Nancy Smith

I'm catching an earful about St. Lucie estuary pollution from some of the folks I used to know during the years I lived on the Treasure Coast. I'm pretty sure they're ready to tar and feather me.

Mea culpa. I'm now fairly sure I was wrong about Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I said in past columns she was losing her power. Nope.

Either the governor has been smoking something he shouldn't, or he's found an old pair of Charlie Crist's flip-flops. How else do we explain his bizarre desertion of maybe the corest of his core principles: free-market competition?

All that whining and wringing of hands over the Republican Party of Florida's presidential primary rule changes, and look what happened. Nothing but good.

If you knew all along septic tank effluent, not fertilizer in Lake Okeechobee, was the primary estuary polluter in Martin County, go to the head of the class.

Nothing says a Supreme Court justice must abstain from participation in a case because he/she and one of the attorneys involved in the case are "good friends."

Unsavory enough that an incumbent congressman with a safe seat would send a letter dripping in nasty to a Senate candidate struggling for cash and polling in last place.

Doesn't anyone else think it's time the public found out who funded the coalition of groups suing the Legislature over its redistricting maps? Who paid plaintiff attorney David King?God knows, it wasn't the League of Women Voters of Florida. The Capitol Press Corps had more money in its scholarship fund during 2012 and than the League had. Check out the LWV's tax returns in the attachment below.

If you've seen the new-style, all-purpose, convertible wedding dresses, you've got a glimpse of post-election Charlie Crist.

A House Committee moved a proposal forward Tuesday that would create a pilot needle-exchange program in Miami-Dade County -- and, frankly, if it goes the distance in the coming session, this is a program that could benefit the whole state, not just South Florida.

America's universities: Last place you would think to look for Thought Police, right? Show me a university in this nation that isn't committed to instilling in students a hunger to question, criticize, and dissent. It's etched in their mission statements, every one. I can't find a single exception. Yet, at least 20 ivory tower scientists never got the message.

To my knowledge, nobody has threatened a single Florida clergyman. But never mind that. Fear is a powerful unifier. And now legislators in each chamber are plowing ahead with bills to protect the religious freedoms of lawsuit-fearing clergy in case the U.S. Constitution doesn't.

The $70 billion fantasy sports market apparently isn't the least bit discouraged by Florida's resistance to gaming expansion. Why should it be? Its entrepreneurs are sure they can convince Florida legislators that playing fantasy games of any kind isn't gambling at all. It doesn't represent a game of chance, they say. It's first about skill.

Patrick Murphy's mom and dad -- best kind of parents a candidate can have when the political chips are down -- are buying love by the thousands for their Senate seat-seeking son.

What are you going to do with Florida sugar farmers? First they insist on keeping the land they own. How selfish is that? Then they go and meet annual Everglades pollution reduction requirements when everybody knows they're poisoning the planet.