Nancy Smith

On a day when an editorial in the venerable Chicago Tribune newspaper is making national news for pleading with Illinois lawmakers to clean up the state's fiscal mess, it's a good time for Florida to count its blessings.

Trust the chairman of the party that camped out like rock-show groupies in African-American churches to now accuse churches and their preachers of having too much influence on voters.

If you follow me regularly, you know how critical I can be of politically charged bias in Florida's mainstream media.

Don't feel too sorry for Brenda Snipes. The already unlamented Broward County supervisor of elections, replaced Friday by Gov. Rick Scott, is leaving if not in a blaze of glory, certainly in possession of a fatter pension package than most career public servants will ever see.

Among all the charities appealing to your spirit of giving this holiday season, you might want to consider putting the Panhandle homeless and still-hurting victims of Hurricane Michael at the top of the list.

You have to hand it to Everglades Foundation CEO Eric Eikenberg.  The man knows how to work a con. He could play Harold Hill in “The Music Man” without anyone ever seeing the band uniforms. 

Conspiracy theories are bad, but conspiracies are worse. 

The fun and sometimes frustration of following the Everglades Foundation's shenanigans is this: It's all such a freaking hypocrisy factory.

After 25 years watching the Foundation with a notebook in my hand, I can smell one of their hypocrisies rising across the 'glades like a bloodhound sniffing out Pup-peroni in a garbage bin. It's a gift.

Tim Canova must be laughing his backside off at the debacle unfolding over at Brenda Snipes' Crazytown.

Walton County -- historically a quiet, dependable, conservative-leaning Panhandle hamlet -- keeps poking up in statewide news because of a contentious issue called “customary use” of the beaches. It’s dragged on for two years with no end in sight, because many folks expect appeals of whatever path is chosen.

There's a time and a place for everything, or so I've heard. But I'm pretty sure a candlelight vigil for murdered hate-crime victims isn't the time or the place for Bob Buckhorn.

How the intemperate mayor of Tampa got an invitation to be the featured speaker at Congregation Rodeph Sholom's vigil in memory of the 11 worshippers shot to death inside a Pittsburgh synagogue, I couldn't imagine ... until I watched the Monday night event live-streamed on Facebook.

If you watched the World Series Wednesday night, you had a better time than I did. The Florida gubernatorial debate was a stunning waste of time.

Andrew Gillum might have started out a money underdog in the race for the Florida governor's mansion, but the Tallahassee mayor has become the darling of progressive out-of-state billionaires and with less than three weeks in the campaign, has money to burn.

Six months ago no National Football League team would be caught dead involving itself in a state election.  But now look: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Miami Dolphins have sunk $500,000 apiece into a committee to defeat Amendment 3, the 2018 ballot measure that would give voters the power to reject any expansion of casino gambling.

James Madison Institute's just-released analysis of the two main governor candidates' economic platforms could wither a cactus.