National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer said it's too early to declare gun-related bills dead after an influential Miami senator this week appeared to shoot down a number of high-profile proposals.

"Everything is alive until it is killed by a vote of a committee or on the floor," Hammer, a past president of the NRA, said in an email Wednesday. "My job is not to wring my hands and whine, my job is to work hard for law-abiding gun owners and never quit. That's what I intend to do."

Labeling the use of business recruitment incentives as "socialism," incoming House Speaker Richard Corcoran told a Texas audience this week he doesn't expect Florida lawmakers to give such money to Gov. Rick Scott --- or to Scott's successor.

"When you're taking money out of the masses' pockets and then giving it literally --- to the Democrats' argument --- to the top 1 percent, to the detriment of everybody else, that is de facto socialism," Corcoran said during a panel discussion in Austin hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit conservative think tank.

Need a little proof that lobbying will be heavy during the 2016 session about whether grocery shoppers should be able to load their baskets with vodka and gin while picking up some eggs and cereal?

Publix, ABC Fine Wine & Spirits and the Florida Independent Spirits Association this week joined forces to keep walls --- the actual solid masonry kind --- between grocery aisles and rows of liquor.

Connie de Haan said she is sorry that Gov.