Category: Florida

Sounds like the attorney defendants in that infamous DUI-setup case could have used better counseling. The blatantly disingenuous defense that the lawyers were merely helping local police get a drunken driver off city streets obviously didn’t impress Pinellas Senior Judge Douglas Baird. Probably incensed him.

He would find the action of the defendants–Stephen Diaco, Robert Adams and Adam Filthaut–“inexplicably egregious, spiteful and malicious.” Since Sharia law doesn’t apply around here, Judge Baird threw the disbarment book at them.

Ultimately, the Florida Supreme Court will make the final call. Most court observers don’t like the respondents chances on appeal.

The law of unintended consequences keeps revisiting education. It obviously didn’t stop with FCAT “accountability” in all its pedagogical mutations. Over-testing, for example, has become a counter-productive, logistically-disruptive given, even if Jeb Bush doesn’t appreciate the legacy smear.

Now there’s the “Best and Brightest Scholarship,” approved earlier this year by the Florida Legislature when it wasn’t checking out early and devolving in embarrassment over Medicaid expansion and the budget.

“B&B” is a well-intentioned effort to help recruit the best teachers possible. It’s a formidable challenge. To that end, incentives were proposed to attract top high school students into teaching. SAT and ACT scores would be the criteria. Top-of-the-line scores would be rewarded with a bonus: $10,000.

Focusing on SATs and ACTs is problematic enough because it has nothing to do with values, communication skills and motivational mindsets. But then there’s this: What of incumbent, proven-effective teachers? The ones you want to hold on to and reward?

Well, the SAT and ACT criteria can apply to them too. They can cite their old scores or, if they didn’t take it back in the day, simply take it now. You read that right–although it’s manifestly wrong-headed.

No surprise that many teachers find the scenario preposterous, insulting and, most of all, irrelevant to what they do–and what they have done.

Sumter County Superintendent Richard Shirley summed it up best. “It amazes me that some in the Florida Legislature think that a (several) decades-old SAT/ACT test taken by a (then) high school junior or senior has any kind of significant impact on their instructional effectiveness as a current classroom teacher in 2015,” noted Shirley.

Actually, it’s amazing that anything coming out of the Florida legislature can still amaze.

Call it “Redistricting 101.” It’s that basic. Let an independent body handle it.

When it comes time, and those times come regularly, why would we even consider letting legislators draw their own redistricting maps? Republican or Democrat. Congressional or state senate. Those with a personal political stake and self-serving by nature should not be allowed anywhere near the “fair districts” process. It’s oxymoronic. No, make that moronic.

For a guy who had no qualms about buying the gubernatorial election, including shelling out $70 million of his own money the first time, you’d think Rick Scott would have written the $700,000 check to settle those public records lawsuits. After all, these are not suits generically suing the state. These are suits that specifically alleged that Scott and staff members violated state law by creating email accounts to shield their communications from state public records laws–and then withheld the documents.

But, no, the taxpayers are “on the hook” for this one.

Through next week the Florida Legislature will be in special session charged–by the Florida Supreme Court–to finally do right by the state Constitution’s “fair districts” provisions. We all know how we got here: the courts have twice ruled that some Republican-drawn districts are still “tainted” for partisan advantage.

We also know this: Inherently self- and party-serving legislators charged with “fair” districting is an oxymoron.

While legislative attention is understandably focused on redistricting via special sessions,     there is one familiar priority already assured for the 2016 legislative session that begins in January. Lawmakers have already filed, actually re-filed, two bills that would allow guns on campuses.

Specifically, the one introduced by Sen. Greg Evers, R-Baker, and Rep. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, would allow anyone with a concealed carry license to bring their guns on college campuses. The other one, introduced by Evers, would give school districts the power to arm a current or former member of the military or law enforcement in each school. These are the same NRA-backed proposals that didn’t pass earlier this year.

Some things never change.

Not that it ever goes away, but the subject of Cuba–in this state and this town–will only continue to ratchet as we approach next year’s presidential election. Hillary Clinton did her ratcheting best recently by taking the anti-embargo issue to Miami where she criticized “most Republicans” for their “Cold War lens” views on Cuba. “Engagement,” she argued at Florida International University, “is not a gift to the Castros; it’s a threat to the Castros.”

Jeb Bush called her Cuban take “insulting” to many locals, and Marco Rubio characterized it as “appeasement.” These Cuban cards will be played many times more as the process winnows candidates and Florida’s swing-state primary approaches in March.

What will be a given is that the GOP nominee will be in agreement with Gov. Rick Scott, Sen. Rubio, former Gov. Bush and the Ros-Lehtinen/Diaz-Balart pro-embargo crowd.

What will be ironic, however, is that the Democratic nominee, while she will have the support of U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor of Tampa, won’t have anti-embargo support from Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who chairs the Democratic National Committee. It’s still too politically dicey for her in her South Florida district.

Moreover, Clinton also won’t have anti-embargo support from Bob Buckhorn, the mayor of the I-4 corridor city that could very well be the Sunshine State difference maker. It’s too personal for Buckhorn, who once flew with Brothers to the Rescue to search for Cuban refugee rafters.

Whatever the motivation, influential Democrats who can’t be strong, anti-embargo advocates are not helpful to the Democratic candidate–and more importantly, not helpful to Florida or Tampa.

* Marion County rarely generates national attention. But that all changes when your county commission announces that, upon further, uh, reflection, they will re-hoist the Confederate flag in front of a prominent government building. It had been taken down last month in the outrage aftermath of the Charleston mass murders.

* Florida Carry Inc. is still taking its best Second Amendment shot, so to speak. The gun rights group maintains that its favorite amendment supersedes a Florida law that bans firearms from state university housing. The case is now in front of the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee.

“All we are saying is that the right to possess a firearm in one’s home is fundamental,” said Florida Carry attorney Lesley McKinney. “Regardless of where one’s home is, it’s still their home.”

The official University of Florida response to heat-packing homebodies: “If you feel strongly  that you want your child or an adult student feels they want a weapon, they can live in non-university housing.”

Next case.

Remember the Fair District Amendment? Thankfully, the Florida Supreme Court did, and that 5-2 ruling against those tainted, gerrymandered, congressional maps–and their “unconstitutional intent to favor the Republican Party and incumbents”–will now be revisited and redrawn. As long as we have an FDA, declared the court, we might as well be in compliance with it.

And the court, as we’ve seen, has ordered eight of this state’s 27 congressional districts, including Tampa Bay’s Districts 13 and 14, redrawn. More than a dozen other bordering districts will also be impacted.

As we await implementation details, including transparency, two subplots–one ironic, one common sensical–will be notable.

Among the districts affected is U.S. District 5, home to U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, a 14-term, African-American Democrat who likes her Jacksonville-to-Orlando salamander just fine. She has threatened to sue to keep it that way. The irony, of course, is that it is a minority-access district and minority communities, as Rep. Brown has noted, “do not live in compact, cookie-cutterlike neighborhoods.”

Partisans have sometimes defended gerrymandering as the only means of securing any representation for minority groups. Violating local boundaries, in effect, can be seen as an acceptable tradeoff to risking a muted voice for a politically cohesive group. Politics as usual, shall we say, for a greater good.

But arguably both parties need to be part of any transparent solution to end partisan gamesmanship. No more salamanders, no more Rorschach-test patterns. Just sanely drawn, contiguous districts that enable meaningful democracy and don’t traffic in demographic herding.

If the Supreme Court’s rebuke is to mean anything, and if the order to the Legislature to present new maps by October 17 is to be complied with, Rep. Brown may have to take one for the team and hope to win a 15th term on her overall record.

The other notable plotline is one already referenced by the U.S. Supreme Court when it recently ruled that Arizona voters could create an independent redistricting commission to draw district lines. While there are no political panaceas, having directly impacted politicians determine their own political borders makes no sense.

There are more than 120specialty license plates in the Sunshine State that support causes that range from the military to the environment to sports and a variety of organizations from the Special Olympics and the Police Athletic League to Hispanic Achievers and Firefighters.

And now there’s an updated one for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that features the team’s logo on a pewter background. The Bucs have had a specialty plate since 1998.

Only one issue here. If it’s for a business–not a cause or a charity or a classic non-profit organization–shouldn’t the business, and the Bucs and the rest of Florida’s professional sports teams are assuredly that, pay the licensed-vehicle owner? Aren’t the motorists helping to market the franchise?

This is not about reef protection or organ donation or an alma mater. This is about big, profitable businesses getting gratis marketing help.