Columns

As the congressional “August recess” wraps up and members of Congress get ready to head back to Washington next week, this is the last chance tell your U.S. representative and senator face-to-face what Congress ought to get done this year.

Chances remain about zero that Republican leaders will be swayed by calls from the state's Democratic congressional delegation to hold a one-day special session to replace a statue of a Confederate

On July 4, 2017, 15,000 immigrants were sworn in as new American citizens -- something each and every one of them worked hard to attain. On that day, they earned the most sought-after citizenship in the world and swore they would support and defend our Constitution. And on that day, along with their citizenship, they were granted the right and the responsibility to vote.

Excuse me for a minute, while I laugh. Actually, I don't know whether to laugh or call the police.

When I saw recent reports of the oil and natural gas industry’s impact on our state, my interest piqued. As the president and CEO of the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, I represent the needs of more than 80,000 minority-owned businesses in the Sunshine State, so I am especially attuned to anything that affects our state’s economy. We support the development of all types of energy, natural gas being one of them.

The University of Tampa just fired a visiting professor who suggested on Twitter that Texas deserves the deadly devastation from Hurricane Harvey because the Lone Star State voted for President Trump in the 2016 election.

Was St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman going to wait until the polls closed Tuesday to tell city residents about the latest sewage spill?

A petition drive has started to remove the Confederate Memorial in Pensacola’s Lee Square.  I will not take the time to detail the history of the memorial which was erected in 1891 with private dollars.  The reader should do that with a quick Internet search. That’s the problem with this insane drive to remove Confederate statues from across our nation – ignorance of history.

Sooner or later, and the later the better, the president's wandering attention will flit, however briefly, to the subject of trade. So, let us try to think about the problem as he seems to: Wily cosmopolitans beyond our borders are insinuating across our borders goods that Americans, perhaps misled by British economist David Ricardo, persist in purchasing.

More than four decades after he was elected to the Florida House and more than a quarter of a century after he was thrown out of the mayor’s office after one term in Jacksonville, Democrat Tommy Hazouri continues to make waves on the First Coast.

In this morning's Politico Playbook, it was reported that President Obama endorsed Rick Kriseman for St. Petersburg mayor.

UPDATED AT 6 PM. TO INCLUDE CALLALOO GROUP'S ADDRESS: Who can blame folks in Midtown, a predominantly African-American neighborhood in St. Petersburg, for protesting Mayor Rick Kriseman's decision to put the historic Manhattan Casino in the hands of community outsiders?

On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., joined Vice President Mike Pence, Gov. Rick Scott, and U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., to meet with members of the Venezuelan exile community, local leaders, and elected officials about the continuing deterioration of democracy, the lack of respect for human rights, and unrest in Venezuela. After the listening session, Rubio delivered remarks at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Doral. His remarks are as follows:

When John Adams wrote into Massachusetts' Constitution a commitment to a "government of laws and not of men," he probably assumed that the rule of law meant the rule of laws, no matter how many laws there might be. He could not have imagined the modern proliferation and complexity of laws, or how subversive this is of the rule of law.

When Gov. Rick Scott says he misspoke, why would anyone who's listened to him mangle words for nearly seven years -- especially his hometown Naples Daily News -- not give him the benefit of the doubt?