You might as well know up front, I am 100 percent behind the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) recommendation to allow a bear hunt this fall.

Let me tell you why.

It's because I'm a conservationist, not a preservationist.

It's because managing animal populations isn't new. It's because I've done this before -- had this homework assignment more times as a Florida journalist than I can count. Some species or another has been dying out or coming back ever since I arrived in Florida in 1977, and I keep writing about it.

Florida Institute of Technology scientist John Windsor raised eyebrows a week ago when he said the 5 million cubic yards of mayonnaise-like muck along the northern Indian River Lagoon is enough to build a 5-foot wall along all six lanes of Interstate 95, stretching the entire 70 miles of Brevard County.

The 2-year-old Nebraska boy who was dragged by an alligator into a lagoon on the edge of a Walt Disney World hotel Tuesday night has been found dead.

Is anybody else as disgusted as I am, watching Democrats race to erect their political podiums in the blood of the Orlando nightclub victims?

Diversity isn't the good word liberals would have you believe. In reality, the majority of people on this planet don't want diversity, can't accept it in others, won't work with the problems it presents.

This isn't a new revelation for me or our large family. We have interracial couples among us. We have gays and lesbians. Actually, we overflow with diversity.

But it certainly is a large part of what horrified me about Sunday's massacre in an Orlando gay nightclub.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, issued an emotional statement during a press conference Sunday afternoon, saying Americans are "heartbroken" by the Orlando nightclub attack by a Port St. Lucie man who pledged allegiance to ISIS before he killed 50 people and injured 53 others.  But Rubio pledged the country would stand together, united to overcome the tragedy.

UPDATED: The Islamic State has taken credit for the nation's deadliest mass shooting in Orlando which left 50 people dead and over 50 injured.

"The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter," the Islamic State's news agency Amaq said, according to Reuters.

City officials identified Omar Mateen, 29, from Port St. Lucie, as the killer of 49 people early Sunday inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. 

If Thursday's South Florida Water Management Board meeting in Fort Myers sounded like deja vu all over again, that's because the annual "buy land, move the water south" campaign is back.

After a distinguished 40-year career in public service, Sen. Gwen Margolis, D-Aventura, has announced she will retire from the Senate when her term is up in November.

The announcement came abruptly in a press release Thursday morning, less than four days after Margolis, 81, came under fire in media reports across the state for disparaging and racist references she made particularly about three of her five competitors in the SD 38 race.

What's up with Gwen Margolis? You have to ask yourself, has the 81-year-old Democratic state senator from Miami-Dade -- first female president of the Florida Senate -- completely lost her political filter?

Or is she purposely taking a page from the Donald Trump Book of Campaign Success and Savvy?

By all accounts, Margolis had what folks are already calling "a Trumpian moment" Monday night at the Sunny Isles Democratic Club monthly meeting.