Gov. Rick Scott defended Steve MacNamara, his embattled chief of staff, who has been the target of a recent rash of media stories that have gone so far as to call him the governors biggest failure.

Scott appeared to lightheartedly approach the topic with reporters outside the Capitol after the Florida State Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police hosted the 2012 Florida State Law Enforcement Memorial on Monday.

Scott told the reporters they are being mean to poor Steve MacNamara.

Rep. Bill Proctor is optimistic that a blue ribbon panel announced Friday will take up many of the higher education proposals that he championed in the recent legislative session.

I dont see it doing any harm and I would hope it would do some good, said Proctor, R-St. Augustine.The task force is going to look at the same facts we looked at. They dont change.

One of the last bills signed by Gov. Rick Scott out of the 2012 legislative session was among his and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwaters primary targets in the session: slowing the rapid rise of the most affordable auto insurance in Florida.

Scott, in a signing ceremony Friday at the Florida State College, Law Enforcement Training/Criminal Justice Center in Jacksonville, placed his name to HB 119, a final-night-of-the-session, Senate-dominated revamping of the no-fault personal injury protection coverage.

A Michigan-based information technology company expected to hire 190 over the next four years is on its way to Floridas Space Coast, the governors office announced Friday.

BlueWare Inc., a software company, is relocating to Melbourne, where it will be developing and writing software, document scanning and developing in the areas of robotics, nanotechnology and genomics, as they apply to a patients medical records.

U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fort Myers, seeking to take on U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Orlando, in November, continued to press the Keystone XL Pipeline issue against the incumbent, as a new application was filed for the political hot potato on Friday.

We know it will bring more oil to the United States; instead of buying it from Hugo Chavez and dictators and thugocrats around the world, we can buy it from a friend, Mack said outside a Shell gas station along the southern arc of Tallahassee's Capitol Circle on Friday. So were telling him to build it now.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida, two of the state's business lobbying powerhouses, are set to begin interviewing candidates for the state Legislature with the qualifying bell still a month off.

The chamber will begin meeting with candidates next week and the process will continue through much of the summer, said Edie Ousley, chamber vice president of public affairs.

For the past year, the Capitol press corps has inundated Gov. Rick Scott and his staff for their inner-office correspondence.

On Thursday, Scott unveiled a webpage called Sunburst that will make it easier and less expensive for the media to read what key members of the governors office are writing among each other and to the public.

It will also now be easier for the public to read questions the media are asking of the governor and deduce and assess what stories are being worked on and their approach to them.

In the eyes of those who run companies, Florida is now the No. 2 best state in which to do business.

For business advocates and lobbyists in the Sunshine State, moving into second place on Chief Executive magazines survey of CEOs' "Best and Worst States in which to do Business" is a compliment to the efforts of Gov. Rick Scott and state legislative leadership.

Associated Industries of Florida, which had previously declared the 2012 legislative session the most business friendly since 2008, honored 16 lawmakers Wednesday, including House Speaker-designate Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, and Senate President-designate Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, who were behind the pro-business efforts.

The business lobbying outfit put the spotlight on four senators and 12 representatives as 2012 Champion for Business award winners.