Friday's scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavor marks the penultimate end of an era, and continued uncertainty over what's to follow.

For Florida's Space Coast, the phase-out of the 30-year shuttle program means the beginning of the loss of some 9,000 NASA-related jobs. President Barack Obama's attendance at the launch will be bittersweet, since his administration's space policies have triggered the drawdown of the region's employment.

Republican U.S. Senate hopefuls George LeMieux and Adam Hasner traded barbs in back-to-back teleconferences Tuesday, with each attempting to claim the conservative high ground.

"Talk is cheap," LeMieux said of Hasner. "But his years in Tallahassee show he voted for earmarks," which LeMieux called "a form of corruption."

By contrast LeMieux, who served 16 months in the Senate as then-Gov. Charlie Crist's appointee filling the unexpired term of Mel Martinez, touted his "92 percent" rating from the American Conservative Union.

Florida taxpayers paid $11.7 million to 197 "communications" and "legislative affairs" employees working for state agencies, a Florida TaxWatch study found.

Adding standard state benefits, the total outlay climbs past $14 million, or $38,467 each day, TaxWatch reported.

"The levels and number of administrative and support bureaucratic staff has been forced to shrink, but too many in our state bureaucracy defy the gravity of downsizing," said TaxWatch president Dominic Calabro.

Expected cost overruns for the Obama administration's "Affordable Health Care Act" are kicking in even before the controversial program rolls out.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has earmarked some $200 million for a multimedia marketing campaign to promote Obamacare.

According to government documents obtained by Judicial Watch, HHS' assistant secretary for public affairs issued a series of contracts for public-relations work -- even as a federal judge in Florida declared Obamacare unconstitutional.

Whatever you think about raising America's debt ceiling, there's a stunning contrast between the credit-challenged U.S. government and the soaring profits of U.S. multinational corporations.

Sorry, liberals, this is not a call for more taxes on greedy, rapacious corporations. At 35 percent, the federal tax rate is already the highest in the world.

But the ironic spectacle of robust private profits in the face of continued record borrowing by the public sector deserves some attention as Wall Street executives demand yet another lifting of the U.S. debt limit.

Not all of the GOP's incomers in the 2011 Legislature were rookies. Two veteran lawmakers who term-limited out of their House seats are back this session, and they're doing some heavy lifting.

Rep. Dennis Baxley chairs the Criminal Justice Subcommittee, where he is leading the Republican charge to reform Florida's sprawling criminal justice system.

"We want to go from being tough on crime, to being right on crime," said Baxley, whose committee bills are focusing on substance abuse, mental health and recidivism.

Staging their stunt of the week, Florida public-employee unions called on members Thursday to withdraw funds from five banks in protest of labor-reform legislation.

The unions, representing some 20,000 workers, targeted Bank of America, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, SunTrust and Wachovia, whose executives sit on the Florida Chamber of Commerce board of directors. The Chamber is among the leading business groups lobbying to end payroll withholding of union dues by government agencies.