As it did last year, the Wall Street Journal this week lashed out at Florida senators -- particularly Insurance and Banking Chair Anitere Flores, R-Miami -- who oppose reform-minded Republicans "trying to shut down a trial-bar scheme that's bleeding property insurers and sending Sunshine State premiums skyrocketing."
UPDATED MONDAY EVENING TO INCLUDE SEN. BENACQUISTO'S COMMENTS. A prominent Tampa businessman said Sunday he is still waiting to hear if the chairwoman of the Senate Rules Committee is going to investigate the extramarital affair of Sens. Anitere Flores and Oscar Braynon.
Maybe now -- four deaths later -- state and federal officials can stop looking at opposition to All Aboard Florida/Brightline's high-speed rail service as the product of a few sour Treasure Coast residents trying to hold back progress.
Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart, released his chamber's new comprehensive policy on workplace harassment to members Thursday, emphasizing in an accompanying memo his commitment "to ensuring all of us have a safe workplace to do the people’s business."
Barely out of the testing phase, another of Brightline's Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach high-speed passenger trains claimed a victim Wednesday. It brings the death toll for the fledgling rail service to four.
No matter how well it performs, VISIT FLORIDA apparently has to beat its chest publicly for every crumb before a skeptical Legislature. It shouldn't have to, frankly.
Either Bill Nelson has been standing too close to Charlie Crist, or his memory is beginning to go south. Or, more probably, he just doesn't think you'll notice. The point is, when it comes to offshore drilling, Florida's senior senator has developed a conspicuous case of the flip-flops.
I had the privilege of being part of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s magic when I heard him speak in 1962, while I was in college in North Carolina. There -- in a segregated city where whites used one toilet and "coloreds" another, where the largest hospital admitted blacks only to windowless basement rooms -- the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in a single afternoon, welded into one thousands of people, black and white.
Rumors of the affair between Republican Sen. Anitere Flores and Democratic Sen. Oscar Braynon have been drifting around Tallahassee for more than a year. But not until Tuesday, when an anonymous texter sent media outlets surveillance "evidence" of to-ing and fro-ing between apartments at The Tennyson, where they both lived last April, did the rumors become a public reality.
With temperatures in the 20s and 30s, and wind chill as much as 20 degrees lower than that, North Florida was reeling in sustained shots of arctic air Wednesday morning, including as much as a quarter inch of ice and a couple inches of snow in the Panhandle.
