Columns

You would not think that a lizard is responsible for this. But let me explain.

The Government Accountability Office‭ (‬GAO‭) ‬recently‭ ‬published a report stating that federally issued Direct Student Loans‭ ‬placed‭ ‬in Income-Driven Repayment‭ (‬IDR‭) ‬plans will cost the government‭ ‬$74‭ ‬billion,‭ ‬which is higher than previously estimated.‭ 

Florida's abortion law in all its collective parts is so unAmerican, so unconstitutional and, frankly, so offensive that any day this law is challenged in court is a day I'm ready to throw a party.

On Monday Stephen Bittel sent out an email to Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee members saying activists have encouraged him to run for FDP chair. Well, being the knight in shining armor a la Donald Trump, he is heeding their call.

Congratulations to President-elect Donald Trump for a common-sense and much needed approach to selecting the new Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS): Instead of a lawyer or another bureaucrat, President-elect Trump selected a competent, knowledgeable physician and surgeon, Dr. Tom Price.

A deep stillness settled over the federal courtroom as graphic photos were shown of the nine people murdered last year at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church. 

Yes, you read that correctly.

This column is a vehicle for a number of items in a bits-and-pieces, strictly opinion, sometimes irreverent format. Look for "Just Sayin'" to run once a week in this spot.

President-elect Donald Trump is known for his blunt approach. And on human rights, we are well past due for some hard truths. 

No, Florida Democrats are not going to have a repeat of 2013. As you may recall, strings were pulled, arms were twisted, people were bought off in 2013 to get Allison Tant in as Florida Democratic Party chair.

The most amusing part of the Trump transition has been watching its effortless confounding of the media, often in fewer than 140 characters. One morning, after a Fox News report on lefty nuttiness at some obscure New England college -- a flag burning that led a more-contemptible-than-usual campus administration to take down the school's own American flag -- Donald Trump tweets that flag burners should go to jail or lose their citizenship.

Welcome to the dawn of the citizen legislator.

So, this is the new conservatism's recipe for restored greatness: Political coercion shall supplant economic calculation in shaping decisions by companies in what is called, with diminishing accuracy, the private sector. This will be done partly as conservatism's challenge to liberalism's supremacy in the victimhood sweepstakes, telling aggrieved groups that they are helpless victims of vast, impersonal forces, against which they can be protected only by government interventions. 

That's how the headlines will read in 2018 if Sen. Bill Nelson doesn't stop playing around in the Florida Democratic Party chair race.

There is no "push" to evict the federal government from running the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. None. No matter what you hear Florida environmentalists say to the contrary.