The three Florida Supreme Court justices seeking to hold onto their seats hit a bump in the road in Hillsborough County last weekend.
In a straw poll conducted by the Hillsborough County Republican Party, none of the justices facing statewide retention votes in November garnered even close to the simple majority required. The results were these:
James O'Keefe, the videographer who helped expose and defund ACORN with his viral videos about voter fraud and other government-enabled hijinks, says election scams are continuing bigger than ever.
What's worse, he says the mainstream media's "profound lack of curiosity" is keeping the illicit activity out of the public eye.
After all the jousting over who knew what and when they knew it, 41,000 more Florida students could have passed the FCAT writing exam if the state Department of Education had taken one simple step.
Rep. Vern Buchanan lives in a world where you're guilty until proven innocent. And with the help of a muckraking press, Democrats are hoping they can finally knock out the three-term congressman with a campaign that remains long on smoke and short on fire.
Buchanan, R-Sarasota, has had a giant target on his back since 2006, when he narrowly beat Christine Jennings in an election that was as closely and hotly contested as Bush vs. Gore six years earlier.
School districts attempting to blame the state Department of Education for their dismal performance on the FCAT writing exam are lamely reaching for a "dog-ate-my-homework" cop-out.
Back on July 5, 2011, all districts were sent a memo advising that the 2012 test would be more rigorously graded than previous versions.
"It wasn't a secret," DOE spokeswoman Jamie Mongiovi told Sunshine State News on Wednesday. The memo, headed "Changes to FCAT Writing," spelled out how student essays would face tougher grading on spelling, punctuation, grammar and overall essay construction.
Public employees constitute the biggest block of workers in 51 of Florida's 67 counties, a new TaxWatch survey shows. And in 40 counties, government workers make up two of the three largest employment groups.
The statewide study found 245 government entities -- ranging from airport authorities to school districts -- "involve significant amounts of both government involvement and funding."
With more than 250,000 employees, school districts employ nearly one of every 30 Floridians and represent either the biggest or second biggest employer in 61 counties.
An emergency meeting of the state Board of Education on Tuesday lowered the passing scores on the 2012 FCAT writing exam in an effort to hold districts "harmless" over plummeting test performance.
Where scores averaged in the 80 percent range in 2010 and 2011, results tumbled to 30 percent this year.The sharply lower writing scores more closely matched the reading results, according to earlier stories by Sunshine State News.
Department of Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson admitted that "several things slipped through" prior to the administration of this year's exams.
If Obamacare is not struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, a congressional study predicts that 71 of the Fortune 100 companies could save $422 billion by simply dropping insurance and paying a federal fine.
"The Affordable Care Act was actually designed to discourage employers from covering their workers, as the penalty for not meeting the employer mandate is quite small, while the 'minimum essential coverage' will be very expensive," says Dr. Alieta Eck, president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
A federal Health Insurance Tax scheduled to kick in by 2014 will cost small businesses $87 billion and "kill jobs," the National Federation of Independent Business says.
In Congress, an effort to repeal the tax is gaining bipartisan steam.
The "HIT" will have "irreversible consequences" on the national economy, according to the NFIB Research Foundation, which predicted the loss of nearly 250,000 U.S. jobs and $30 billion in sales by 2021 due to the tax.
