head of the Tennessee and Greater Nashville hospitality associations sent an email to a dozen or so people that compared First Lady Michelle Obama to a chimpanzee. As word leaked of this offensive humor, pressure built and the man responsible was soon fired.

Monday, March 15 Today, the Select Policy Council on Strategic and Economic Planning met. We heard presentations on energy exploration from the Collins Center for Public Policy and the Legislatures Office of Economic and Demographic Research. I met with my Education Policy Council staff to discuss the agendas for our committees on Wednesday.

GOP attorney general candidate Pam Bondi is holding a fundraiser in DC with two of the big-name Florida Republicans behind her. Make that one name in two

WASHINGTON -- Doubling down on dubious bets is characteristic of compulsive gamblers and federal education policy. The nation was essentially without such policy for grades K through 12, and better off for that, until 1965. In that year of liberals living exuberantly, they produced the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Now yet another president has announced yet another plan to fix education. His aspiration has a discouraging pedigree.

Howell Raines lost his executive editor's job at The New York Times for promoting the career of Jayson Blair, a black drug addict and fantasist who invented entire stories describing the hills of West Virginia from a saloon down the street in New York. But somehow, Raines still imagines himself a media Bigfoot who can pronounce on the State of Journalism, a one-man Pulitzer Prize panel.

WASHINGTON -- As Democrats consider shoving health care reform through the House with a process known as "deem and pass," it is helpful to return to square one and ask: What, again, is the rush? A year ago, when reform work got under way, Democrats were hell-bent on passing legislation before year's end. Because? There was no way, Democrats believed, that they could accomplish such sweeping reform in an election year.