So you want to shake a finger at the Republicans for politicizing merit retention? You think they're the ones who render the judiciary less independent?

In November when I vote not to retain the three justices on the ballot, it will have nothing to do with a handful of Florida rulings that run contrary to my politics. It will have everything in the world to do with competence.

Academics loved Barack Obama in 2008, and they love him still in 2012 -- particularly the ones associated with public colleges and universities. The president continues to rake in the lion's share of their campaign contributions.

But what a lion's share.

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, says the political skew within the academic community should be of little surprise. "Voting patterns among people in higher education are so colossally one-sided it's almost ridiculous," he says.

ABC News jumped out in front of other fact-checkers on Friday, exposing President Barack Obama's "false claim" that the Fast and Furious program began under President George W. Bush.

It did not. In fact, the program began nine months into the Obama administration, in October 2009, and the network's online website "Political Punch" was the first to check the president's statement and set the record straight.

If I were smart, I'd stop speculating what Charlie Crist is going to do. He's going to do what Charlie Crist always does -- wait to see which way the wind blows, then let us know.

Generation Opportunity, a right-leaning group that polls youth voter sentiment, is out with a new survey that reveals twice as many young adults would rather work on Wall Street as protest it.

Seventy-six percent say the lack of job opportunities is shrinking the middle class, as young adult unemployment remains at 12.7 percent.

"I think this is pretty meaningful," University of Central Florida graduate Joe Chilcott told Sunshine State News Tuesday morning. "We need to work. We need jobs. Protests don't take us in the direction we want to go."

Make a habit of feeding alligators and you'd better never stop. If you do, they're going to get a little angry and try to eatyou.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz had better start getting a few things right, according to prominent Washington observers, because of late, her clout among Democratic peers has suffered a considerable blow.

They say the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee has embarrassed many high-ranking party leaders with shoot-from-the-hip misstatements, downright inaccuracies and even a charge of thuggery.

Picture, if you will, the screaming headlines, the cries of negligence and/or corruption if it had been Rick Scott who handed 90 million taxpayer dollars to a company that went belly up three years later.

Digital Domain Media Group's collapse last week made victims of all Florida taxpayers. To the tune of $20 million. But few of those taxpayers will feel the pinch quite as directly as the long-suffering citizens of Port St. Lucie.