After 10 Glorious Years, Sunshine State News and I Are Passing the Baton

Visit Florida will emerge from the budget process next year a slimmer creature than it is today, I've resigned myself to that. But I hope it won't mean sacrificing Florida tourism's considerable muscle.

The fall of Aleppo just weeks before Barack Obama leaves office is a fitting stamp on his Middle East policy of retreat and withdrawal. The pitiable pictures from the devastated city showed the true cost of Obama's abdication. For which he seems to have few regrets, however. In his end-of-year news conference, Obama defended U.S. inaction with his familiar false choice: it was either stand aside or order a massive Iraq-style ground invasion.

As everyone knows, the fiasco that took place in Miami-Dade County on Dec. 20 has given us Stephen Bittel as Miami-Dade's committeeman. Not fairly, mind you. Not as the will of the people, mind you.

"To change anything in the Navy is like punching a feather bed. You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching."