Columns

Republicans say they are going to “replace” Obamacare, but they will come up with something very similar and at least as bad if they start with the same misguided objective: “universal coverage.”

Democratic leadership wants Annette Taddeo out of the way and just like that, she moves over. The former head of the Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee and former candidate for almost everything else is no longer running for state committeewoman.

December 17th marks the one year anniversary of the Libyan Political Agreement, making this an opportune time to review the administration’s policy on Libya. When this administration first participated in the intervention in Libya in 2011, many of us expressed concern with the administration’s lack of clearly articulated objectives, a post-intervention plan, or even an explanation about how it fit U.S. national security interests.

On the first stop of his "thank you" tour in Ohio Thursday, president-elect Donald Trump hit replay on several of his campaign tropes.

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.

For the last five days I've been asking myself the same question, and I can't stand it anymore. It's time I asked it out loud. Why didn't Judge Karen Gievers of Florida's 2nd Judicial Circuit recuse herself? 

Twenty-five years ago -- December 1991 -- communism died, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disappeared. It was the largest breakup of an empire in modern history and not a shot was fired.

Give  it up for St. Petersburg. In case you haven't heard, the Sunshine City is going to be the first in Florida to use 100 percent renewable energy.

The Network of Entrepreneurs & Business Advocates (NEBA), a 25-year-old business association based in Tallahassee that advocates for a strong and vibrant private enterprise system, heard from a panel of business advocates representing Associated Industries of Florida (AIF), Florida TaxWatch (FTW) and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

Sometimes history doesn't have to wait to judge -- and when it comes to dictators, even dead ones, we shouldn't either. 

With the end of Fidel Castro's nasty life Friday night, we can hope, if not reasonably expect, to have seen the last of charismatic totalitarians worshiped by political pilgrims from open societies. Experience suggests there will always be tyranny tourists in flight from what they consider the boring banality of bourgeois society and eager for the excitement of sojourns in "progressive" despotisms that they are free to admire and then leave.

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.

One of the more salutary outcomes of the recent election is that Democrats are finally beginning to question the wisdom of basing their fortunes on identity politics. Having counted on the allegiance of African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, unmarried women and the young -- and winning the popular vote all but once since 1992 -- they were seduced into believing that they could ride this "coalition of the ascendant" into permanent command of the presidency.

The cost of protecting a president has always been prohibitive. It's only the election of Donald J. Trump that called attention to it.

House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Senate President Joe Negron are both attorneys, both conservatives, both former appropriations chairs -- but if you're looking for clues to leadership style, any other similarities are a lot harder to find.