Discourse.net

Joy Rapture and Bliss

It seems that Florida is in a Happy State of Mind:

Florida residents are happy. Really happy.

So happy, the state ranks as the third happiest in the nation, according to a Centers For Disease Control and Prevention survey that accumulated four years worth of data from 1.3 million people who participated in the poll.

Or, at least they were happy — the data were collected before the collapse of the real estate bubble. (And some were polled before Hurricane Katrina — which may explain why Louisiana came in first, before even Hawaii.)

Well, I, for one, am not happy today. I have a rotten cold and just this afternoon received a monster pile of 120 exams to grade — with more coming when the people with medical excuses take their.

More exam grading moaning anon.

(Spotted via SFDB)

Herald Editorial Page Compounds Errors on Home Insurance

The Miami Herald doubled down today on its failure to address the shortcomings of undercapitalized, undiversified newly minted under-regulated Florida home insurance companies. (See Citizens Insurance May Be Bad, But Consider the Alternatives for yesterday's installment.)

On the editorial page today, the Herald starts off well in Storm warning: Prop up insurance noting that “the system for insuring homes and businesses against disaster remains badly flawed.” And this is good too:

Neither Citizens nor the CAT fund has sufficient cash on hand — nor enough borrowing power — to meet the huge outlays required by the proverbial one-in-100-years storm. The result would be harsh rates on Florida homeowners to make up for the shortfall.

But then we go off the rails:

The picture isn't completely grim. Since the start of 2008, a record number of policies — 500,000 — have been taken out of Citizens by newly formed insurance companies. That's a good sign, but Citizens remains the largest state-run insurance pool in the country.

No, it's not a good sign at all if the companies writing those policies are not safe and sound. And there's no reason to think that most of them are anything like it.

Why is the Herald so badly missing the boat on this issue?

Bar Pass Rates Posted

The 2009 July Florida Bar Pass Rates are out. In order to illustrate my point that Bar Pass Rates are Over-Rated As A Measure of Law School Quality, I thought I'd not only sort the results, but calculate the number failing (the bar reports test-takers and test-passers). The numbers are in most cases reasonably small...

As I said before, "there certainly comes a point where a substantially lower bar pass rate than other schools in the state is a sign of a problem that a law school should work to fix." FAMU's score seems to suggest that, despite recent improvements, there's still work to be done there.

Citizens Insurance May Be Bad, But Consider the Alternatives

Beatrice Garcia has an article in today’s Miami Herald about Citizens Insurance company, the state-sponsored home insurer of last resort for those of us in the hurricane belt. See Is Citizens Insurance ready for the big one?

Citizens is known for its high rates, DMV-quality service, and for being under-capitalized. It is not much fun to deal with, but then neither is my bank. (Which, come to think of it, is also state-capitalized these days.)

The article does a good job of noting some of the issues with Citizens:

Citizens is the largest insurer in Florida, covering 1,057,829 homes, condos and apartment buildings. The biggest chunk of its policies — $232.1 billion worth — are written on riskier, coastal properties.

…

Insurance regulators, legislators and critics of Citizens say the company's frozen rates aren't actuarially sound. In laymen's terms, that means the insurer is not bringing in enough money through premiums to cover the bulk of the potential losses it could face after a huge storm.

To get Citizens' rates back on course, a law passed in May requires the insurer to raise rates 10 percent a year over the next five years. The smaller annual increases soften the rate shock for homeowners. But eventually, rates could end up about 60 percent higher.

…

But Citizens isn't totally in dire straits. The insurer should have nearly $3.9 billion in cash in the bank by the end of the year, says Binnun.

Add in a guarantee from the State of Florida to buy $750 million of Citizens bonds, a bank credit line and proceeds from municipal bonds it has already sold and the total of available funds comes to $6.9 billion.

…

Citizens also buys back-up insurance from the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund to cover some of the losses it might face. This year, it purchased nearly $9.8 billion in coverage.

All that gives Citizens the ability to cover up to $16.8 billion in claims.

But even with all the funds it could tap, Citizens could fall short if “the big one'' — that one-in-100-years storm — hits the state. Such a storm could rack up claims totaling about $22 billion, Binnun says.

In other words, Citizens need to save up another $3.2 billion — about double what it will have in the bank by the end of the year –- in order to be actuarially sound. That’s a lot of money, but if it could save that amount since its founding in 2002, it should be able to pile it up in a few more years. Unfortunately, it's going to do that by raising our already quite substantial insurance rates some 10% per year until the money pile is big enough.

The Herald article more or less assumes that private insurance would be better, although it notes that some private policies have coverage limitations.

As it happens, I have a Citizens policy. Over the last three years I’ve had two letters from private insurance companies announcing they were taking over my policy unless I opted out (this was a state plan to encourage people to leave Citizens). One look at the capitalization of those companies and I opted out. In addition, my insurance agent has sent me proposals from three or four private companies, all but one of them started recently under the new Florida law encouraging companies to enter the market. None has a track record. None has much capital either. They are not rated by any of the major rating agencies (except one, that had a not-so-great grade of BBB-). They have their own ratings bureau, one which says they are just fine thank you, but it's not one I feel any reason to believe.

Unfortunately, in this era of light regulation private insurance is not inevitably better than public; indeed, I think some of these new tiny companies may be worse. This is, in fact, the ironic implication of a new analysis of the state home insurance market from the Competitive Enterprise Institute which shows how poorly capitalized the new private insurers really are. (CEI is not a source I’d rely on uncritically, but it confirms what I’ve worked out myself from looking up reports on the new Florida-only insurance companies. For more see Florida insurance numbers deceive and Consumers cry foul over Citizens' shift to low-rated firms.)

From the point of view of the homeowner, private insurers also have a degree of political risk that Citizens lacks: If they go belly up, the state has no moral obligation to bail them out — on the other hand, we have good reason to believe that at the end of the day the state (or the taxpayers) will stand behind Citizens.

I turned down my insurance agent’s suggestion that I go private, even though the proposed rates were a few dollars lower than what Citizens charged. My agent was all for it, claiming the service would be better (no word on the relative commissions!). The risk seemed too great.

The GOP Hardcore Loves Rubio

Senate Guru:: FL-Sen: Marco Rubio Crushing Charlie Crist Among Florida Republican Grassroots

Polls show that Florida voters as a whole like Crist better than any other candidate currently in the race.

And I'll bet that's maybe even true of people who identify as being Republicans; but is it true of the sort of GOP faithful who vote in primaries?

Yes, it's another turnout primary. As Senate Guru says,

Overwhelmingly, Republican Party activists in Florida prefer Marco Rubio to Charlie Crist, with disapproval for Crist and his policies being so strong that motions to censure Crist either succeed or only narrowly fail by the smallest of margins. These are the voters that know both Crist and Rubio best. Do you wonder why the Rubio camp is able to proceed with optimism in the face of statewide polls currently giving Crist a clear advantage?

The only question is whether or not the Rubio camp's organization will be effective enough to translate this clear-cut support (and broad discontent with Crist) into a sufficiently strong grassroots army to counter Crist's fundraising advantage and Washington D.C. establishment support. If Rubio does (and I think he can), a major upset may be in the works.

Actually, there's one other question: if Rubio starts looking really threatening, will he drive Crist so far to the right that his general election chances are harmed even if he wins?

Congratulations to FAMU Law

Florida A&M University (FAMU) law has received full ABA accreditation -- a notable turnaround after a rocky patch.

The Telling Link Tags

Slashdot reports on Computerized Election Results With No Election:

“In Honduras, according to breaking Catalan newspaper reports (translations available, USA Today mention), authorities have seized 45 computers containing certified election results for a constitutional election that never happened. The election had been scheduled for June 28, but on that day the president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted. The 'certified' and detailed electronic records of the non-existent election show Zelaya's side having won overwhelmingly.”

Which is indeed interesting.

And one of the tags the editors put on the story is …. “Florida2000”.

FAMU Law Back from the Brink

OrlandoSentinel.com, FAMU law school clears key American Bar Association hurdle toward accreditation

An American Bar Association committee is recommending full accreditation for the nearly 7-year-old school after an inspection earlier this year, the school and the ABA have confirmed.

…

Pernell said ABA inspectors who visited the school in February were impressed by ongoing changes, which include creation of the Center for International Law and Justice. The center is designed to expand the school's presence in the developing world even as the school is working toward becoming a more important community resource locally.

Previous site inspections had gone rather badly…

Ave Maria Jumps Last Legal Hurdle Prior to Move

The Fort Myers Florida Weekly reports that Ave Maria School of Law's juris doctor program licensed by state:

Ave Maria School of Law's juris doctor program has been licensed by the Florida Department of Education's Commission for Independent Education. Receipt of this license was the last of the licensing and accreditation standards the law school had to satisfy prior to holding classes in Naples this August.

That said, there appear to be some money issues. Avewatch.com has some info at (Second) Mortgaging the Future of Ave Maria Employees and Memo Challenges Ave Maria Finances/Ethics. And a member of the Board of Trustees seems to have lasted less than three weeks. (See Ave Maria University Trustee Departure is “Mystery” and Resigned Trustee Critical of University Leadership.)

Meanwhile, however, the Fort Myers Florida Weekly reports,

Classes at Ave Maria School of Law are scheduled to begin at the 12.5-acre Vineyards campus in Naples in August of 2009.

Secret Taping in Florida 10th Judicial Circuit Courts

This very confusing article entitled More questions about court recordings indeed raises more questions than it answers. Piecing together the story between the official obfuscation and the uneven writing, what seems to have been going on is…

• Someone — we don't know who — in the state court system in the 10th Judicial Circuit installed an official backup taping system in the Florida state courts. At present no one is willing to take the credit for this innovation.
• Signs were posted warning the public that taping was going on, but it is unclear if the signs referred to the primary system — which has “a blue indicator light [that] is apparent at the front of each courtroom” when it is on. More to the point, that appears to be what the public thought it meant.
• The court staff indicates judges were aware of the system and could ask for it to be turned off; they also are now suggesting that it was used more in criminal than civil cases. But if there were court orders regarding when taping should be on or off, they have yet to be produced; it's likely that litigants were not informed one way or the other.
• The tapes are public records covered by Florida's aggressive Sunshine Law — but the court staff are not responding very enthusiastically to record requests. They say they have to redact them first (I'm unclear as to how much redaction they are entitled to do).
• Although this is particularly unclear from the article , there is some implication that the tapes might have able to capture sounds over the whole courtroom, not just the front.
• Parties are concerned that private conversations with their lawyers may have been recorded.

Lots here that remains very murky. Florida is a two-party consent state for sound recording. Does putting up a sign in a court room suffice to get consent?

Fair Districts Florida Takes Aim at Florida Gerrymandering

Florida has a serious gerrymandering problem. We're the classic 50/50 state politically (remember the 2000 election?) but the state legislature in particular and also the state congressional districts are drawn with a heavy partisan bias. The results are sometimes quite striking.

The people at FairDistrictsFlorida.org are trying to do something about it. Trying to legislate neutral principles for districting is a Very Hard Problem, and I haven't yet taken the time to figure out what I think of this proposed solution to it, but I agree it's a major issue and admire the energy and commitment Fair Districts Florida is bringing to the problem.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Still Doesn't Have Our Interests at Heart

Lots of people remarked on how Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the other two local Florida Republicans who just survived tougher-than-usual re-election races switched their votes on S-CHIP and voted for it last week after being pilloried for a series of no votes back when it mattered.

I didn't join that chorus. I saw these as cheap votes for a bill that was now certain to pass; yes votes a year ago might have actually swung the tide on a bill that will particularly benefit South Florida due to the very large number of uninsured children in our community.

And only a few days later I feel vindicated: our own Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, supposedly one of those chastened Republicans, now more sensitized to our needs after a hard-fought (but ultimately not that close) election is right back to her old tricks: letting ideology trump reality.

One of our current realities is that the State of Florida is facing declining tax revenues, and is balancing its books on the backs of schoolchildren. And the schools of Miami-Dade are taking a fearsome hit in the budget the GOP-controlled legislature has just sent to the Governor.

One consequence of this disaster is a push to provide some funds at the national level. Again, that would be of disproportionate benefit to South Florida because we're in such dire straightsstraits. But — surprise — our own Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is against it.

U.S. House bill would pump millions into S. Fla. schools: Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, called the economic stimulus plan “a reflection of the state of this nation's priorities.”

“To secure our future, we must invest in our students today by reversing cutbacks in education, preventing teacher layoffs, keeping class sizes small and building modern schools outfitted with 21st-century classrooms,” he said.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, was skeptical.

“Borrowing and spending are out of control in Congress,” she said. “Every week, we are confronted with a new massive bailout plan that is packaged as an emergency must-have bill. The true bill will be passed along to our children in massive deficits.”

I didn't hear any of that stuff when she voted — repeatedly — for tax cuts for rich people, did you? But now that the economy requires massive fiscal stimulus to stave off a Depression, now it's time to ration the children again.

Jeb!less?

The Buzz reports that Senate bid by Jeb Bush iffy, friends say.

If true, I don't know whether to be sorry we won't have Jeb! to kick around again — I think he'd lose unless the Democrats really screwed up — or happy that there's no chance he'd actually get elected … Florida Dems are capable of giant screwups …

Update: It's official: Jeb's not running. Nobody ever said he wasn't smart.

Won't Be Missed

Florida Senator and national embarrassment Mel Martinez To Retire.

Should be quite a race to succeed him in both parties. I look forward to the blogger outreach….

Gov. Crist Extends Early Voting Hours

A smart politician does the right thing when it helps his side.

Charlie Crist is a smart politician.

The loooong lines at the Florida polls were making people wonder what was wrong (again!) with the state's voting officials. One reason for the long lines was that the legislature changed the rules to reduce the hours and locations — a combination of penny pinching and the historical GOP bias against making it easy for the riff-raff to vote. So it was popular politics for the would-be post-partisan Governor (but see his judicial appointments!!!) to do whatever it took to restore some sanity by extending polling hours to 12 hours per day from the artificially short six hours in most locations.

Lost in all the kudos for the Governor's act of sanity (has it come to this? the government does the obvious and necessary and the Herald's local columnist falls over herself praising it? ) is the political calculation undoubtedly behind this move. Never forget that Charlie Crist is one smart calculating politician: you don't move from “Chain Gang Charlie” to Mr. (attempted) Middle-of-the-Road without a keen sense of how the wind blows.

Now, imagine you are a Republican who believes that his political chances will be best helped by carrying his state for the GOP, or failing that by being seen to have gone the extra mile for the ticket. It's true that having McCain/Palin win the election is bad for your long-term future, but there's so little chance of that happening that you can afford to make a big Florida push.

What are you afraid of? The biggest thing on your mind is that the GOP vote is going to stay home. You're worried they're going to stay home because they never liked John McCain anyway. You're worried they're going to stay home because they think Sarah Palin is unfit to command. You're worried they're going to stay home because the polls suggest that the state and the nation are lost. And, to top it off, you're worried they're going to stay home because with all this baggage weighing the ticket down, a measurable fraction of the GOP vote is going to stay home because it doesn't want to stand in line for three hours. (Anecdotal evidence suggests, that the average Obama voter is more energized about the ticket than the average GOP voter, so the long lines just make matters worse.)

So of course Charlie Crist did what he had to do to shorten the poll lines. It was smart politics. And self-interested too.

Amazing Early Voting Stats

The Buzz has the data as of the weekend, The Fla. tally so far: Ds up 80K votes:

The Fla. tally so far: Ds up 80K votes

Through Sunday, it appears absentee and early votes have Democrats up by 80,287 votes.

Of the 1,010,046 people who voted early, 53.7 percent were Democrats, 30.19 percent Republicans and 16.02 percent other. Of the 1,059,518 absentee ballots returned so far, 35.31 percent were from Democrats, 50.23 percent Republicans, and 14.46 percent other.

All told, 2,069,564 people have voted already — 44.33 percent of them Democrats, 40.45 percent Republicans, and 15.22 percent other.

These are statewide totals.

Early Voting Starts Today in Florida

Early voting starts today in Florida.

Early voting should not be confused with absentee voting.

Absentee voting is where you or someone pretending to be you asks to be sent a ballot, and then you or they fill it out with any number of close friends watching. Absentee balloting is a rolling feast, which I think began some time ago.

Early voting is just like regular voting, complete with new optical scanning voting machines, except the hours and locations are different. You can't do it in as many places, nor for as many hours in the day.

Eye on Miami kindly provides a guide, Miami Dade Early Voting Where and When.

I've never voted early — there's something about the democratic ritual of the polls, plus the convenience of the local site, only a few blocks from home, that makes it very appealing, even as I wonder whether it should be legal to use a Catholic Church as a place to hold state balloting on state constitutional amendments regarding things like abortion or gay marriage. Might it sway some religious Catholic voters on some issues? But I digress.

I'm somewhat tempted to try early voting this year, as I think the lines at the polls will be long. But I hear they will probably be long at the early voting stations too.

State GOP Starts the Sliming and Fear-Mongering

I haven't gotten mine yet, but someone was kind enough to send me a scan of a GOP mailer that is going to houses around here claiming that Democrats want to “surrender” to terrorism. This particular copy was sent right to the heart of FL-18, Annette Taddeo's district.

The content of this thing is pretty ugly. Here's a shot of the worst page. You can click on it for a larger .pdf version of that page.

This is accompanied by a smiling photo of Governor Charlie Crist, along with a message warning that terrorists want to kill us, and that we should vote for Republicans to “help keep America safe.” (You can download a .pdf of the entire mailer, if you want.)

Got that? The State GOP, which paid for this thing, and the formerly post-partisan Governor, are saying that Democrats want to surrender to terrorists. Talk about low-class smear jobs…

Does anyone actually think that Democrats want to surrender to terrorism? Most Democrats want to make an orderly exit from Iraq. So, the polls tell us, does most of the country. (And, for what it's worth, during the second Presidential debate it was Obama who took the more bellicose approach towards chasing down bin Laden, not McCain.)

It used to be that we only saw stuff like this in the last week before election day. But the GOP wants absentee ballots, and early voting starts soon, so here we go.

Last Day to Register to Vote in Florida

Today is the last day to register to vote in Florida.

You must either mail (with today's postmark) or hand deliver a completed application to any Supervisor of Elections' office in the state, a driver’s license office, a voter registration agency, an armed forces recruitment office, or the Division of Elections.

And if you are a US citizen who is a Florida resident and is not already registered, you must do it today — or miss out on what will undoubtedly be the most important Presidential election since we re-elected the current disaster. And maybe even more than that.

Florida Courts Hearing on the Future in Coral Gables Tomorrow

I learned from my service on a committee convened by the Florida Supreme Court that our state courts really do try to think ahead, and are serious, innovative and thoughtful when it comes to planning.

It seems they also do outreach, and they're coming to a meeting room near me — tomorrow. The following just plopped into my mailbox:

Florida Supreme Court Committee to Host Nine Public Meetings on Future of Florida Courts

Think of the changes Florida has undergone in the last two decades – and imagine the changes that will take place in the next two decades.

As Florida changes, so too must Florida courts. Sheer population growth will increase the number of cases coming into the courts. Significant changes in demographic and societal trends will alter the kinds of cases that the courts must resolve. Economic changes will impact the resources available to handle cases. Emerging technologies will change the ways people interact with each other and with the courts.

Florida’s judicial branch is working on a long-range strategic plan so that the courts can respond to new challenges and stand firm as a strong cornerstone of a well-functioning society and a healthy economy. And it wants to hear from people around the state as it develops its plan.

The Supreme Court Task Force on Judicial Branch Planning will hold nine meetings around the state, including in Miami. The Task Force is inviting citizens and local officials to share their thoughts on trends and conditions that they believe will impact the ability of the judicial branch to carry out its mission over the next 20 years. The current strategic plan for the Florida judicial branch, which can be found at www.flcourts.org/gen_public/stratplan/index.shtml, includes the mission and vision of the branch.

A public meeting will be held in the Miami-Dade area:

October 2nd, 2008 4 – 7 p.m.
Miami Dade Public Library
Coral Gables Branch
3443 Segovia Street
305-442-8706

Persons with disabilities or those using a TDD through the Florida Relay Service, 711, or who need an accommodation to participate should contact Kat Simpson at (850) 488-6569 as far in advance as possible, preferably at least five working days before the public hearing:

Individuals and organizations are also invited to submit written comments, which will be accepted through Nov. 1. Comments may be sent to:

Task Force on Judicial Branch Planning
Office of the State Courts Administrator
Strategic Planning
Florida Supreme Court
500 South Duval Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1900

# # #

MISSION: The mission of the judicial branch is to protect rights and liberties, uphold and interpret the law, and provide for the peaceful resolution of disputes.

VISION: Justice in Florida will be accessible, fair, effective, responsive and accountable.

For more information contact: Steve Henley
Senior Court Operations Consultant
Office of the State Courts Administrator
850-488-6569 or henleys@flcourts.org

Could be interesting. Or, judging from some of the slides from a previous meeting, could be a bit odd.

(Other meetings around the state, mostly in the next few days, listed here.)

University of Miami Law Tops Florida Bar Pass

Congratulations to the UM Class of 2008, which recorded a stellar bar pass rate on the Florida bar exam. According to the official list, our grads achieved the highest pass rate of all Florida law schools, with a 92.4% pass rate among first-time test-takers. (More bragging at the official UM announcement.)

I've reproduced the full table below, sorted by percentage passing, based on the raw data (sorted by number passing) contained in a .pdf from the Bar Examiners.

But first, a few words of warning: Bar Pass Rates are Over-Rated As A Measure of Law School Quality.

It would be sort of interesting to extend this table with a column showing percent of class taking the exam, and also percent of class taking out of state exams.

The percent in-state vs. out-of-state tells you something about how national/regional/local the law school is. A large number taking no bar at all raises the question whether the law school is steering some students away from the summer bar exam in order to prop up its statistics, although there are also other very innocuous explanations. It may be that many students go on to LL.Ms and put off the bar, or that the school prepares them for other sorts of careers. The no-bar-anywhere number only raises a question, rather than answering it.

The first number is probably easy to get, but I don't know about the second. We graduated 442 JD's last year, making the 236 Florida test takers just 53.3% of the UM graduating class. My impression is that just about all of our JDs took a bar exam somewhere, and that the numbers reflect a reality that we run a school with both national and Florida ambitions, but I could be wrong about that. Indeed, if you'd asked me, I'd have guessed that the Florida-national ratio was more like 2:1 than 1:1, which suggests either that anecdotal evidence is not worth much, or that the school is becoming more national.

Register to Vote - It Matters

Oct 6 is the deadline to register to vote in Florida if you want to vote in the November election.

If you are a student and plan to vote absentee where you last lived, whether in or out of state, don't wait to apply for that ballot; these things take time.

[Queued up to run while I'm in New York.]

No Amendment 5 Or 7 Or 9 (Updated)

Via Michael Masinter I hear,

After oral argument this morning, the Florida supreme court unanimously struck from the November ballot amendments 7 and 9 proposed by the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. The two amendments would have amended the Florida constitution to authorize school vouchers, to remove its “no aid” to religious institutions provision from the declaration of rights, and to write the dissent in Locke v. Davey into Florida constitutional law.

Opinion to follow - I think the court had to decide today so the ballots could be printed.

UPDATE: A friend writes to inform me,

My understanding is that the Court moved these AOs up and had to act right away because the Sec of State had said that he was going to certify the amendments on Friday. The order on #7 and #9 tells the circuit court to enter final judgment by tomorrow, Thursday. Judgment on #5 is affirmed and thus final.

UPDATE2: Indeed, the court kicked three amendments off the ballot, all evil and misleadingly described. Amendment Five was the insane property tax amendment — cut property taxes 25% and tell the legislature to make it up to the schools somehow. Seven and nine were as described above.

Amendment Five looked headed for defeat — a majority may have been for it, but not the super-majority required; I think its backers, not least the Governor, may breath a secret sigh of relief. I don't know if the absence of seven and nine (and five) will remove what had been seen as a push for right-wingers to turn out at the polls. After all, Amendment 2, the marriage amendment, is still on the ballot.

Gov. Crist Does Florida No Favors With This One

Freed from tacking to the center for his national ambitions — or smarting from being rejected for being insufficiently red-meat conservative perhaps — Gov. Crist has pulled a Jeb Bush:

Figure in Clinton Impeachment Is Named to Florida Supreme Court: In a move that drew praise from conservatives, Gov. Charlie Crist on Thursday named to the State Supreme Court a former congressman who played a major role in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The appointee, Charles T. Canady, 54, spent eight years in Congress before being named an appeals court judge in 2002 by Gov. Jeb Bush.

While in Congress, Mr. Canady was one of the House managers who handled the impeachment case against Mr. Clinton.

This is a divisive appointment.

Obama to Ramp Up Staff in Flordia

Sam Stein, in the Huffington Post, Obama 'Months Ahead' Of Gore/Kerry In Organizing Florida:

The new locations will include Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Jacksonville, Sarasota, and the ever-important (think, 2000) Miami-Dade. Next week the campaign will be adding centers in Ft. Myers, Tallahassee, Orlando, Miami-Dade (2nd), Homestead, Naples, Hollywood and Tampa (where they already have an office) to the list. The Illinois Democrat is currently operating out of Tampa, Gainesville and Ft. Lauderdale.

The offices, according to Bubriski, will be staffed, and do not include the varous volunteer offices that Obama will have at his disposal. None of the locations are existing Democratic party headquarters

The implications of this extend well beyond the Presidential campaign. Obama will stress turnout. Turnout will help the whole ticket — especially the Congressional candidates.

FL Candidate Unveils Powerful Ad

Alan Grayson, who is running for Congress in FL-8, has unveiled a powerful TV ad. I hope we see more like this.

Update: Democratic Congressional Candidate Alan Grayson on Iraq Reckoning: “We'll Put People in Prison”.

New Poll Looks Good for Local Democratic Candidates

A new poll spells trouble for the Diaz-Balart brothers, who represent neighboring South Florida in Congressional districts. As McClatchy's Washington bureau puts it,

A new poll suggests that two Republican members of Congress from Miami are facing a tight race from their Democratic challengers — the first significant challenge to the incumbents in years.

The poll, by Bendixen & Associates, shows Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, Cuban-American brothers with a long Miami political pedigree, are leading their Democratic challengers by only single digits with four months to go to the election. Potentially more troubling for the GOP incumbents, the poll shows neither cracked 50 percent of the vote. That's a far cry from their dominance in previous campaigns.

The Joe Garcia campaign was quick to crow about the results in an email to supporters:

A few moments ago, The Miami Herald released a new, independent poll.

The headline: “GOP incumbents facing a tight race in South Florida.”
Here are the raw numbers:
Joe Garcia 39%
Mario Diaz-Balart 44%

Now, I know some of you may be wondering what all the fuss is about — Joe isn't ahead, so what's the big deal?

Well, here is quick a break-down of these numbers to put things into perspective:

1. Diaz-Balart is in serious trouble. In politics, there is a key figure that analysts look at when determining an incumbent's viability — the “re-elect' rating (whether 50% of the public would vote to re-elect him or her). Mario is at a 44% re-elect, which places him well below the 50% viability threshold an incumbent needs to feel comfortable.

2. Joe has nowhere to go but up. Mario Diaz-Balart enjoys the luxury of near-universal name recognition that comes with being a career-politician — even though most people only know him as 'the brother of the guy that wants to be the future President of Cuba,' but that's besides the point. Joe Garcia has yet to run a single television ad and our work has been limited primarily to grassroots outreach. As is the case around the country, 2/3 of independent voters are voting Democratic. We expect this pattern to hold as more voters learn of Joe Garcia's long record of working across party lines to find common-sense solutions to problems.

3. The issues are on our side. Mario Diaz-Balart is not on the right side of any major issue. Whether it's on the economy, rising gas prices or the Iraq War, Mario Diaz-Balart's blind support for the failed policies of George W. Bush places him out of touch with our community. Meanwhile, Joe Garcia's plan to provide tax cuts for working families, make our country energy independent and bring a responsible end to the Iraq War reflects the values of South Florida and is resonating with voters.

FL-18th's Annette Taddeo, fighting a better financed and more popular opponent, is behind by 27 percentage points — 58 to 31 — with just 11 percent undecided.

Gov. Crist Gets Engaged

Flablog has the rundown on Florida Governor Charlie Crist's engagement to one Carole Rome, described as an MBA, with experience working as an auditor and as a realtor, at Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again? including many people asking the obvious question.

It's hard not to be cynical about the sudden engagement of a man whose primary obstacle to the Republican Vice-Presidential nomination are the rumors that he's gay. It seems not everyone has been able to control their snark and just wish our Governor joy in his engagement, no doubt in large part to his unbroken series of convenient publicized serious girlfriends before each of his recent election campaigns.

Actually, what struck me most about this story was that the Governor wasn't, as I though, a life-long bachelor. Our “bachelor Governor” is actually a divorcee!

Sayth the Herald [which oddly didn't even put the story on it's front page, what's with that?],

It will be the second marriage for Crist and Rome. Crist was married for six months after college to Amanda Morrow and then divorced in 1980.

Rome was married to Todd Rome of New York, CEO of Blue Star Jets, until 2006.

As far as I can tell, no reporter seems to have spoken to Ms. Morrow in any of Crist's recent campaigns. (Although one very unpleasant blogger did track down a recent picture of her.)

All I could find was a dubious web page with this, sourced to Adam C. Smith and Joni James, St. Petersburg Times (June 21, 2006),

While in law school, Crist married Amanda Morrow in Delray Beach. The 1979 marriage lasted a little more than six months. They divorced in January 1980. “We dated at Florida State for a couple of years, got married. I was pretty young. It just didn't work out,'' said Crist, who has never talked much about the marriage and had little to say about it.

The brevity of his marriage, and the fact that Crist has never had kids, has prompted whispers about his sexuality and questions about his ability to relate to most voters.

“I don't like to argue and we did some of that. But that's really all I have to say,'' said Crist, who has not kept in touch with his former wife.

Although he displayed relatively few signs of humanity in public life during his pre-Gubernatorial career as “Chain Gang Charlie” Crist (and even looking beyond his about-face on offshore drilling), Crist has been a more reasonable and centrist Governor than I would have expected.

Admittedly, expectations were low for a man who promised to be a Jeb Bush clone. But it was a promise he didn't keep. And in public appearances Crist acts like a likable human being in ways that if they are scripted would suggest a super-human acting ability, one so great as to suggest a certain fitness for higher office.

Yes, the state budget is going to hell in hand basket, and Crist's future may be going with it, so he has to be praying for national recognition now, before it's too late. But even so.

Maybe, even despite the campaign history, even despite the promise of a Fall (campaign season?) wedding, we should give the Governor the benefit of the doubt on this one until and unless there's an actual fact to point to?

Tres Florida

Why I am not the least bit surprised that all three major Florida universities — UM, UF, FSU — are represented on this select list of institutions of higher education who have signed deals with Victoria's Secret for “pink” themed clothes and underwear?

All so very tasteful and revenue-enhancing, I'm sure. And so Florida. Although to be fair, there are lots of schools from both sunny and raininy states on that list…

(Spotted via Kieran Healy, A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.)

Local GOP Candidates Back Out of Debates

Catching up on the local news, now that I'm back in Miami — complete with the standard ride-an-airplane-catch-a-cold. It seems that the local GOP congressional incumbents are trying to avoid debating their challengers: Miami-Dade Dems: Debate? Republicans run and hide.

Joe Garcia, challenging Mario Diaz-Balart for District 25, said in a statement Wednesday that his opponent had backed out of a commitment to debate.

“This is an act of political cowardice. If Mario Diaz-Balart had time to vote to underfund our schools, three times against children’s healthcare and against medical benefits for veterans, then he better make time to explain himself to the people of South Florida,” the statement said.

Of course, it's SOP in the incumbent playbook to avoid debating an opponent as much as possible for fear that they have more to gain. Normally the candidates do one or two set-pieces just before the election and that's it.

But I don't think that the regular playbook is going to apply to this abnormal year, especially in macho S. Florida — at least for the male candidates. How it will play in the 18th, where two women are in the race, I'm less clear.

"Sunshine State": It Should Have Been a Contender

This song, Sunshine State, should have been a contender for state song instead of the horrors we got.

But at least you can enjoy the video.

(via Eye on Miami)

South Florida Delegate Results

The Florida Democratic party had caucuses last weekend; as far as I know these don't count any more than anything else Florida Democrats do.

The numerical results were determined by the voting in the Florida primary. The issue at the caucus was who would get to be the actual delegates.

How are the district-level caucuses run? Who chooses the delegates? The selection of district-level delegates will be in 25 post-primary district-level caucuses around the state on March 1, 2008. The highest vote-getters slotted under each presidential candidate are elected. (The numbers each presidential candidate gets in each district is dependent on the Presidential Primary results in that district.) In order to participate as a voter in the caucus, a voter must establish that he or she is a registered Democrat within the Caucus' Congressional District. Voters must present a voter registration card and photo I.D. The voter will then be required to fill out a statement of support for the presidential candidate whom he or she supports. Delegates and alternates will be elected only by those participants at the caucus who have declared support for the same candidate to whom the delegate or alternates are pledged. Each participating voter must vote for exactly the number of delegate candidates to which the presidential candidate is entitled. Undervotes and overvotes will result in that ballot becoming invalid and will not count.

See the unofficial results, if you want to know who won in south Florida.

Florida Republican Wants Confederate Flag License Plate

Think Progress was where I saw it first: Florida lawmaker seeks Confederate flag specialty plate.

Florida state Rep. Donald Brown (R) introduced a bill last week to create a “Confederate Heritage” license plate for the state. Saying “it would give motorists a way to show pride in their heritage,” Brown proposes a $25 charge for motorists to purchase a plate with “a shield displaying the rebel battle flag symbol surrounded by several flags from the Civil War era.” The money would benefit “educational programs run by Sons of Confederate Veterans,” which considers the Civil War to be “the Second American Revolution.”

And they even have a picture:

Florida has more specialty license plates than you can imagine. Some are very nice.

WSJ Says Florida Leads the Nation

According to the Wall St. Journal's Objection! Funny Legal Ads Draw Censure, Florida leads the nation in restrictions on the use of animals in lawyer advertising.

Tigers are OK. Lions probably. But no sharks or pit bulls. Go figure.

The article is limited only to animals and TV ads; had they mentioned advertising rules more generally, and especially the evolving rules relating to law firm web pages, they'd have had to mention New York state's increasingly restrictive policies, quite possibly worse than Florida's.

Election Returns

McCain wins over Romney, Rudy! crashes, Huckabee is reduced to “other”.

Look for Rudy! to endorse McCain tomorrow. The chance of a brokered convention just went down — but the intra-party dirt will really start to fly now.

Clinton crushed Obama but gets no delegates.

Both Amendment 1 (cutting property taxes) and Initiative 3 (more slot machines) passed. Sigh.

Will anyone remember this prediction a year from now?

A study done by Coral Gables-based Washington Economics Group for the pro-slots organization Yes for a Greater Miami-Dade said more than 6,400 jobs could be created by the machines in their first year of operation. The study projects $26 million in tax revenues will go to the county and the cities of Miami and Miami Gardens in the first year.

I doubt they'll see that kind of money, although I'll not bet against gamblers' addictions, but I know there's no way they'll see a net increase in jobs anywhere near that size (they may displace a few, though).

Voting Today

Haven't voted yet, but this is how I'm leaning:

Presidential beauty contest: John Edwards.

Several times I've thought of voting tactically for Obama since he's my favorite of the two leading candidates. But he has done just enough progressive-bashing, and his health plan has a big enough hole that I think I'm sticking with voting for Edwards.

State Amendment 1 (starve localities, decimate services, and discriminate against young people and immigrants from out of state by further limiting property tax increase on housing appreciation): NO!

County proposition 1 (technical change on election rules to save millions of dollars): Yes

County proposition 2 (elect the county property assessor): No?

This is the one vote I'm least certain about — I don't know who is behind it, or what they hope to achieve. Nor does this seem the sort of post all that well suited to election, even if other counties do it.

Country proposition 3 (2nd try at legalizing slot machine gambling at dog races & frontons): NO!

On balance I think we don't need to feed gambling addictions; the claims of jobs and revenue from out-of-state tourists are bogus; the claim that revenue will help schools is also belied by experience of lottery money being offset by decreased spending. And it's been sad to see teachers and cops pressed into service arguing for dog track gambling.

Take the Broweird News Quiz

Miami is weird and wonderful. But Miami people say that Broward, the next county north, is just weird. That's not completely fair, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it after you take the Miami Herald's fun Broweird news quiz.

Sample question (I had to think about this one):

16. Which of the following in Fort Lauderdale terrorized two teenagers and sent a dog to the animal hospital for treatment?

A. Africanized honey bees.

B. Deerfield Beach firefighter and reality TV show star Dani Campbell.

C. Alligators.

D. Airport bus drivers.

Could have been any of them, really.

Join the 'None of the Above' Campaign

No, I'm not talking about the GOP primary. I'm talking about the contest for a new Florida state song.

I admit that this morning I was a little worried about my post attacking all three songs as bad. (The Song Will Not Remain The Same) In fact, I toned it down quite a bit from the first draft, saying to myself that it just came out sounding too curmudgeonly.

Well, I'm feeling bolder now that I've read Flablog, Bad music:

Folks, I hate to find myself in the Simon Cowell role in this talent show, but these are aggressively awful songs.

I don’t mean just awful in a passive, boring, public-assembly way. I mean chair-creaking, clock-checking, eyes-scanning-the-exits, mind-numbingly, risibly awful. One sounds like an infomercial for a television ministry, one sounds like a 19th century Congregationalist hymn, and one sounds like something that should have been recorded on an Edison wax cylinder.

And these were chosen by people who are influencing innocent children.

I tremble for our future.

Maybe what we need is a “none of the above movement”? Is there some way to get a re-do, or to hear the other contenders, or hire a decent rock band, or commission the Dean of the UM School of Music, or something.

Please, someone, tell me help is on the way.

The Song Will Not Remain The Same

The state of Florida is looking for a new state song.

The current (written in 1851 by Stephen Foster, officially adopted by Florida in 1935) state song's official name is “Old Folks at Home,” (lugubrious mp3) but most people know it either for its first line “Way down upon the Swanee River…'' or for its racist lines including “Still longing for the old plantation” and “Oh darkies, how my heart grows weary.”

They had competition for a replacement, and now they are down to three finalists which can be heard at justsingflorida.org. And apparently the public is invited to vote online for the winner. Ballot stuffing anyone?

Here are direct links to the syrupy contenders:

'Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky)' | Music and lyrics by Jan Hinton

'My Florida Home' | Music and lyrics by Christopher Marshall

'Florida, My Home' | Music by Carl Ashley, lyrics by Betsy Dixon

I think the first one is awful, the second one dull, and while the third may be the least bad, I don't much care for it, and it would be hard to sing. I hope I never have to hear any of them again, but I suppose they'll start popping up at graduation.

Do any states have good anthems?

Florida Fund Crisis: The Jeb Bush Connection

A money scandal with a Bush connection — who would have thought it? Forbes did. Where Was Jeb?:

A government money market debacle unfolding in Florida is raising questions about former governor and presidential brother Jeb Bush's possible involvement in the mess.

Florida froze withdrawals from a state investment fund earlier this week when local governments withdrew billions of dollars out of concern for the fund's financial stability.

In the past few days, municipalities have withdrawn roughly $9 billion, nearly a third of the $28 billion fund (which is similar to a money market fund) controlled by the Florida's State Board of Administration (SBA). The run on the fund was triggered by worries that a percentage of the portfolio contained debt that had defaulted.

A majority of this paper was sold to SBA by Lehman Brothers. Bush, as the state's top elected official, served on a three-member board that oversaw the SBA until he retired as governor in January. In August, Bush was hired as a consultant to the bank. Lehman spokesperson Kerrie Cohen, speaking on behalf of Bush, said they had no comment and would not say when the bank had sold Florida the paper. SBA did not return calls.

Let's not jump to conclusions just because it looks bad. But it doesn't look good.

Update: Does this sound like the time Jeb's state pension fund held on to Enron despite warnings to sell?

Washington Post Introduces Us to "Swamp Divers"

Yes, it seems that there are Floridians nuts enough to go swimming with alligators. So the Washington Post profiles this group, which it calls

a very small, very savvy, very crazy band of swamp divers — people who purposefully jump into dark and dangerous ponds, pools, canals and creeks in the Everglades and its surrounding wild waters. They do it for science, to make movies, to observe or capture uncommon scenes in an element of the Everglades few humans ever see.

And, yes, for scary fun. Entering the hidden haunts of the lizard king of the Everglades, a creature capable of snapping human bones like tortilla chips, is an electric jolt.

“It's very, very exciting,” said Fernandez, a South Miami man whose murky immersions have rekindled passion for a photography profession he abandoned years ago. “There are times when you're in there and the alligators bump into you. Sometimes, they take off in a very small area, and it's like a chain reaction, they all start flying by and hitting you.”

Swamp diving is eerie, fascinating, frightening — and an experience that almost no one should ever, ever try. Don't even think about it.

OK. If you say so.

I'm Starting to Like a Republican

I'm really starting to like our Governor, Charlie Crist.

Other than as regards the DFC (which he cleverly handed over to a Democrat), our new governor is governing as a centrist — for example by taking some actions that will help slow global warming — which turns out to be great politics:

Something that was once unimaginable in Florida happened last week: A Republican governor hosted a global warming summit.

Then he issued a series of executive orders aimed at greatly reducing air pollution from cars, utilities and new homes.

He's also putting solar panels on the Governor's Mansion, asking utility companies to build more windmill generators and ordering all state vehicles to use ethanol or other biofuel blends.

It's official: Charlie Crist is the un-Jeb.

You might dismiss acting to slow global warming as a bit of a stunt. It's a popular issue, and we here have more to lose than most as it's too hot already, and most of the state is only feet above sea level.

But consider this next fact: Governor Crist just vetoed an obscure but very awful bill that would have totally transformed Florida's administrative procedure laws. The bill would have dramatically limited agency rulemaking powers, and would have made it much easier and more profitable for private parties to challenge previous rules and all non-rule documents, not least by in effect stopping all rules from taking effect when challenged, no matter how silly the challenge.

Vetoing it was absolutely the right thing to do, and won't win points with the far-right anti-government crowd, but it can hardly be called grandstanding.

DFC Up to Its Old Tricks

Unchanging: The Florida Dept. Of Children and Families is still screwing up, and kids are dying,

It was the fourth time in as many years that state child welfare workers had visited the home of Stephanie Dorismond.

The oldest of five children, Stephanie, 15, had told North Miami Beach police that her uncle had asked for sex and that a family friend had molested her. An investigator took less than a week to devise a safety plan:

''Mom told [to] ensure the safety and wellbeing of the child at all times,'' he noted in his report.

Case closed.

But even as Department of Children & Families investigator Williams R. Ajayi moved on to his next case, Stephanie, a slim girl with a glowing smile, was already in peril. On April 10, a day before DCF closed its case, a counseling group assigned to work with the family told Ajayi that the teen had run away from home.

Records show Ajayi did nothing.

And Stephanie was found dead in a hotel room soon afterwards.

Weird Florida News (Dead Chicken Edition)

Summer brings out the weird news, and Florida's is just a little weirder than most people's:

Man acquitted of assault with a dead chicken (via Flablog).

On Thursday, a jury acquitted the neighbor, Juan Fernando Carrasco, of hitting Shaffer in the head with a dead 4-pound chicken.

“I wasn't injured but I certainly felt it. He got my attention,” saidShaffer, 78.

The April 12, 2006, dispute between the two neighbors — separated by a 3-foot-high fence on Jane Lacy Lane, a dirt road of 2 1/2-acre lots in New Smyrna Beach — ended when Shaffer called a sheriff's deputy.

And when Carrasco refused to accept a plea agreement by the State Attorney's Office, the battery-with-a-dead-chicken case went to trial. On Thursday, a jury of four women and two men took 20 minutes to decide Carrasco was innocent of battery.

…

“Sounds like something you hear on 'Jay Leno' but it's not a joke,” Assistant State Attorney Larry Avalon argued. “Mr. Shaffer was hit with an object that has weight. That is battery.”

But Carrasco's attorney, Diego Handel, argued that the state's only evidence was Shaffer's testimony claiming Carrasco hit him with the dead chicken.

“It may be a case involving a dead chicken but it is extremely serious to Fernando (Carrasco),” Handel said. “The lack of evidence supports the conclusion that Fernando is not guilty. It's a situation of 'he said and they said.' “

After the trial, Shaffer said he was satisfied with the jury's decision.

“He had 14 months to worry about it and it cost him a bunch. That's enough,” Shaffer said. “It was his word against mine.”

One member of Carrasco's family called it the “alleged assault with a dead weapon.”

Update: Was it a battery hen?

Today's Strange Florida News

The headline in the print version of the Herald says it all: “Man With Bad Headache Learns His Wife Shot Him”; the online version's headline is less funny.

A woman was arrested Tuesday after her husband woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible headache and later learned he had a bullet lodged in his head.

St. Lucie County sheriff's deputies initially thought Michael Eugene Moylan had been hit by a stray bullet, but later realized the couple's story did not match up, Sheriff Ken Mascara said.

April Moylan, 39, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, Mascara said. Moylan was being held in jail.

I can hear the jokes already…

Florida Paper Ballots Law - The Fine Print

Daily Kos: Florida's Paper Ballots Come with a Catch

This Sounds Like a First Amendment Issue to Me

No, you won't spend any time in jail, but you'll certainly feel like a criminal once the local record shop makes copies of all of your identifying information and even collects your fingerprints.

On top of that, stores that want to sell used CDs despite all these discouragements will have to post a $10,000 bond!

CDs, even used ones, are a form of speech covered by the First Amendment. The idea that one must register to traffic in speech strikes me as presumptively unconstitutional. I wonder how this statute could survive strict scrutiny (which I assume would be what applies?) given the assertion at ars technica that in fact there is “no proof that [stolen CDs] is a particularly pressing problem for record shops in general.”

Cites to the text of the bill, or thoughts from First Amendment mavens most welcome.

Two Pieces of Very Good Legal News From Florida

He was once known as “Chain Gang Charlie” Crist for his tough law and order stands, but in the face of strong troglodyte opposition from Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, Florida Governor Charlie Crist has pushed through a set of reforms to Flordia's felon disenfranchisement rules. Now, instead of making it virtually impossible for felons to get their right to vote (and to hold state licensees for a wide variety of trades), it will merely be slow (15 years!) for non-violent offenders, and slow and difficult for violent offenders. This is a major issue as the state has almost a million persons who have been found guilty of felonies, and about half of them are black (although blacks are about 14% of our total population). That a Republican governor would do this, because it's the right thing, is amazing. Florida still remains well behind states with more civilized penal policies, but this is a huge step in the right direction. Details at the Miami Herald, Felon rights on faster track.

Also in today's news, a welcome and very powerful ruling by our Supreme Court. In Re: Amendments To Florida Rule Of Judicial Administration 2.420—Sealing Of Court Records And Dockets. (April 5, 2007) says in the strongest terms that state courts must not “superseal” civil cases in trial courts — ever. “Supersealing” was a procedure that removed any trace of a matter from the public docket, even its docket number and title. As the court notes, it was a set of practices “that, however unintentional, were clearly offensive to the spirit of laws and rules that ultimately rest on Florida’s well-established public policy of government in the sunshine.” The Court's decision does not prevent the sealing of substantive civil case records in appropriate cases after appropriate process. Also, the issue of criminal and appellate cases is left for another day, pending study by the appropriate committees (in criminal cases there are additional issues relating to protecting informants, for example).

A great day for the State of Florida! (And if the last election were held today, I'd vote for Crist.)

[Bonus good news: Condo tenant wins fight to keep mezuzah.]

Pick Your Nuisance

We may have the occasional crocodile here in Miami, but it seems just north of us, in Broward County, they have Pitbulls On The Loose.

Nineteen possibly feral pitbulls collected in one week? And many more still on the loose? I feel safer with the crocodiles, which we are assured as generally peaceful and leave one alone if one doesn't bug them.

Regarding 'The South Florida Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet'

Is there a South Florida Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet? Many people seem to think so.

I prefer the theory that someone once picked up the US and shook it, and all the loose screws fell to the bottom…

FL GOP Wants to Raise Taxes -- On Poor People

It's bad enough to read that the state GOP — or at least the ones in the state House of Representatives (ie. the most right-wing ones at present), want to eliminate property taxes and instead increase the sales tax (which is a regressive tax). I would like to dismiss this as posturing, but there are three reasons why I can't.

1) The proposal is to make the change via a ballot proposition to chance the state constitution. Anything can happen, especially if it is dressed up as a tax cut.

2) State property tax receipts are tanking, so the state will be out hunting for more revenue.

3) This is Florida.

Fish Stories

So it seems that Florida diners are ordering grouper and getting counterfeits: On Fla. Menus, a Favorite Fish Experiences Identity Theft. I suspect that when the stuff is slathered in sauces, or charred to within an inch of charcoal, diners can't tell the difference anyway.

It all puts me in mind of the story of the lady who went to Zabars in New York and said, “I'd like half a pound of caviar. And make sure it's imported because I can't tell the difference.”

Weird Even By Florida Standards

This story, Jilted, diapered astronaut planned to kidnap rival, is weird even by Florida standards.

Only In Florida

Forget about South Florida corruption. Up north a ways, in Central Florida, they bring weirdness to new heights.

I mean, where else but Florida could you ever get this fact pattern:

Deputies: Man on crack when alligator attacked. LAKELAND -- A man who was attacked by an alligator this morning was naked and smoking crack at the time, Polk County deputies who rescued him said today.

Apgar, 45, of Polk City, suffered a broken arm, partially amputated left arm and trauma to his left leg. Doctors are trying to reattach the arm at Lakeland Regional Medical Center, where [he] was listed in critical condition.

"We don't know whether he'll make it or not," said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd.

Voting Machine Problems in Florida

There were a lot of celebratory articles today about how the voting machines worked OK on Tuesday. (E.g. AP's Voting System Worked, With Some Hiccups.)

Not so fast. Looks like another Florida voting machine meltdown. Yes, all the elements are there. Enough missing votes to determine the outcome of a Congressional election. Florida election officials in a state of denial. Next up, the lawsuit(s).

(See also Flablog for the cynical summary.)

The Local S. Florida Angle

Democrats will control the House, with help from South Florida.

Republican Charlie Crist Christ won the state, but lost this region. It looks as if state turnout wasn't all that high, which hurt Davis, as did Christ's huge financial advantage, which allowed an incessant barrage of TV ads depicting Davis as pro-terrorist. [Update: I hear Crist ran 21,000 commercials -- more than any other candidate in the nation.]

Democrat Alex Sink will be the first elected state CFO -- and looks to have a great future in state politics.

Nelon beat Harris -- without my vote. I didn't want to vote for a supporter of the torture bill. And they both voted for it. So for the first time in my life, I voted for neither candidate in a contested election.

Ron Klein beat Clay Shaw in the much-watched Boca Raton congressional election. Mahoney narrowly beat "Mark Foley" (Joe Negron) in Palm Beach, but it was close.

Where I live, Democrat Dave Patlak was beaten by incumbent Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen by almost 2:1, pretty much tracking party registration in Florida's 18th district. The Patlak campaign had a few tens of thousands of dollars; the incumbent had well over a million on hand before the campaign even began.

Broward voted down a mass transit tax by a 2:1 ratio.

But the local news is dominated by the shooting of a UM student, Bryan Pata, a football player with a possible NFL career, in the parking lot of his off-campus apartment building.

NOVA as a Debate Location

The secondfirst Florida gubenatorial debate is about to start at NOVA South Eastern University. Turns out that might not the best place to hold it, at least according to this email I received:

Two models for the future of South Florida will be debated on Tuesday, October 24th, at NOVA South Eastern University. The selection of the debate site is quite unfortunate, in my opinion, because NOVA is involved in a labor dispute that will, if nothing changes quickly, render some 350 janitors jobless. An institution that is toying with the future of so many workers, as though their lives and livelihoods were truly unimportant, should not be chosen as the locale for hosting a discussion about the future of all Floridians. This problem is even more egregious, considering that two institutions of higher learning in South Florida, FIU and UM, have recently committed their resources to respecting the rights of workers to both organize and have a decent standard of living. These institutions are more deserving of hosting such a momentous event, for they have secured the future of their workers.

What I am asking is that NOVA Southeastern University finally accept the rights of their janitors to have a decent life, or that the debate be moved to a different place.

Many people are mobilizing in the next few days and weeks to achieve this goal, a goal that will benefit South Florida in general, for a solid working class is the back bone of any healthy community. Please stay tuned!

Dr. Manuel J. Caro
Sociologist
North Miami

FL Governor: It's a Horserace Again

Poll says Davis has caught up with Crist:

A shift in the mind-set of independent voters has made Florida's governor's race a ''dead heat,'' according to a new poll by Quinnipiac University.

The poll, released today, shows Democrat Jim Davis narrowing the gap with Republican Charlie Crist to two points -- 46 percent to 44 -- well within the poll's 3.4 percent margin of error.

Nevertheless, I admit that just as I was surprised at the size of Crist's lead, I'm also surprised that Davis caught up so fast.

Register to Vote

The deadline to register to vote in Florida is October 10th, three days away. The deadline for a host of other states is one of the next seven days.

10/7: MS, NV, RI, SC
10/8: AK, TN, WA
10/9: AR, AZ, HI, LA, WY
10/10: CO, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, MI, MT, NM, OH, PA, TX, UT, VA, MO
10/13: ID, NC, NY, OK
10/14: DE
10/17: MD, ME, MN, NJ, OR, WV
10/18: MA
10/19: WI
10/20: NE
10/23: CA, KS, SD
10/24: CT
10/27: AL, IA, NH, VT
Election Day Registration: ID, ME, MN, ND, NH, WI, WY

If this is a new registration application, the date the completed application is postmarked or hand delivered to a driver's license office, a voter registration agency, an armed forces recruitment office, the Division of Elections, or the office of any Supervisor of Elections in the state will be your registration date. If this is a new Florida application, you must be registered for at least 29 days before you can vote in an election. If your application is complete and you are qualified as a voter, a voter information card will be mailed to you.

Mydem.com offers you a chance to check online if you are already registered, but they make you sign into the site first.

It could be an historic election. If they count the votes right, of course.

I Voted -- But Will It Count?

And then I come home to find How easy is it to hardware hack a Voting Machine?

A couple of untrained 54-year old women from Black Box Voting bought $12 worth of tools and in four minutes penetrated the memory card seals, removed, replaced the memory card, and sealed it all up again without leaving a trace.

The Experiment on an actual Diebold voting machine shows that the seals do nothing whatever to protect against access by insiders after testing, and the seals also are worthless in jurisdictions like Washington, Florida, California, and many other locations where voting machines are sent home with poll workers for days before the election.

How I'm Voting

It's election day today in Florida. We have the primaries, a school board election, and also the judicial elections and a local ballot question (other parts of Miami also have some big county commission races, but the terms are staggered and I live in a district which has an off year). The judicial elections -- the part that gets by far the least attention from voters or media -- may be the most important part.

Governor (D primary): Jim Davis

At the top of the ballot there's the race that got the most attention: the gubanatorial primary. As a registered Democrat, I get to choose between two candidates I'd happily vote for over either of the Republicans, so I'm already ahead whether Rod Smith or Jim Davis wins. Both candidates bring a different package of virtues and blemishes to the table and I can't say I have violent feelings about this one. But on balance, I'm going to vote for Davis. I was leaning that way anyway, but what tipped me was the multi-million dollar third-party ad blitz for Smith in the last few days. It was mean, negative, misleading -- and financed by Big Sugar.

I'll be voting for the ballot proposition to give county commissioners a real salary instead of the pittance they now receive. They run a huge budget and, who knows, it might reduce the propensity to make backroom deals for cash.

That said, I resent the one-sided way in which the ballot summary is worded:

Shall the Charter be amended to provide that County Commissioners no longer receive the $6,000 annual salary established in 1957, but shall receive instead the population based salary provided by State statutory formula (currently approximately $88,919) and used by other Florida counties, including Broward County?

School Board (District 6): Gus Barrera (incumbent).

I have a vote in a local school board race in District 6. It's a sign of how dismal the choices are that I will be voting for a man who supports book-banning. Yes, "Gus" Barrera not only voted to ban Vamos a Cuba, a picture book for little children on the grounds it failed to be anti-Castro enough, he voted to waste more money appealing the school board's loss in court. Why am I voting for him? Because the other guy is worse.

Barrera at least voted not to ban the book the first time the issue arose, thus giving the school system's normal procedures a chance to examine it. And to their credit the parents and bureaucrats both said to keep the book -- at which point Barrera voted to overturn their decision. Barrera's opponent's main campaign issue is that he would have voted to ban the book right away. No thanks.

AG (D primary): Walter (Skip) Campbell

There's a race on for Florida's Attorney General, often a springboard to higher office (the Republican incumbent is the leading candidate for Governor). I have to confess I've paid too little attention to this one (is it not seriously contested?). Skip Campbell is endorsed by DFA and by the Miami Herald. While I don't fully trust the Herald in non-judicial elections -- its instincts are very status quo -- anyone who can get both these endorsements is likely to be someone I'm going to feel comfortable with.

There is, however, one place where I do tend to be a status quo voter, and that's in the judicial races. I like voting for judicial incumbents unless they're doing a bad job (examples include ethical lapses, sloppy rulings, and consistently poor in-court behavior). This year I'll be voting for all but two of the incumbents running for re-election.

The first exception is Judge Ivan Hernandez. I'll be voting for his opponent in Group 4, Robin Faber. The reasons why this is an important vote are well summarized in the Miami Herald editorial endorsing Faber.

The second exception is Judge Ana Maria Pando who was admonished by the Florida Supreme Court last year for failing to disclose a campaign finance loan from her parents in previous elections. In Group 10 I'll be voting for Sari Teichman Addicott.

There are also a number of open judicial seats -- some where it's a tough call.

Miami-Dade Circuit Court

Group 25: Murphy (I) [(I) means incumbent] (Herald endorsement)

Group 42: Schwartz (I)

Group 78 (open seat): one of the toughest calls -- all the candidates seem to have both virtues and question marks. The Herald endorsed Bardawil, but she didn't get that great a qualification rating from the Dade bar poll -- 57% suggested she was unqualified! At 37 years old she's also the least experienced lawyer in the race. However, Jose R. Sanchez-Gronlier did equally badly, and Valerie R. Manno Schurr, only did somewhat better (47% rated her unqualified). I remember Ms. Schurr from her previous race in 2004. She's experienced as a lawyer, had a prior career as a nurse, and is a UM law grad. I liked her in the 2004 race, and I think she's my choice in this group.

Group 79 (open seat) has two candidates, Marie Abigail Davidson and Antonio "Tony'' Marin. The Herald endorsed Marin, a pillar of the local Cuban establishment, as did the pseudonymous Rumpole. He also gets a much, much higher rating in the Dade bar poll, so I'm voting for Martin.

Update Group 80 (open seat) has three candidates: Mario Garcia Jr.; Marisa Tinkler Mendez; and Catherine B. Parks. Garcia is out of the running as far as I am concerned -- he has too little legal experience without anything I know of to make up for the lack. The Herald's not-so-convincing endorsement is for Marisa Tinkler Mendez, but on paper Parks looks like a slightly better candidate on the basis of her diverse experience as a litigator (20 years), a trauma nurse, and especially as an active citizen in various local organizations. For this one I may need to call people I know until I find someone who knows them personally.

Miami-Dade County Court

Group 1: Shirylon McWhorter (I) (Herald endorsement). Judge McWhorter failed the Save Dade test (about which more below) -- but so did her opponent.

Group 4: Robin Faber (running against incumbent) (even the Herald doesn't support incumbent Ivan Hernandez -- although the PBA does.)

Group 9 (open): Both the Herald and Rumpole endorse Victoria Del Pino over Joel Jacobi. The Dade bar poll scores are not that different, although Del Pino slightly edges Jacobi. I'm planning on voting for Del Pino on the grounds that she seems to have more relevant experience, and that even if it were a tie all other things being equal I'd probably like to see more women on the bench. (Both candidates fail the Save Dade test.)

Group 10: Judge Ana Maria Pando is the incumbent, but I'm voting for Sari Teichman Addicott for the same reasons as in the Herald's endorsement. Read the Florida Supreme Court's decision in the Pando case for yourself.

Group 11: Karen Mills Francis (I)

Group 12: An important vote for Judge Steve Leifman (I). It would be sad if he lost. See the Herald and Rumpole. Leifman is tops in the bar poll too.

Group 14: Judge Michael Samuels (I) (Herald endorsement)

Group 27: Judge Sheldon "Shelly" Schwartz (I). Another valued veteran. Herald likes him too.

Group 39: Judge Bronwyn Catherine Miller (I). I actually have met Judge Miller. She seems smart. And I hear she's a good judge. And the Herald likes her.

Group 40: Judge Bonnie Lano Rippingille (I). Herald. The challenger, Don Cohn, sounds good too, but I'm for retention during good behavior.

Group 43 (open): Three candidates. Do NOT vote for Cecilia Armenteros-Chavez. I don't know much about Michael A. Bienstock; both he and Jose L. ''Joe'' Fernandez have somewhat similar Bar poll scores. The cognoscenti and the Herald much prefer Fernandez, and I have no reason to disagree.

And finally, I thought I should reprint this from the Sun-Post before it vanishes (temporarily at this link):

Like many political action committees, SAVE Dade endorses candidates. Known for championing an amendment to the county's human rights ordinance that includes banning discrimination against anyone based on sexual orientation, SAVE Dade (the SAVE stands for "Safeguarding American Values for Everyone") has an adversary -- the Christian Family Coalition, a local group devoted to the ideal that it's OK to discriminate against gay people and it is not OK for same-sex couples to enjoy any kind of civil rights protections.

How does Murmurs know this? Simple -- the Christian Family Coalition sent questionnaires to judicial candidates, which were displayed on the organization's Web site, mdccc.org. "Canon 2 (c) code of Judicial Conduct, states a judge should not hold membership in an organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin. Do you believe this canon should be changed to include sexual orientation (i.e., bisexuality, homosexuality, etc.)?" "Do you believe there should be domestic partner benefits (same-sex marriage benefits) for judges?" Why the obsession with homosexuality? One clue would be the group's founder and director, Anthony Verdugo. Formerly the head of the Miami-Dade Christian Coalition, Verdugo and his followers have been seeking to overturn the county's provision banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. They also want a state amendment declaring that marriage is only between a man and a woman -- even though such a provision already exists on state books.

Isn't it a major no-no to ask judges such questions, as it may render them less than impartial in future cases, you may ask? Not according to the Florida Supreme Court's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee. "The mere expression of an opinion does not necessarily mean the person giving the opinion has researched the issue exhaustively, or that the person would not be amenable to altering the opinion in the face of capable advocacy. That is, expressing an opinion does not automatically indicate closed-mindedness," the opinion stated, which is also proudly displayed by mdccc.org -- as are the judicial candidates' answers to the questions. Apparently county court candidates Patricia Marino-Pedraza (Group 1), Shirlyon McWhorter (Group 1), Ivan Hernandez (Group 4), Victoria del Pino (Group 9), Joel Jacobi (Group 9), Ana Maria Pando (Group 10), Stephen Millan (Group 11), Gloria Gonzalez-Meyer (Group 14), Sheldon "Shelly" Schwartz (Group 27), Cecilia Armenteros-Chavez (Group 43) and Jose Fernandez (Group 43) more or less think it's all right for judges to belong to groups that discriminate in regard to sexual orientation. McWhorter, Hernandez, del Pino, Jacobi, Pando, Millan, Gonzalez-Meyer, Armenteros-Chavez and Fernandez also answered "n" (no) when asked if domestic partner benefits should be extended to judges. Eleventh Circuit Court candidates Jose Perez Velis (Group 25), Dennis Murphy (Group 25), Gina Mendez (Group 42), Antonio "Tony" Marin (Group 79) and Mario Garcia Jr. (Group 80) said it was not OK to forbid judges from belonging to groups that discriminate based on sexual orientation. And Velis, Murphy, Mendez, Marin and Garcia also marked "n" when it came to extending domestic partner benefits for judges. As of deadline, Murmurs could not find the Christian Family Coalition's endorsements on its Web site. However, according to SAVE Dade's Web site, www.savedade.org, "The Christian Family Coalition has decided to do endorsements for the first time this year, as opposed to the report cards they have done in the past, and they have adopted a policy to only offer endorsements to those candidates that agree not to accept the SAVE Dade endorsement."

One judicial candidate preferred the backing of the Christian Family Coalition to SAVE Dade's endorsement. "Formerly endorsed judicial candidate Patricia Marino-Pedraza...has opted to drop our endorsement so that she may receive the Christian Family Coalition endorsement," SAVE Dade stated. "SAVE Dade would like to thank the judicial candidates who turned down such offers from the Christian Family Coalition."

I do realize I'm voting for some judges who fail this test but in most cases their opponents fail it too, and in the rest they are not good choices for other reasons.

Campus Cops Gone Wild

Via boing-boing comes this amazing story of campus cops gone wild at the University of Florida. (Note that since UF is a public university, the cops are subject to the same constitutional constraints as other cops.):

Phil Sandifer, a grad student in English at Gainesville's University of Florida ... was harassed by campus cops for publishing fiction on his LiveJournal. The cops -- acting on a tip that appears to have originated from people displeased with Sandifer's Wikipedia editing style -- argued that because Sandifer's story depicted a murder, he should be fingerprinted and have his DNA taken in order to ensure that he wasn't responsible for any unsolved murders.

As I investigated this story, the campus cops stonewalled me, but used the fact that I was leaving messages for them to attempt to frighten Sandifer into allowing them to fingerprint and DNA-sample him, saying that a journalist was on the story and he'd better exonerate himself before the story broke. They went to Sandifer's (righteously angry and uncooperative) faculty advisors and, in front of them, leaned on Sandifer for his biometrics and threatened to retrieve his DNA from his garbage if he wouldn't concede to a DNA swab.

Mitchell J Silverman, an attorney in Hollywood, Florida, used the state's sunshine laws to get hold of the police reports on the event.

The report is remarkable for what it doesn't say: it is an apparent fabrication that contradicts the eyewitness reports of everyone I spoke to involved in this story.

Very Odd College Rankings

The Washington Monthly Magazine has produced an idiosyncratic list of rankings of undergraduate colleges. I haven't looked at the methodology, but the rankings for Florida are quite suspect from the point of view of a person trying to decide where to send their kids. That has nothing to do with law schools, but bear with me.

The University of Florida is ranked 37th. The Florida Institute of Technology is ranked 121st. FSU is 132nd. Nova is 157th. The University of South Florida is 158th. FIU is 169th. And UM is 170th.

I'm not offended by the idea that the undergraduate college at UF might beat UM on a value-for-money scale: especially if one is weighing the cost of in-state tuition, UF might well be a better deal for your educational dollar despite the gigantic class size and the location in Gainesville. And I'm sure that every college in the state has departments that shine. But overall I simply find it inconceivable that the college at UM, which has made such enormous strides in the past 10-20 years and which today boasts by far the strongest faculty in its history, could possibly be ranked so much lower than UF, not to mention behind those other schools.

OK, UM isn't quite at the rear of the state sweepstakes, as UCF got ranked at 193, and FAU at 240, but still.

Daily Show's Valentine to Florida

The Daily Show explores its love affair with Florida. Part One and Part Two (not decorous at all).

They love us. They really do.

They do love us, don't they?

A Chance to Help Raise the Quality of the Florida House

A correspondent writes,

I see in your blog from March of this year that you called attention to Florida House member Dennis Baxley's ridiculous idea to make sure students can "express their views" in the classroom. Unfortunately I live in his district. The good news is that he faces a challenger this year in November, a young democrat who is an Iraqi war veteran but now works at a women's domestic violence center. His name is James Walker. I am not associated with his campaign, but have been trying to help him and have given him the maximum $500 myself.

Are you interested in doing something about Baxley and legislators who propose crazy ideas like his? I suggest you round up your friends who have an interest in this issue and each give James Walker $50 for his campaign. The only way to temper people with crazy ideas like Baxley is to try to throw them out of office. This is an excellent chance to do so. Baxley has no business serving in our legislature.

Here is a link to James Walker's website:

P.S. Baxley's legislation relates directly to religion and his disbelief in the theory evolution. What he really wants is for students to be able to argue in favor of creationism, and against evolution, and not be penalized in any way (i.e. meaning graded down). Baxley is a far right wing religious conservative.

Florida Progressive Coalition Blog

Say hello to the new Florida Progressive Coalition Blog. Florida is the ultimate 50/50 state, so it's always nice to see progressive activists at work. Oh yes, they've got a Progressive Coalition Wiki too.

[Update: Read more about the plan behind the effort at Daily Kos.]

Because Those Poor Defenseless Gators Need Help

Flablog is on the case:

If giant pythons are outlawed only outlaws will have giant pythons.

The board of the South Florida Water Management District asked federal regulators this week to take a step toward banning imports of the Asian reptiles, which can grow as large as 26 feet and 200 pounds - and, if one one famous case is an indication, seem to have acquired a taste for gator.

Davis or Smith for FL Governor?

I confess that I have paid almost no attention to the Florida Governor race. Jeb is term limited and can't run. The GOP primary candidates are running right, although the latest poll shows Charlie Crist well ahead of Tom Gallagher.

But now I learn that the Democratic primary candidates, Rod Smith and Jim Davis, are tied in the latest poll.

I am among the undecided, mostly for lack of information. Comments as to what distinguishes the candidates -- both of whom seem to have been endorsed by pols I like -- would be welcomed. I sort of gather that Rod Smith is the more electable candidate, but thought Davis had a decent record as a Congressman. But I could be wrong...

Jeb Bush's Values

Fred Barnes says Jeb Bush is great. Here's a real-life example of what Jeb Bush means to real people: thanks to his choices, the state of Florida loses track of hundreds -- yes, hundreds -- of at-risk kids in the foster care system every year. That's right: rather than raise taxes, Jeb Bush chose -- even after the matter became a state scandal three years ago -- to run a system in which the state of Florida takes kids into care, then loses them, (often to biological parents, ruled unfit to keep them, who then kidnaped them). We don't know if they're dead. We don't know if they're on the streets. We don't know anything about where they are. All we know is that Jeb Bush doesn't care much about them -- couldn't be bothered to find competent people to run the system nor to fund it properly.

When the disappearance of a 5-year-old girl from her Miami foster home four years ago went unnoticed for months, the ensuing scandal that engulfed Florida's child-welfare agency led to recriminations and promises of beefed-up efforts to track down children who went missing from state care.

A few months later, Gov. Jeb Bush and his social-services chief declared ''success,'' saying the state had found all but 102 of about 400 foster children who had gone missing.

That was Dec. 17, 2002.

Yet as of Monday, the number of kids missing from the state's troubled child-welfare system has skyrocketed to 652, most of them runaway teens and youngsters snatched from foster care by their biological parents. The number of missing kids has risen even as the number of kids in state care has declined.

And here's the killer quote:

"People look for their pets with greater concern,'' said Howard Talenfeld, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who is president of Florida's Children First.

Weird Florida News

Bumper crop today.

• DNA ties UM prof to Genghis Khan. As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.
• Man arrested after trying to use potato as a silencer. Apparently, the folk story that a potato will silence a pistol shot is widespread.
• Lady who found a grilled cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary, then auctioned it off on e-bay for $28,000 (plus another $6,000 for the skillet!), has now had the sandwich's image tattooed onto her right breast.

Just another day in Florida.

Which is good, because I needed something to distract me from the latest US-troops-get-barbaric allegation: Iraqis claim troops framed victim.

Renting Out the Commanding Heights

I know the state of Florida has no shame, and I suppose that anyway this probably is no different from ads appearing on the sides of public buses but even so I was very surprised to have ads for satellite TV and satellite radio fall out of the envelope when I got my annual car registration renewal notice.

When the state sells off public functions we call it privatization. (When it sells or leases land we have unfortunately gotten used to calling it a 'rip off'.) When the state takes on formerly private functions we call it a vast number of things, depending on the circumstances and how we feel about it.

But when the state lends its good offices to put an advertisement into every home (or, who knows, just demographically selected homes?), do we just call it "advertising"? Surely there's a better word for this?

Meanwhile, Back in Tallahassee

The Florida legislature has been unusually busy this year, and by and large the results are pretty ugly.

The legislature passed, and Jeb Bush signed, a bill repealing the doctrine of joint and several liability in Florida. Henceforth, joint tortfeasors will no longer be required to contribute more than their percentage of the judge or jury's assessment of their share of the total fault. Deep pockets can rest easier. The value of patsies just increased. And victims (and taxpayers) will have to pay more when some members of a group of joint tortfeasors are judgment-proof.

Florida is infested with billboards. And south Florida is full of billboards blatantly erected in violation of local law...which for years wasn't enforced in exchange for bribes and/or campaign contributions. Eventually, the laws here got changed to 'grandfather' them in so that some streets I drive on, like Bird Road, are overrun with the things. The Florida legislature's reaction to this will, however, boggle your mind. It has just passed a bill that...protects billboards from the threat of being obstructed by trees.

Ladybird Johnson must be spinning in her grave. [UPDATE: As noted by an astute commentator, Ladybird Johnson is in fact living; according to the wikipedia "She has been protected by the Secret Service longer than anyone else in history."] This isn't just a failure to 'beautify' roads -- it's a public commitment to permanent uglification. If Jeb Bush signs this one, local governments will be forbidden from planting any trees where they might obstruct the public's view of those glorious billboards.

The bill requires that billboards be given a clear sight line of 500 feet on roads with speed limits above 35 mph and 350 feet where the speed limit is under 35 mph. If counties or cities plant trees within that zone, they have 90 days to remove them or face a court fight and fines.

And if existing trees near a billboard are knocked down in a hurricane or if they die, they cannot be replaced except by low-growing shrubs or flowers that do not block the sign.

Still on the legislative agenda: proposals to gut the class-size amendment, the voter-approved mandate to have small classes in schools. That amendment has been a perennial bone in the Republican throat since at some point you might actually have to appropriate money to build those classrooms and pay those teachers.

There has been a ray of good news: spurred by the public scandal of an on-camera murder of a child by guards at a Florida "boot camp" (and the furor over the ensuing attempt at a coverup, then a whitewash), the legislature has voted to "demilitarize" the boot camps to which youthful offenders can be sent. Instead of a regime where guards, who were essentially unregulated and unsupervised, could and did use as much violence as they wanted for minor infractions such as 'not looking respectful', the new statute "bans the use of stun guns, pepper spray, pressure points, mechanical restraints and psychological intimidation unless a child is a threat to himself or others." Yes, in Florida this really is enormous progress, so let's be grateful for it.

I Hope He's Exaggerating

Here's how one local anonymous lawyer-blogger sees the Jeb Bush administration's approach to state judicial appointments:

WANTED: ONE APPELLATE COURT JUDGE.

QUALIFICATIONS: MEMBER OF THE BAR. REPUBLICAN OR TO THE RIGHT OF REPUBLICAN. Cannot have practiced criminal defense law. Cannot have ever said anything nice about a criminal defense attorney or a defendant.

The ideal applicant will be a Judge who has never granted a motion to suppress, a JOA, or sentenced a Defendant to anything under the top of the guidelines. Having never granted a motion for a defense continuance is a plus.

Must work well with Judge Rothenberg and be willing to overlook, ignore, or explain away at least eight of the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

Legal research skills must be limited to the late 1700’s case law, as only those candidates that promise to apply only the original intent of the framers will be considered, especially in cases involving the internet, computers, telecommunications, or searches of automobiles.

Membership in organizations that espouse the belief that the United States Of America is a Christian Country, and that separation of church and state is an outmoded concept will receive a favorable and expedited review.

Democrats, people who read books other than the Bible, and defense attorneys need not apply.

Pay flexible based on experience.
Ask about our "per curiam affirmed" bonus program for criminal appeals!!!!

Animals Behaving Badly

The silly season is starting early this year, and there are lots of Florida animal stories in the news, notably Fla. Island Town Overrun With Iguanas (Boca Grande, far from here) and Florida's newest problem: Burmese Pythons (not far from here at all).

Florida's newest problem is roughly the circumference of a telephone pole. It has no toes. It snacks on rabbits. It's the Burmese python. And in South Florida, the problem is growing in number and in feet.

"Last year, we caught 95 pythons," said Skip Snow, a biologist with Florida Everglades National Park. That's not counting the 13-footer that exploded after trying to eat an alligator, or two others that got loose and ate a Siamese cat and a turkey.

Caption: The hind legs and tail of a two-metre alligator protude out of the body of a dead, four-metre python in Everglades National Park in Florida.

Pythons have also discovered suburbia, said Capt. Ernie Jillson, who helps run the Miami-Dade County fire department's snake squad. They catch around 20 pythons a year.

Sun-Sentinel Is Against The War

The Sun-Sentinel is a quality newspaper a bit north of here. It has a justly deserved reputation as being pretty conservative editorially, and even in some of its political coverage. (A long-time state political reporter just got reassigned for being too overtly Republican, showing both that there's a tilt, and that the place has some standards.)

So it's interesting that the Sun-Sentinel editorial page, which I gather has been a big cheerleader for the Iraq war, is now not only vehemently against the Iraq war, but trying to suggest it was always against it. That's right: the war is now so unpopular that former backers are obfuscating their prior support.

Incidentally, the paper's April 7 editorial is real strong stuff. Here's how it starts:

Three years, 19 days. And counting.

More than 2,300 Americans killed. More than 16,000 wounded, many of them maimed for life. And then there are the tens of thousands of Iraqi victims.

Almost $400 billion spent so far, followed by another $330 million every day.

These are the tangible costs of the Iraq war. There are other costs that are harder to measure precisely, but they are many and they are mounting. It can be strongly argued that they are largely the fault of a president who is stubborn, intractable, dogmatic, exclusionary and intellectually dishonest, and who appears reluctant to operate outside his inner circle.

New Florida Chief Justice is UM Graduate

Justice R. Fred Lewis, a graduate of the University of Miami School of Law, will be the 52nd Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court.

And students say their career options are limited?

GOP in Trouble in Florida

St. Petersburg Times Online -- The Buzz: For GOP, Perilous Polling:

Florida Republicans could be in deep trouble this cycle. Consider:

--When asked whether they'd prefer Republicans or Democrats to control Congress after November's elections, 48 percent said Democrats and 38 percent said Republicans. Only 20 percent of independents wanted Republicans in control.
--Not even Jeb Bush could beat Bill Nelson at this point. In a hypothetical matchup 48 percent supported Bill Nelson and 44 percent Bush. Back in November, the same pollster found Bush beating Nelson by 5 percentage points.

And -- yes! -- Harris stays in the race.

Uh-oh

Run, Jeb, Run! is exactly what I've been afraid of for weeks. And the more Cruella Harris craters, the more likely it gets.

Florida Cops Intimidate Would-be Complainants

Via Boing-boing, a link to this absolutely amazing piece of investigative reporting: Police Station Intimidation-Parts 1 and 2 in which "CBS4 News found that, in police departments across Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, large and small, it was virtually impossible to walk in the door, and walk out with a complaint form."

Given I am currently doing work on ID cards, I was particularly struck by this transcript of the reaction of the Sea Ranch Lakes PD in Broward County, not all that far north of here:

cop; We don't give you -- we don't give you a form. Where do you live?
tester: I don't want to say.
officer: You don't want to say?
tester: Where are you going?
officer: You want to play hardball? We'll play hardball. I want ID.
tester: For what?
officer: I'm asking you for ID right now, that's why. Here, hand it to me. Hand it to me.
tester: Are you kidding me? Here.
officer: I said, hand me your ID. What are you doing here? This is --
tester: I came to ask you how to file a complaint.
officer: This is very suspicious.
tester: Asking how to file a complaint is suspicious?
officer: Why don't you shut up?
officer: I say this is very suspicious, that you pull in here at this time of night --
tester: Eight o'clock?
officer: You're constantly butting in.
tester: I'm constantly butting in?
Mike: Sir, I would like to leave.
officer: I would love it, but he's got your driver's license, so you're just going to have to stay.
Mike: Sir, are you detaining us?
officer: Okay, could I give you a ticket right now for improper backing.
Mike: You can do whatever you want, I suppose.
officer: Okay, that means yes, I guess you're saying, right? ANd for backing up, correct, yes?
Mike: I was backing up, sir, because I was leaving.
officer: But because I'm a nice guy, okay, I'm going to give you a warning. Is that fair?
Mike: Yes, sir.
officer: Okay.

The TV station that broke the story reports that "Remarkably, of 38 different police stations tested around South Florida, all but three had no police complaint forms" yet it nonetheless felt obligated to introduce its report by saying that "Most police officers are a credit to the badge, serving the community and the people who pay their salary, getting criminals off the street, making the community safer for everyone." Guess none of those guys happen to work the front desk, eh?

And much of the report is also devoted to quoting Miami police chief John Timoney saying that stuff like this can't and shouldn't happen, if it did it would surely have consequences. Not one suggestion that maybe Timoney himself might be a poster child for intimidatory policing.) To be fair, though, Timoney's department, the City of Miami was one of the few south Florida jurisdictions that actually had complaint form on hand, and trilingual ones at that. Could be due to the high demand?

My Legislature at Work

The state of Florida faces a number of serious problems. For example, the state child welfare system is something worse than a total disaster. Not only does it lose track of kids who then vanish, leave kids in dangerous homes, and cut off health care for poor kids with no alternatives but the state also runs a series of 'boot camps' for 'young offenders' in which state employees are encouraged to beat up children. We don't know how many they have killed in the process, but we do know that the latest fatality happened to be captured on a video that sounds totally repulsive. Personally, I don't have the stomach to watch it. (The autopsy, by the way, appears to have been phonied up by a local ME with an expired medical license who also has a record of botching autopsies. He said the death, shortly after the beating, was due to 'natural causes'. Did I mention the victim was black?)

So what's the Florida legislature worrying about? Why, the state pie of course! Should it be pecan or key lime? The battle lines are drawn!

Florida Mandates Unsafe and Expensive Voting Machines

An impassioned op-ed in the Daytona Beach News-Journal pretty much summarizes the current state of play in Florida in the Jeb-Bush mandated voting machine fiasco.

I'm going to quote quite a lot of it, because this is an important issue.

Do you realize that the voting system the county will use in the 2006 elections has been proved to be completely vulnerable to manipulation and alteration of election results without detection?

Did you notice that the Republican Governor of Maryland just condemned the Diebold voting system that Volusia County is about to purchase, stating that the citizens of his state (who already vote exclusively on Diebold paperless touch-screen machines) have no confidence in the accuracy of their elections and that he, personally, has no faith in the Diebold voting machines?

Were you surprised to read that the cost to implement the Diebold system in Maryland increased from $37 million to $66 million? And that the annual maintenance costs for the Diebold touch-screens increased, as confirmed by Maryland's governor, by a startling 1,000 percent, from $858,000 to $9.5 million?

Do you know that our Supervisor of Elections has privately estimated an additional $1 million in costs to implement the Diebold voting system? And that she has acknowledged that the Diebold touch-screen machines do not meet the requirements of the Help America Vote Act (which is now in effect) and will have to be significantly upgraded at taxpayer expense prior to the first election in which it is used?

Are you aware that the Florida Division of Elections certified Diebold's paperless touch-screen voting systems in a slipshod, hasty, illegal process that violated state laws and regulations?

Do you know that the Division of Elections is arbitrarily withholding certification of the one voting system, the AutoMark, that would allow our county to retain verifiable elections? And that its reason for doing so is absurd?

Have you been informed that 29 states and the federal government have certified the AutoMark, but Florida refuses to do so?

Do you realize that an investor lawsuit has been filed against Diebold alleging that the company did not disclose known security vulnerabilities and accusing Diebold's top executives of reaping millions of dollars in personal profits through insider trading?

Have you followed the statements by Diebold's new chief executive officer that the company is considering selling off its troubled elections division?

Do you know that Diebold has confirmed, in a letter to the state of Pennsylvania, that the problematic "interpreted" code (the existence of which Diebold originally denied) does in fact exist as proven in the successful "hack" of Diebold 's voting system in Leon County? And that Diebold has confirmed that this code also exists in the touch-screens, making them vulnerable to hacking without detection and with no paper ballots to count?

Have you noticed that 25 states have passed legislation mandating an auditable paper trail, while Florida is heading the wrong way up a one-way street by mandating paperless touch-screen machines?

Have you heard that our Supervisor of Elections may use 100 percent paperless touch-screen voting machines at all early voting sites, essentially rendering our paper ballot system useless?

Do you care whether your vote counts and whether Volusia County voters can have confidence in their voting system?

If you do care, as I do, too bad for us. The Volusia County Council appears to have no choice but to approve the Diebold touch-screen purchase at its meeting Thursday (9:30 a.m., County Administration Building, 123 W. Indiana Ave., DeLand). Volusia County is the last county in Florida to hold out for verified voting, but the state has effectively defeated us through its bogus delay in certifying the AutoMark. Our time has run out. The state has won.

A Novel Approach to Gym Class

The story has a Miami dateline, but it actually happened in a rural part of Florida's panhandle -- an area that is culturally more Alabama than anything else. It seems that Ernest Ward Middle School gym teacher Terence Braxton is alleged to have let kids cut gym for $1/day,

Fla. Teacher Charged as Children Pay to Cut Gym: Braxton allowed kids to skip his class if they paid him $1 a day, according to charges filed by authorities in Escambia County, Fla. They say he may have racked up more than $1,000 over three months.

The 28-year-old teacher has been charged with six felony counts of bribery and turned himself in on Thursday at a Pensacola jail. He was released on his own recognizance.

...

"The basketball team had lost every game for five years," Principal Nancy Gindl-Perry said. "This year, we only lost two games, and they were only by two points. He had a very good rapport with the kids."

Suspicions about Braxton arose during a parent-teacher conference, when the teacher known as "Coach Braxton" and a student differed on attendance records.

"Coach said he'd missed four or five classes," Gindl-Perry recalled. "Well, the look on the child's face. Then the mother said, 'You told your dad and I you only missed one.'"

Jeb Bush's Florida

Florida's funding for its public schools ranks 49th out of 50 states. For the fourth-largest state in the union, that's nothing short of a national disgrace.

Florida Democrats Have A Certain Style

What he said:

South of the Suwannee:
Say what you will about the Florida Democratic Party, but you can't argue with the logo it is using for its annual party conference.

Further Proof that Jeb! is Smart -- and Dangerous

I've been saying for some time that if Jeb Bush is smart he'll want the VP nomination in 2008 -- not the Presidential nomination. The GOP presidential nomination in 2008 will be a poisoned chalice (unless the Dems do something suicidal like nominate Sen. Clinton, and maybe even then if voters see the Senator as a stalking horse for the ex-President). I figure that Jeb! (as he likes to be known) is too smart to want the role of sacrificial lamb. Plus if anyone would inherit all the tar of the current administration it's surely a relative. No, the nomination is for someone else.

But the Vice Presidential nomination is perfect: If the ticket wins, you are heir apparent. If the ticket loses you are not blamed, and are on the inside track for 2012. More importantly, by being the Veep nominee, Jeb! prevents any rival from having that pole position in 2012. It's a no-lose proposition.

And it looks like Jeb! gets it: In State: An interview with an upbeat governor he doesn't rule it out:

The only thing I have said is I'm not running for the United States Senate, I'm not running for president."

Pressed about whether he'd be as clear in ruling out a vice presidential run, the governor demurred: "That's a nuance. . . . I just told you what I said."

Just in Case You Were Thinking of Coming to Visit

Florida's "stand your ground" law, which lets people use guns or other deadly force to defend themselves in public places without first trying to escape, is now in force, and anti-gun campaigners are gearing up to warn tourists about it.

"Dangerous" says the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Pathetic," responds Gov. Jeb Bush to the mock scare campaign that is really designed to protest the law.

Full text of statute.
New York Times: Tourists to Florida Get a Warning as Greeting.

Jeb Bush Sinks to a New Low

Jeb Bush has called for an “investigation” into something unknowable in an attempt to rehabilitate his ultra-right-wing credentials. It can only mean he hopes to be the vice-presidential nominee in the next election. (I believe him and his father when they say he won't be the presidential candidate…this time.)

Schiavo's 1990 Injury to Be Investigated in Fla.:

Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, citing an alleged time gap between when her husband found her and when he called 911.

In a letter faxed to Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney Bernie McCabe, the governor said Schiavo testified in a 1992 medical malpractice trial that he found his wife collapsed at 5 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1990, and he said in a 2003 television interview that he found her about 4:30 a.m. He called 911 at 5:40 a.m.

“Between 40 and 70 minutes elapsed before the call was made, and I am aware of no explanation for the delay,” Bush wrote. “In light of this new information, I urge you to take a fresh look at this case without any preconceptions as to the outcome.”

On Wednesday, Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, has said his client did not wait to call for help and has conceded that he confuses dates and times. Felos has said that if Michael Schiavo had not called 911 immediately, Terri Schiavo would have died that day. “There is no hour gap or other gap to the point Michael heard Terri fall and called 911,” Felos said. He called this a “baseless claim to perpetuate a controversy that in fact doesn't exist.”

It's highly [likely] that this craven act will produce a result the base will be able to brag is “inconclusive” since there is no relevant evidence to be found now. The major effects will be to further torment Michael Schiavo — HASN'T HE SUFFERED ENOUGH? — and throw a sop to the red-meat crowd.

Experts agree: Jeb Bush is a ghoul.

FL SCT Hears Arguments on School Vouchers

Excellent roundup of the coverage by Mark Lane at FLablog.

Rep. Harris Wants to be a Senator

Can the GOP find a would-be Senate candidate who would be even worse if elected than the hapless Sen. Martinez? Oh yes it can: Harris to challenge Nelson for Senate seat.

Conservative Straight-Jacket for Universities Bill Dies in Tallahassee

The keep Florida stupid bill (also known as the “ensure the dominance of private universities” bill) is dead (for now).

Important Florida News on Page A2 of Washington Post

Here's the important national story with a Florida angle that made page A2 of the Washington Post the other day: Florida Cat Mum on Alleged Abduction:

Mr. Kibbles must have special powers.

His benefactors say the black cat completed a journey that many suburbanites couldn't tackle without a map, navigating 15 miles of sprawl from the Everglades to his home in Coconut Creek, Fla. But that's not the end of it. The big question now is whether Mr. Kibbles can tell his tale.

It looks as though a South Florida judge thinks so.

Broward Circuit Court Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren has ordered Mr. Kibbles not to contact a couple accused of cat-napping him. That's right. No kitty calls. No kitty e-mails. Nothing.

There's lots more.

Here, meanwhile, is the Miami Herald's version of the story, April 29th:

A Broward County judge ruled this morning that a Fort Lauderdale firefighter and his fiancée are to have no contact with their neighbors — or their neighbor's cat, Mr. Kibbles.

Circuit Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren made the order in a status hearing for Christopher Cortes, 32, and Iris Zukerman, 31, of Coconut Creek. They are charged with misdemeanor theft and animal cruelty.

Prosecutors claim the pair abducted Mr. Kibbles, a jet-black cat owned by Nancy Leonard, 47, who lives in Coconut Creek's Victoria Isles town house complex. A police report indicates that Cortes was angry about the cat's use of his new pickup truck as a litter box.

Cortes and Zukerman allegedly drove Mr. Kibbles about 15 miles west into the Everglades and dumped him there.

The cat found his way home about two weeks later.

The couple's attorney has said Cortes and Zukerman were trying to save the cat's life. They thought he was a stray and were afraid the neighborhood homeowners association would take him to be euthanized.

A jury will hear the case later this year. Lerner-Wren set another status hearing for 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 5.

A longer version appeared in the Broward edition on the 30th, and introduced the “Mr. Kibbles mum on gag order” aspect of the story..

Climate Change Follies

EnergyBulletin.net has a jolly little item about a little ice age about to erupt on England: Britain faces big chill as ocean current slows:

CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing.

They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream — the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea — has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength.

The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures.

...

Such a change could have a severe impact on Britain, which lies on the same latitude as Siberia and ought to be much colder. The Gulf Stream transports 27,000 times more heat to British shores than all the nation’s power supplies could provide, warming Britain by 5-8C.

Wadhams and his colleagues believe, however, that just such changes could be well under way. They predict that the slowing of the Gulf Stream is likely to be accompanied by other effects, such as the complete summer melting of the Arctic ice cap by as early as 2020 and almost certainly by 2080. This would spell disaster for Arctic wildlife such as the polar bear, which could face extinction.

The State of Man in Nature

Someone named David Scott Banghart has started a new blog called Seminole Heights in which he plans to blog about things relevant to his neighborhood in Tampa Florida, a place that sounds as if it's a transitional neighborhood. Here's how Mr. Banghart describes his community,

This is an interesting urban neighborhood, full of life and character. Many homes are bungalows that date from the 1920's, but all styles and can be found including the mini New Tampa style of the New Millenium homes. There is a strong diversity in race, culture, sexual orientation and political opinion. The three subneighborhoods (Old Seminole Heights, South Seminole Heights, and Southeast Seminole Heights) have very strong civic associations and the residents are known city wide for civic activism. Southeast Seminole Heights was named as 2003 National Neighborhood of the Year. This neighborhood is home to to community radio station WMNF 88.5, well known for its dedication to activism and progressive causes. City council member Kevin White resides here and council member Rose Ferlita works here. Several strong neighborhood watch groups exist, working closely with police in reducing crime.

At first glance, Seminole Heights looks like an exemplary neighborhood blog.

One post in particular caught my eye. In Stolen Bike Mr. Banghart tells a story about one of his neighbors that reminds you how much goodness and decency there is out there:

Recently my one of my neighbors came home after a day trip to find their children’s scooters and a bicycle missing from their porch. With the help of some neighbor children, 4 days later they were able to find the stolen items. Apparently two young children were with an older cousin. The cousin just walked on the porch took the bike and then gave the scooters to these two children. My neighbor found out where the two children lived and spoke to them and their mother. The children’s mother indicated she would take care of it. The items were supposedly all at the cousin’s house. The items were returned with most of the stickers, decals, and handler bar streamers removed, obviously done in an attempt to disguise to whom the items belonged to. My neighbors are good people who chose to deal with the issue in a positive manner, inviting the children to come and play at their house where the children could use the bike and scooters. Their hope is that they can develop a positive relationship with these children and be a good role model for them.

…

These neighbors are doing a good thing. They have a safe supervised child friendly house that has drawn out many of the neighboring children from the isolation of their houses to play with their own children, helping building a sense of community for those children and their families. My neighbors try to establish relationship with the parents just as their children establish relationships with the other children. They hold events such as Easter Egg hunts, Halloween parties and Christmas Parties open to these children and their parents. In a small but significant way they are also helping rebuild and revitalize this neighborhood.

I really have to wonder if I have that sort of goodness and fortitude to forgive someone who stole from my children, and then invite them into my house. I suppose a lot depends on just how young the kids are—if they kindergardeners it's one thing, but even fourth graders should know better…

Florida Felon Un-Disenfranchisement Might Make it to the Ballot

Ending ban on felon vote clears hurdle. I'll believe this when I see it. And I have some doubts that it would pass. But it is still really good news that a legislative committee has approved putting the question of amending the state Constitution to restore voting rights to felons onto the next ballot.

• Public-spiritedness has broken out in Tallahassee
• Florida Republicans think they can win black votes by taking up issues that the black community cares about
• The GOP has done focus groups, figures the issue is a loser if it gets to a state vote, and that Democrats will not only waste money and time supporting it, but can be tarred as the pro-crime party.

Florida's Academic Stupidity Bill

Brian Leiter has more about Florida's so-called 'Academic Bill of Rights'.

For my previous post on this nasty piece of proposed legislation see Be Socratic In Class — Get Sued.

Jeb Bush's 'Culture of Life' In Deadly Action

Jeb Bush is all for 'life'…as long as it doesn't get in the way of more tax cuts.

Agency probes group homes' deaths: A federally funded watchdog group is investigating the recent deaths of four disabled Floridians amid an aggressive campaign by the state to cut millions of dollars from programs that provide medical care for disabled people in community settings.

Two developmentally disabled adults who lived in group homes in Brandon, and two others under the care of The ARC in St. Lucie County, have died since October 2004, a month after the state required the operator of the two Brandon group homes to change the way residents received nursing care.

A woman at one Brandon home developed such a severe infection at the site of her feeding tube that she has been hospitalized in intensive care since Feb. 13.

Will we see Randall Terry demonstrating about this outside the statehouse? Somehow I rather doubt it.

Schiavo Case Almost Led to State Cop v. Local Cop Showdown

According to today's Miami Herald, Jeb Bush ordered state cops to grab Terri Schiavo at a point during the judicial proceedings at which, due to Florida's automatic stay law, such a move would arguably have been if not legal at least not in direct violation of a court order. The automatic stay law suspends a judge's order when the state appeals it. (Judge Greer reimposed his order within a few hours.)

Local cops apparently didn't get the word, or didn't want to go along with the sneaky move, and were prepared to stand off the state cops.

Participants in the high-stakes test of wills, who spoke with The Herald on the condition of anonymity, said they believed the standoff could ultimately have led to a constitutional crisis and a confrontation between dueling lawmen.

“There were two sets of law enforcement officers facing off, waiting for the other to blink,” said one official with knowledge of Thursday morning's activities.

In jest, one official said local police discussed “whether we had enough officers to hold off the National Guard.”

OK. We dodged that bullet. But kindly remind me how many microns separate us from banana republics with warring paramilitary forces.

Be Socratic In Class -- Get Sued

It wasn't enough to try to force FSU to open a chiropractic school. According to something called The Independent Florida Alligator, some Republicans in the Florida legislature now have found an even better way to undermine the state University system. It's called H-837 (aka S 2126) [full text below], and has this innocuous title,

An act relating to student and faculty academic freedom in postsecondary education; amending s. 1002.21, F.S.; providing student rights to academic freedom; creating s.1004.09, F.S.; providing a postsecondary student and faculty academic bill of rights; specifying student, faculty, and instructor rights; requiring the dissemination of copies of the act to state universities and community colleges; providing an effective date.

But in fact, as the Alligator summarizes the bill, it's quite remarkably stupid:

TALLAHASSEE — Republicans on the House Choice and Innovation Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to pass a bill that aims to stamp out “leftist totalitarianism” by “dictator professors” in the classrooms of Florida's universities.

The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, passed 8-to-2 despite strenuous objections from the only two Democrats on the committee.

The bill has two more committees to pass before it can be considered by the full House.

While promoting the bill Tuesday, Baxley said a university education should be more than “one biased view by the professor, who as a dictator controls the classroom,” as part of “a misuse of their platform to indoctrinate the next generation with their own views.”

The bill sets a statewide standard that students cannot be punished for professing beliefs with which their professors disagree. Professors would also be advised to teach alternative “serious academic theories” that may disagree with their personal views.

According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, the law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.

Students who believe their professor is singling them out for “public ridicule” — for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class — would also be given the right to sue.

…Professors might have to pay court costs — even if they win — from their own pockets.

The silver lining to this asinine proposal is that the University of Miami, which is a private school, won't be affected. Destroying the public law schools in the state would certainly leave UM as the undisputedly best law school in the state, instead of having to compete with UF and FSU …

Here's the text of the bill from FLSenate.gov:

Florida Senate - 2005 SB 2126
By Senator Wise
5-1187A-05 See HB
1 A bill to be entitled
2 An act relating to student and faculty academic
3 freedom in postsecondary education; amending s.
4 1002.21, F.S.; providing student rights to
5 academic freedom; creating s. 1004.09, F.S.;
6 providing a postsecondary student and faculty
7 academic bill of rights; specifying student,
8 faculty, and instructor rights; requiring the
9 dissemination of copies of the act to state
10 universities and community colleges; providing
11 an effective date.
12
13 WHEREAS, the principles enumerated in this act fully
14 apply only to public postsecondary institutions, and nothing
15 in this act shall be construed as interfering with the right
16 of a private postsecondary institution to restrict academic
17 freedom on the basis of creed or belief, and
18 WHEREAS, the central purposes of a postsecondary
19 institution are the pursuit of truth, the discovery of new
20 knowledge through scholarship and research, the study and
21 reasoned criticism of intellectual and cultural traditions,
22 the teaching and general development of students to help them
23 become creative individuals and productive citizens of a
24 pluralistic democracy, and the transmission of knowledge and
25 learning to society at large, and
26 WHEREAS, free inquiry and free speech within the
27 academic community are indispensable to the achievement of
28 these central purposes which reflect the values of pluralism,
29 diversity, opportunity, critical intelligence, openness, and
30 fairness that are the cornerstones of American society, and
31

Page 2
1 WHEREAS, the freedoms to teach and to learn depend upon
2 the creation of appropriate conditions and opportunities on
3 the campus as a whole as well as in the classrooms and lecture
4 halls, and
5 WHEREAS, academic freedom is indispensable to American
6 postsecondary education and, from its first formulation in the
7 General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure
8 of the American Association of University Professors, the
9 concept of academic freedom has been premised on the idea that
10 human knowledge is the pursuit of truth and that there is no
11 humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to
12 challenge, and
13 WHEREAS, academic freedom is most likely to thrive in
14 an environment that protects and fosters independence of
15 thought and speech and, in the words of the general report, it
16 is vital to protect as "the first condition of progress, [a]
17 complete and unlimited freedom to pursue inquiry and publish
18 its results," and
19 WHEREAS, because free inquiry and its fruits are
20 crucial to the democratic enterprise itself, academic freedom
21 is a national value as well, and
22 WHEREAS, in Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the
23 University of the State of New York, a historic 1967 decision,
24 the Supreme Court of the United States overturned a New York
25 State loyalty provision for teachers with the words, "Our
26 Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom,
27 [a] transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the
28 teachers concerned," and
29 WHEREAS, in Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957), the Supreme
30 Court of the United States observed that the "essentiality of
31


Page 3
1 freedom in the community of American universities [was] almost
2 self-evident," and
3 WHEREAS, academic freedom consists of protecting the
4 intellectual independence of professors, researchers, and
5 students in the pursuit of knowledge and the expression of
6 ideas from interference by legislators or authorities within
7 the institution itself, meaning that no political or
8 ideological orthodoxy should be imposed on professors and
9 researchers through the hiring, tenure, or termination process
10 or through any other administrative means by the academic
11 institution nor should legislators impose any such orthodoxy
12 through the control of postsecondary institution budgets, and
13 WHEREAS, from the first statement on academic freedom,
14 it has been recognized that intellectual independence means
15 the protection of students as well as faculty from the
16 imposition of any orthodoxy of a political or ideological
17 nature, and
18 WHEREAS, the General Report of the Committee on
19 Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of
20 University Professors admonished faculty to avoid "taking
21 unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating
22 him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had
23 an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the
24 matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge
25 and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive
26 opinion of his own," and
27 WHEREAS, in 1967, the American Association of
28 University Professors' Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms
29 of Students reinforced and amplified this injunction by
30 affirming the inseparability of "the freedom to teach and
31 freedom to learn" and, in the words of the joint statement,

Page 4
1 "Students should be free to take reasoned exception to the
2 data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve
3 judgment about matters of opinion," and
4 WHEREAS, the academic criteria of the scholarly
5 profession should include reasonable scholarly options within
6 the areas of discipline, and
7 WHEREAS, the value of the life of the mind was
8 articulated by Thomas Jefferson when he stated, "We are not
9 afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate
10 any error so long as reason is left free to combat it," and
11 WHEREAS, the education of the next generation of
12 leaders should contain rigorous and balanced exposure to
13 significant theories and thoughtful viewpoints, and students
14 should be given the knowledge and background that empowers
15 them to think for themselves, NOW, THEREFORE,
16
17 Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Florida:
18
19 Section 1. Subsection (7) is added to section 1002.21,
20 Florida Statutes, to read:
21 1002.21 Postsecondary student and parent rights.--
22 (7) STUDENT ACADEMIC FREEDOM.--As detailed in s.
23 1004.09, students have rights to a learning environment in
24 which they have access to a broad range of serious scholarly
25 opinion, to be graded without discrimination on the basis of
26 their political or religious beliefs, and to a
27 viewpoint-neutral distribution of student fee funds.
28 Section 2. Section 1004.09, Florida Statutes, is
29 created to read:
30 1004.09 Postsecondary student and faculty academic
31 bill of rights.--

Page5
1 (1) Students have a right to expect a learning
2 environment in which they will have access to a broad range of
3 serious scholarly opinion pertaining to the subjects they
4 study. In the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts,
5 the fostering of a plurality of serious scholarly
6 methodologies and perspectives should be a significant
7 institutional purpose.
8 (2) Students have a right to expect that they will be
9 graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and
10 appropriate knowledge of the subjects they study and that they
11 will not be discriminated against on the basis of their
12 political or religious beliefs.
13 (3) Students have a right to expect that their
14 academic freedom and the quality of their education will not
15 be infringed upon by instructors who persistently introduce
16 controversial matter into the classroom or coursework that has
17 no relation to the subject of study and serves no legitimate
18 pedagogical purpose.
19 (4) Students have a right to expect that freedom of
20 speech, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and
21 freedom of conscience of students and student organizations
22 will not be infringed upon by postsecondary administrators,
23 student government organizations, or institutional policies,
24 rules, or procedures.
25 (5) Students have a right to expect that their
26 academic institutions will distribute student fee funds on a
27 viewpoint-neutral basis and will maintain a posture of
28 neutrality with respect to substantive political and religious
29 disagreements, differences, and opinions.
30 (6) Faculty and instructors have a right to academic
31 freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects, but

Page6
1 they should make their students aware of serious scholarly
2 viewpoints other than their own and should encourage
3 intellectual honesty, civil debate, and critical analysis of
4 ideas in the pursuit of knowledge and truth.
5 (7) Faculty and instructors have a right to expect
6 that they will be hired, fired, promoted, and granted tenure
7 on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in
8 their fields of expertise and will not be hired, fired, denied
9 promotion, or denied tenure on the basis of their political or
10 religious beliefs.
11 (8) Faculty and instructors have a right to expect
12 that they will not be excluded from tenure, search, or hiring
13 committees on the basis of their political or religious
14 beliefs.
15 (9) Students, faculty, and instructors have a right to
16 be fully informed of their rights and their institution's
17 grievance procedures for violations of academic freedom by
18 means of notices prominently displayed in course catalogs and
19 student handbooks and on the institutional website.
20 Section 3. The Chancellor of Colleges and Universities
21 shall provide a copy of the provisions of this act to the
22 president of each state university. The Chancellor of
23 Community Colleges and Workforce Education shall provide a
24 copy of the provisions of this act to the president of each
25 community college.
26 Section 4. This act shall take effect July 1, 2005.

Schiavo. More Weirdness

Mark A. R. Kleiman: Running out of running room summarizes the last 18 or so hours of super-weirdness. One can only speculate where this is all going.

I gather that after the overwhelming loss before the 11th Circuit en banc, the Supreme Court filing hasn't actually reached the Court yet, but is expected Real Soon Now.

I can only say at this point that I hope Jeb Bush steps up to the plate and gets involved again in this one, since it's such a popular national issue, and popular in Florida too. And popular with Evangelicals. And I imagine this this mainline Christian's comments will have some resonance too.

Something Tells Me It's All Happening At the Zoo....

Florida is the new California,

Congress' historic — some would say ill-advised — action in the Terri Schiavo case this week symbolizes one of the most important but least appreciated new political trends of the last decade — the emergence of Florida as a national harbinger of political trends and issues.

Indeed, there was a time that if you wanted to get a peak at the political future, you only needed to take a look at California. From community college roll-outs and tax cut rebellions to immigration battles and environmental plans, the Golden State often established important political and policy trends that rippled across the nation.

But over the last 10 years, Florida has finally taken its place alongside California as one of the leading predictors of the political future. No longer a sleepy Southern state, retiree haven or rising Sunbelt state, Florida is now a certified, cutting edge trendsetter when it comes to national policy.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(via FlaBlog)

Schiavo Latest

Early this morning, Judge Whittemore denied Theresa Schiavo's parents' motion for a TRO. Here is Michael Schiavo's Brief in Opposition to the Motion for an Injunction. Earlier I linked to the Schiavo complaint.

Update: I've now read Judge Whitmore's careful opinion. My Schiavo predictions last night were right on target, except that the judge takes an even stronger stance: he pretty much finds all five counts to be without merit.

Update 2: If these medical facts are accurate, they paint a compelling picture.

Update 3 (3/23): Here's a contrary medical analysis of the above.

Schiavo in Federal District Court - Tentative Thoughts and Guesses

I am not a federal courts scholar, although I'm interested enough in related issues to at least keep an eye on the subject. Ditto for federalism. And I've had the advantage of following some pretty high-powered exchanges on various email lists devoted to constitutional law. So here are some partly-informed thoughts, first on the constitutionality of the Schiavo bill, Public Law No: 109-3 (full text below), and second on what the federal court is likely to do with the case. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may find some of my views surprising. (Note: Before reading further, you might wish to go visit the comprehensive factual account of the progress of the Schiavo case at Abstract Appeal.)

As I blogged on Sunday, my first somewhat knee-jerk reaction was that the Schiavo bill was incompatible with the Republican vision of strong federalism, a view that generally argues in principle (if so rarely in practice) for limited Congressional power over traditionally state domains of regulation, and which has enthusiastically greeted a set of Supreme Court decisions that restrict Congress's commerce clause power. I still think that's true. And it's a deserved shot, not a cheap one.

But so it's easy to point at others' hypocrisy, and only a little helpful at best. What about if the Schiavo Bill is held up to the view of federalism I hold? Does it pass muster? I think, at the end of the day, it does – although as I'll explain below I think, amazingly, the court will not actually need to address this question.

The first thing to understand is what the Schiavo Bill does and doesn't do. The bill as passed does not actually set rules of decision; it's purely jurisdictional: it creates a federal forum to hear claims of “the alleged violation of any right of Theresa Marie Schiavo under the Constitution or laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life.” The statute does not create any new rights at all other than access to federal court. (“Nothing in this Act shall be construed to create substantive rights not otherwise secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States or of the several States.”) And most importantly, the bill does not direct the court to reach any particular verdict.

The bill can be criticized for being overly particular, but in fact that's not a terribly powerful legal as opposed to political critique. As they told me in law school, “the Constitution doesn't have a 'Givings Clause'”; if the Congress wants to award me a private pension, it can do that, even if you deserve it more. (And it's not a bill of attainder because it doesn't on its face create a legal disability, although it does of course work some hardship on Mr. Michael Schiavo.)

The bill can be criticized for in effect reopening a concluded proceeding, and thus inviting the federal court to overturn a settled court judgment. I think this is the strongest claim against it doctrinally. But again, I'm not at all sure this works. In our dual court system we're accustomed to parallel and potentially contradictory outcomes. Indeed 18 USC § 1983, which makes it a federal issue to deny someone their constitutional rights 'under color of state law', positively invites them.

One might ask, and at first I surely did, where Congress gets the authority to create this jurisdiction, or where the federal courts get the authority to hear this case. But on reflection for someone like me who takes a relatively expansive view of the power of both Congress and the courts to enforce the Constitution, this doesn't actually seem so hard after all – the authority comes for the Constitution (and the 14th Amendment). And why shouldn't Congress act to empower federal courts to protect individual constitutional rights?

Interesting as all this is, I think at the end of the day very little of it matters. I say this, because I've had a look at the Schiavo complaint and it looks fairly lame. I think any judge faced with this case will take the obvious way out: assume the constitutionality of the Schiavo bill, and rule against the plaintiffs on the (de)merits of their complaint.

Here's why.

Under these circumstances, the two parties, as adversaries, present their evidence to the trial court. The trial court determines whether the evidence is sufficient to allow it to make the decision for the ward to discontinue life support. In this context, the trial court essentially serves as the ward's guardian. Although we do not rule out the occasional need for a guardian in this type of proceeding, a guardian ad litem would tend to duplicate the function of the judge, would add little of value to this process, and might cause the process to be influenced by hearsay or matters outside the record. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court's discretionary decision in this case to proceed without a guardian ad litem.

Count two is the same claim, but couched as a deprivation of a procedural due process right to life, liberty or property.

Count three claims a violation of a right to equal protection on the grounds that Florida's substituted judgment rules are unconstitutional.

Count four argues that since Ms. Schiavo is Catholic, removing her feeding tube “in a manner disapproved of by the highest ecclesiastical authority of her Catholic church imposes a substantial burden on Terri's free exercise of religion” in violation of the federal religious land use and institutionalized persons act. Yes, that's really what it says. Read paragraph 67 for yourself. Incidentally, RLUIPA is a statute primarily about “zoning and landmarking laws that substantially burden the religious exercise of churches or other religious assemblies or institutions absent the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest.”

Count five is like count four, except it alleges that “defendants” (none of whom are state actors other than the Florida judge) “have a constitutional duty” to “accommodate” Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs. And the order to remove the feeding tube “on its face” is “specifically targeting religion for special disabilities without a compelling state interest”. As the “special disabilities” here appears to be not treating what the Catholic church says Ms. Schiavo's caregivers should do as dispositive, I have to say that this count appears as unlikely as the fourth.

Of these counts, four and five seem at first glance to be quite lame. I'm not competent to say with any certainty, but I strongly suspect that count three is also a dead loser if only because if it were not the issue would have arisen by now. That leaves the fundamental argument in counts one and two – a claim of a giant defect in the state procedure.

Undoubtedly, the First/GOP strategy was to go to the feds, throw up a lot of dust, and hope that the district court would issue a stay, buying time for a year or three of federal appeals. After all, the easy way out for the federal district court would have seemed to be to keep everything in place for the pendency of the litigation.

But I don't think this complaint has what it takes to get the average district judge with an ordinary backbone to do that. The Schiavo case was heard in state court by Judge Greer, and I think the judges fraternity thinks he's handled a real hard case very well. I know from my clerkship with a federal district court judge that federal trial judges, who after all live in the same legal community as the state court judges, are often quite concerned to be and to seem respectful of their state court colleagues. Slapping on a stay without something that looks like a good argument on the merits would be slapping Judge Greer in the face for no reason. And I don't think most federal judges would be at all keen to do that. And in any attempt to sort out who gets to decide what – who has legal right to speak for Ms. Schiavo – the federal court will be bound by state law; indeed, given that this complaint argues only that the state court erred in (1) not having a guardian ad litem and (2) the ultimate merits, I'd think a federal court might find itself bound by state court decisions as to status

One final point: All bets are off in the Court of Appeal, though. They might well issue an emergency stay when the case reaches them. Even if my guess above about where this is going is correct, I couldn't hazard a guess without reading the trial court's opinion, and maybe not even then.

AN ACT

For the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. RELIEF OF THE PARENTS OF THERESA MARIE SCHIAVO.

The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida shall have jurisdiction to hear, determine, and render judgment on a suit or claim by or on behalf of Theresa Marie Schiavo for the alleged violation of any right of Theresa Marie Schiavo under the Constitution or laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life.

SEC. 2. PROCEDURE.

Any parent of Theresa Marie Schiavo shall have standing to bring a suit under this Act. The suit may be brought against any other person who was a party to State court proceedings relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain the life of Theresa Marie Schiavo, or who may act pursuant to a State court order authorizing or directing the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life. In such a suit, the District Court shall determine de novo any claim of a violation of any right of Theresa Marie Schiavo within the scope of this Act, notwithstanding any prior State court determination and regardless of whether such a claim has previously been raised, considered, or decided in State court proceedings. The District Court shall entertain and determine the suit without any delay or abstention in favor of State court proceedings, and regardless of whether remedies available in the State courts have been exhausted.

SEC. 3. RELIEF.

After a determination of the merits of a suit brought under this Act, the District Court shall issue such declaratory and injunctive relief as may be necessary to protect the rights of Theresa Marie Schiavo under the Constitution and laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life.

SEC. 4. TIME FOR FILING.

Notwithstanding any other time limitation, any suit or claim under this Act shall be timely if filed within 30 days after the date of enactment of this Act.

SEC. 5. NO CHANGE OF SUBSTANTIVE RIGHTS.

Nothing in this Act shall be construed to create substantive rights not otherwise secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States or of the several States.

SEC. 6. NO EFFECT ON ASSISTING SUICIDE.

Nothing in this Act shall be construed to confer additional jurisdiction on any court to consider any claim related—

(1) to assisting suicide, or

(2) a State law regarding assisting suicide.

SEC. 7. NO PRECEDENT FOR FUTURE LEGISLATION.

Nothing in this Act shall constitute a precedent with respect to future legislation, including the provision of private relief bills.

SEC. 8. NO AFFECT ON THE PATIENT SELF-DETERMINATION ACT OF 1990.

Nothing in this Act shall affect the rights of any person under the Patient Self-Determination Act of 1990.

SEC. 9. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS.

It is the Sense of Congress that the 109th Congress should consider policies regarding the status and legal rights of incapacitated individuals who are incapable of making decisions concerning the provision, withholding, or withdrawal of foods, fluid, or medical care.

I Am NOT Making This Up

The Florida legislature is in session. And the state is not flush with revenue.

Here's one of the ideas on how to solve that problem that's emerged: A Tax on Toilet Paper. The money would be used to upgrade sewer systems.

The jokes alone will kill it, however…

Update: Some seriously bad bills listed at Flablog.

Something Went 'Boom' Near Tampa

Florida Sonic/Seismic Event via Cryptome:

Last night the USGS recorded an earthquake of unknown magnitude centered 2 km south of Tampa FL. The FAA was reported as saying this was a sonic boom cased by two F-18 fighter jets approaching MacDill AFB in Tampa. Anyone who has heard a sonic boom before (and living in Florida, we hear quite a few of them between the space shuttle landings and various military bases) will tell you what happened last night was much more than that.

At 7:41 pm EST, my 3-year old son and I were sitting on the couch when our sliding glass doors started to rattle. 10 seconds later the floor started vibrating, enough to send my son into a panic and inquire what was happening. Having been in earthquakes before, I assumed that's what it was. The entire event lasted about 30 seconds, and was felt in several surrounding counties. A sonic boom, no matter what creates it, is never more than a few seconds. I do not recall hearing the classic “thud” that accompanies the subsonic vibration, but I may have missed it…but the vibration lasted a good 25-30 seconds, and was severe enough to register on local seismic monitoring stations. You can varify the event at earthquake.usgs.gov.

Seeing as how the Air Force alerted the FAA with an explanation, you can probably deduce that this was some sort of military test and the F-18 sonic boom was the cover story. The event was reported in at least 8 surrounding counties, which is an area of a few hundred miles. Sonic booms are never heard or felt over an area that large, even when the space shuttle returns from orbit. Whatever it was, the military isn't giving us the full story, and as usual, the media is doing very little to find out what the real facts are. The Air Force spokesman was quoted as saying the jets would be departing either today or Sunday for the return trip, indicating we may have another “sonic boom”.

Bunker-buster anyone?

UPDATE: Actually, I my memory let me down on this one The bomb I was thinking of wasn't the nuclear bunker-buster, which admittedly is deployed out of Florida, but couldn't possibly have had such a small impact. The bomb I was trying to recall the name of is the “21,700-pound satellite-guided GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB” also known as the 'Mother of All Bombs'. That's the one that got test-dropped on Florida in Nov, 2003.

Sorry to Ruin the Joke, But...

A chain of links led me to this funny site called Dumb Laws, where I found a number of really silly-sounding rules including the claim that in Florida,

If an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fee has to be paid just as it would for a vehicle.

Well, I'm as willing to believe in the idiocy of the Florida Legislature as the next guy, but it made me a little suspicious that there was no citation to the source of this rule. Party-pooper that I am, I popped over to the Florida Statutes Annotated on Westlaw and searched for the words “elephant” and “elephants”. Not found.

Could it be the the “dumb” here is believing these are actual dumb laws?

(Hope these guys have done their research…)

Bigots on the March

Green Cove Springs Florida (population 5,547) is just south of Jacksonville. It's a looong way from here, but it's not in the very northwest part of Florida, the western panhandle, which is culturally Alabama. So I would have expected just a little more enlightenment than it apparently has.

Green Cove enjoys a school administrator who won't allow a woman to appear in a school yearbook in a tuxedo. Because she's gay.

Rule are rules. Especially when made up on the spot (there are no written dress code rules in Green Cove regarding year book pictures).

Other top stories today in the Green Cove news:

• Police Nab Jacksonville Beach Man in Sex Sting
• Deputies: Clay County affordable housing official stole $40,000
• Two Indicted in Slaying of Grandmother
• One Charged, Brother Wanted For Putnam Attempted Murder

Amazon.com #1 bestseller for Green Cove this week

• A National Party No More by Zell Miller

Well, if Zell Miller, king of the hate-fest, is their kind of guy, it all starts to make sense….

Tallahassee Voter Power Grab DOA?

Flablog suggests that Jeb!'s attempt to get the power to control voter lists (see yesterday's item) may be DOA in the legislature, and provides quotes and links to prove it.

That would be nice.

Do NOT Trust These People With the Power to Disenfranchise Voters

Governor wants to tighten state's grip on election laws

In a move that would dramatically increase state control of elections, Gov. Jeb Bush and the state elections office will ask the Legislature for greater authority, including the ability to decide which voters should be purged from voting rolls.

The secretary of state, who is appointed by the governor, also would be given strong enforcement powers, including the authority to seek criminal charges and fines up to $5,000 against any of the state's 67 election supervisors — most of whom are elected — who fail to follow the rules.

My G*d, does no one have a memory? Remember how these guys — the Secretary of State and the Governor — used the authority they already have to secretly purge likely Democratic voters from the rolls?

And then they manipulated the 2000 recount, too. And lied about it.

Following the contentious 2000 recount, e-mails on former Sec. of State Katherine Harris’ computer revealed that she had been in contact with Jeb Bush during the recount, contrary to both their claims. Miami Herald reporter Meg Laughlin discovered that e-mail messages sent to Jeb Bush from Harris had been deleted after the recount. Harris then had the operating system of her computer changed, a procedure that erased all its data. Following the contentious 2000 recount, e-mails on former Sec. of State Katherine Harris’ computer revealed that she had been in contact with Jeb Bush during the recount, contrary to both their claims. Miami Herald reporter Meg Laughlin discovered that e-mail messages sent to Jeb Bush from Harris had been deleted after the recount. Harris then had the operating system of her computer changed, a procedure that erased all its data. “What was odd about what she did,” said Mark Seibel, an editor at the Herald, “was that they installed an old operating system—not a new one—which makes you wonder why they did it.”

Gotta give them points for bare-faced cheek, I suppose.

More Anti-Democratic and Anti-Labor GOP Activities in Florida

From the Labor Blog:

Last fall, Florida voters overwhelmingly (72%) approved a constitutional amendment increasing the minimum wage by a buck and mandating that any employers breaking the law pay double damages plus legal fees when they violate the law.

Now the Florida GOP state House leaders want to let violators of the law escape those double damages if they give the money back within 15 days of being notified by employees of the intent to sue.

The Florida Republican leaders claim this provision fits within the intent of the Amendment. Since I drafted the damn thing, I think I can say with some authority that their bill completely violates the constitutional amendment. Read the amendment for yourself, but the basic problem with this 15-day notice is the same as the Wal-Mart deal: Employers will have every incentive to violate the law recklessly. Even if they are caught underpaying a few employees, they can simply pay back the wages owed with no fine, while pocketing the profit from underpaying the many workers who will inevitably never challenge the employer’s illegal activity.

But then that's the point of these “notice” provisions— to gut minimum wage laws and discourage enforcement. These rightwing politicians hate working class people and support corporate criminality. They are soft on crime when the criminals wear a nice three-piece suit.

Both this and Jeb's campaign against the class-size amendment are part of a more basic political dynamic. Florida is your classic 50/50 state. But our state legislative districts have been carefully gerrymandered to produce large GOP majorities in both houses, delegates who are as a group to the right of the median voter, who is in fact quite middle-of-the-road. As a result, the only way to get progressive legislation passed, even when the public supports it, is by pleblicite. Yes, this on occasion produces an absurd result (but so do legislatures). It nevertheless remains the only way in which anything that doesn't fit the GOP agenda can get passed — even when voters want it. And when that does happen, the GOP swings into action to sabotage it and repeal it.

But that takes work, and can even create a tiny bit of bad press. Which is why the Florida GOP wants to greatly reduce the public's ability to pass constitutional amendments.

Democracy in action is not always pretty. But it is better than the alternatives. I would trade the ease-of-amendment by pleblicite for a legislature that ran in districts which were drawn in a fair and non-partisan manner. But so long as we remain one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation, we need the citizen initiative option.

As regards the minimum wage, there are legal and moral issues here. Our legislators swear to uphold the state constitution. Currently, that includes the follwoing clause regarding the enforcement of the right to the state minimum wage:

Enforcement. Persons aggrieved by a violation of this amendment may bring a civil action in a court of competent jurisdiction against an Employer or person violating this amendment and, upon prevailing, shall recover the full amount of any back wages unlawfully withheld plus the same amount as liquidated damages, and shall be awarded reasonable attorney's fees and costs. In addition, they shall be entitled to such legal or equitable relief as may be appropriate to remedy the violation including, without limitation, reinstatement in employment and/or injunctive relief.

Allowing employers who fail to make their payments a chance to escape this clause, which seems to pretty clearly create a right to sue and a right to double wages as damages, strikes me as not living up to that oath. (I also expect that a court would find it violates the Florida Constitution.)

Jeb Bush: Devious in Plain Sight

Mark Lane at Flablog notes Gov. Jeb Bush's fourth iteration of his 'devious plan' to gut the clearly expressed will of the Florida electorate. We voted for smaller class sizes, but Jeb, like all Bushes, thinks that the way to power is to always cut, never raise, taxes and to hell with education.

See Devious Plan Ver. 4.0 for a summary and links to the lurid details.

Note that so far, none of Jeb's plans have worked. Voters want the smaller classes. They'd even pay for it.

He just doesn't get it.

FSU To Open Chiropractic School (Probably)

It's not a science; in fact it's more like a cult or a religion. But it is covered by my health insurance. And FSU up in Tallahassee may soon have an entire school devoted to it, now that our esteemed state legislature has voted funds for an FSU Chiropractic College.

Needless to say, the FSU faculty are not happy to find the legislature giving them this surprise gift. Several of the biggest names on campus have threatened to resign. It's all a glorious political mess, and there's even a special-purpose blog to tell us all about it: FSUblius.

Democrats Got Creamed in the Florida Rural Vote

Surprising Florida Presidential Election Results: I'm not one who follows the Florida county votes, but if I read this right, this chart seems to say that the GOP get-out-the-vote operation worked well statewide. In urban counties they tended to get more new voters than the Democrats; in rural areas they either got Democrats to switch or Democrats stayed home.

Florida Ground Game

The local Kerry-Edwards office is full of energetic retired people during the weekday; more young folks on the weekend. Seems this is part of a widespread Florida trend: John Kerry's Senior Brigade.

Further Evidence that Jeb Bush is Smart AND Dangerous

Today's news brings yet more evidence of how smart, and how dangerous, Jeb Bush is. (As distinguished from G.W. who is just dangerous in a ham-handed way.) One part is the coverup of his involvement in Florida felon's list fiasco; the other part is his very smart announcement today that he won't run for President in 2008.

Jeb's brilliance is evident from his disclaiming any Presidential ambition for 2008. This will make his heavy-handed influence in the Florida polls seem a tiny bit less self-interested.

More importantly, though, this disclaimer reflects a shrewd calculation that Jeb would be unelectable in 2008. After all, there are only two possibilities: Either GW is re-elected or Kerry wins. If Kerry wins, odds are he governs as Clinton II and gets re-elected; any Republican nominated against him, especially a Bush, would lose. On the other hand, if GW gets re-elected, the dollar tanks, Iraq remains a quagmire possibly even requiring a draft, social security privatization either goes the way of Hillarycare or tears the country apart, and at the end of it all (barring death in office) Jeb would be even less electable in 2008 then he would be if he were running against Kerry. So better to disclaim now and take the credit. Smart. Very, very smart.

Read on the for the latest about the Florida felons list, the dangerous part.

Sunday's papers trumpeted that Jeb Bush was personally warned about the defects in the Florida felons list, but insisted it be used anyway. This list, you may recall, is the one that blocked many black voters who were not felons but somehow failed to block Hispanics even if they were…a fact that dovetailed conveniently with the Democratic voting patterns of black voters and the traditionally (if now “attenuated”:) Republican sympathies of Florida's Hispanics. The email “smoking gun” fingering Jeb is contemporary hearsay — according to the Tampa Tribune, that email reports on a conversation with Bush that the e-mail's author wasn't involved in but had no reason to lie about:

The e-mail describing Bush's decision to push forward with the purge was written by Jeff Long, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement manager who was responsible for providing the felon data used by election officials to create the purge list.

Long was writing to his boss on May 4 to relay information he had received earlier that day from Paul Craft, the Department of State's top computer expert in charge of creating the purge list.

According to Long's e-mail, Craft said that state department officials had asked Bush on May 3 to scrap the list because there were problems with the matching program that would be used to determine which registered voters had been convicted of felonies. Florida law prevents felons from voting.

It may be hearsay, but it's a contemporary record, and I would tend to believe it. Many things not good enough for court are good enough to suggest otherwise plausible political conclusions.

Jeb Bush knows, however, either that the email's account is incorrect, or else he has the confidence that if the truth hasn't come out before, the people involved are going to keep quiet. So he's denying everything.

(Unfair to tag Jeb with hearsay? Even if Jeb Bush wasn't personally involved in the voting list fiasco, he appointed the people who were, and they surely knew what he'd like. And they clearly didn't think Jeb wanted a fair-minded attempt to allow everyone to vote who had the right to do so.)

Will My Vote Count?

I live in the ur-swing state. I'd like my vote to count. I'll be voting on an electronic voting machine with no paper trail. I don't trust it. Not at all. (Here's one more reason I don't trust the machines in use in my precinct.)

The most amazing thing about this to me as a person clinging to an increasingly sorely tested belief in the rule of law, is that the plain, plain, plain meaning of the relevant florida statute says that a machine with no backup records is illegal. Florida law demands the ability to do recounts in close elections. This theory is about to be tested in court — at last.

Here's part of the Herald's story.

Florida's election system, ridiculed and maligned during the 2000 presidential election and then rebuilt with new technology, was thrown into chaos again Monday with five weeks to go before Election Day.

A federal appeals court in Atlanta reversed a lower-court judge and ordered him to hear a lawsuit that demands voters be given paper receipts when they use touch-screen voting machines so there is a paper trail in a close election.

The court's decision is vindication for U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, the Palm Beach County Democrat who filed the lawsuit, and a potential nightmare for election officials in the 15 counties that use the ATM-style equipment, including Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.

It also throws an unwelcome light once again on Florida, which was assailed Monday by former President Jimmy Carter, who said a repetition of problems from 2000 “seems likely in Florida.''

Regardless of whether Wexler wins his lawsuit in court, state officials said Monday that they will now draw up an emergency rule requiring touch-screen counties to do manual recounts in close elections — a startling turnaround, because the state fought for months to bar such recounts.

(emphasis added) Problem: how do you do a manual recount where there's no record???

Critics of touch-screen technology are alarmed that there may be no way to know if a machine malfunctioned during a close election.

State law requires recounts when elections are decided by a razor-thin margin. If the difference in vote totals between candidates after the first automatic recount is less than one-quarter of 1 percent, election officials are required to do a manual, or hand, recount of all overvotes and undervotes. Overvotes are votes for more than one candidate in a race; undervotes are no votes at all in a particular race.

But the state elections division has argued that manual recounts aren't needed for touch-screen machines because they are incapable of recording overvotes. State officials even issued a rule prohibiting counties from doing manual recounts — a rule the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups successfully challenged in court last month.

The law suit raises that issue, but I can't imagine how some new rule relying on this technology can address it.

A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood called the ruling ''procedural'' but acknowledged that the state now plans a new rule in time for the Nov. 2 elections spelling out how to do manual recounts in touch-screen counties. How recounts would be done hasn't been decided, spokeswoman Jenny Nash said.

She said state officials were interested in doing what “we feel will best serve Florida. We are concerned with finality and not continued litigation.''

But the state's solution does not at this time include paper receipts, because Florida hasn't certified any printers that can legally be used with touch-screen machines.

And I predict there is no way it can in time for the election. Unless they scrap the machines, which is pretty unlikely.

Yet More on Hurricanes and Divine Providence

Looks like I'm not the only one having fun with this. Jim Defede is the Miami Herald's best local muckraker, but he took a break from that to induldge in some speculation today:

The juice is loose — and it's windorific: Lately, I've begun to wonder if there were some sort of biblical implications to the recent storms. Red wine and reading Revelations by flashlight during a hurricane will have that effect on you.

“And the fifth angel sounded and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace …''

When I read that section I recalled those fires on the western edge of the county two months ago and how the smoke billowed across the whole county.

“And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth …''

Come on people — mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus?

And now four hurricanes.

“… Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed … ''

REPENT — NOW!

Hello! Don't most hurricanes come out of Africa? And isn't that where the Euphrates is located?

OK, let's be clear. I'm not saying that Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne are some version of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but I'm not saying they aren't, either.

For a while I seriously considering slaughtering a lamb and smearing its blood over my doorway. But then I realized I was confusing my Old Testament with my New Testament.

Besides, where can you get a live lamb on short notice in this town? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure if I had the right connections I could score a really good sacrificial lamb easier than you can Dolphins tickets.

More on Hurricanes and Divine Providence

The demonstrably silly post I made the other day Hey Florida, Have You Got the Hint Yet? got linked to by Atrios and many other blogs. So it got more than seventeen thousand visitors in a couple of days, very very few of whom then went on to look around the rest of the blog. A few clearly thought I was in earnest.

So, for the record, just because Jeanne did a dispsy doodle and is now heading straight for Palm Beach does not mean anything about Fate, Warnings, Butterfly Ballots, or who should be President.

Unless, of course, the fear that this just might be a Sign would make you more likely to vote for Kerry in order to begin to undo the consequences of the ballot mess in Palm Beach four years ago. In which case, yes, it's a Sign, and we can expect continual disaster until we all get the message. Notice how the predicted track hugs the East Coast right up to Washington, DC? But like Pharoah before him, the current ruler will not heed the warnings…the people must repent before it's too late…

Actually, come to think of it, we can expect disaster until this lot is out of Washington. Trouble is, the disasters are man-made.

Hey Florida, Have You Got the Hint Yet?

Apparently, if you take a map of how Florida's counties voted in 2000 (red for Bush, blue for Gore) and overlay a map of the track of the hurricanes that have been beating up Florida this year … you get something amazing. I haven't checked it myself, and I don't actually believe that divine providence directs the weather.

But.

(Click for a full-size version.)

Update: More on Hurricanes and Divine Providence

Hot News about Florida Ballot

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that Nader should be on the ballot. Its decision basically ignores the factual findings by the trial court — findings that I thought were dispositive — on the theory that the statute at issue is vague as to what constitutes a “national party” and in particular failed to give potential candidates the guidance they were entitled to as to their ballot entitlement.

In light of this vagueness, and Florida's strong policy in favor of ballot access, the court said it was unwilling to conclude that the legislative intent was to have candidates like him thrown him off the ballot. This is a plausible argument, but I don't think it imposes the excessive legislative clear statement requirement that the court found. Even if it's not exactly clear where the line is, there are some things that clearly don't qualify as a “national party” and today's Reform Party is I think one them. But what I think doesn't matter, and that's that.

So far I've only had time to watch 3/4 of the oral argument from this morning. The bench was sharp. Barbara Pariente is not a quiet Chief Justice, but she’s the kind of judge I’d like to appear before because she tells you straight out what she is interested in hearing about.

In contrast, my sense was that the advocacy was very uneven at best.

IMHO, Sukhia, the big-time GOP lawyer representing Nader didn’t do too well – he dodged and weaved, trying to avoid the two questions the court clearly wanted to address: 1. What the statute should be understood to mean; 2. what rule he proposed and what would prevent it from opening the floodgates to every ‘party’ that could claim to be operating in two states. When he was done I had no idea how his rule would work, except that his proposal amounted to “full discretion to the Secretary of State” – and that was a rule that the Court seemed disinclined to accept.

George Merros, Jr., for the Fl. Secretary of State, did much better. He proposed a standard and tied it to statutory language. That left the problem of legislative intent. But he handled it well.

In the part of his argument that I heard, Larry Tribe, was asked to construe the statute, but did a poor job, offering a reading that defined “national party holding a national convention” [edit: in a way that he made clear had no hope of being accepted by the court; suitable for a seminar, inexecusable for time-limited argument]. He did fine on hard questions, but muffed the central easy one.

FLorida - Taking It From Every Side

Take a look at this picture in which it looks as though Tropical Storm Jeanne, which was going to miss Florida may instead take a sharp left and attack the state from the one direction we haven't been hit yet.

It does seem consistent with the idea that Someone is either warning or punishing Florida, doesn't it?

Why Betty Castor is Going to Win in Florida

I used to do a lot of retail politics. One of my very unscientific tests for how a campaign is doing is how they handle phone calls: Campaigns that don’t answer before the third ring will lose. Campaigns that don’t give great phone will lose. Alas, the reverse is not inevitably true—quick pickup and great phone alone are not enough to ensure a win, especially if no one ever calls.

But let me tell you, I’ve never seen or heard such great phone as I just got from calling Betty Castor’s HQ. (Castor is the Democratic nominee for Senate, running against the unscrupulous hate-peddling Mel Martinez.) Earlier today I tried to make a donation on the web page, and got an ‘internal server error’ so I called up the campaign HQ (I got the number from Google's cache of the front page) to tell them about it. The phone was answered just as the second ring began. I told the perky lady on the phone why I was calling, and she gave me her name (Rebecca), thanked me for reporting it, said she’d look into it, and then added that meanwhile she could take credit cards over the phone. So I made my not particularly munificent donation (we are rebuilding our house, there are many good causes, cash flow isn’t all it could be), only to be thanked as if I just pledged several thousand dollars. Another couple of minutes of pleasant chit-chat, and I was dispatched.

Impressive.

PS. My email to tech support also got a quick emailed reply saying that they were investigating.

Nader Case Goes Beyond Weird

[UPDATE @ 9pm: Abstract Appeal reports that the Florida Supreme Court reversed the trial court's reinstatement of its stay, thus reinstating the automatic stay supplanted by Judge Davey….but added its own order stopping everything — no mailing of ballots until it rules. And it set oral argument for Friday 8am, “cognizant of the September 18, 2004, deadline for mailing overseas ballots.” Which seems fair enough.]

My head is spinning.

The Florida trial court reinstated its stay. Shortly afterwards, the Florida Court of Appeals had its hearing. The Florida Secretary of State asked the Supreme Court to reinstitute the say.

Meanwhile — hold on to your hat — the “Reform Party” (ie the GOP) counterclaimed in the trial court, arguing the Democrats should be thrown off the ballot because their slate (filed in a timely manner unlike the Republican one) was not, they say, notarized like it should have been.

I hope the Democrats who didn't want to challenge the GOP's late filing are feeling suitably chasened. (Imagine a world in which neither party was on the ballot…that would be even weirder.)

Go to Abstract Appeal for more….I have to go collect my kids from school.

Nader Ballot Case -- Justice at High Speed

Abstract Appeal remains the best place to go to get your Nader Florida ballot case information. The latest updates as of this second report on the abortive attempt by the so-called Reform Party to remove the case to federal court. That attempt died faster than you can say “nofederalquestionandwaiver.”

Today is the hearing in the Flordia state court of appeal. The Florida Supreme Court seems to have put up a web page with a full set of .pdf's of Briefs & Other Documents in Case No. 04-1755. I wish I had time to read them.

Nader Florida Ballot Case Update

Amazingly, the Miami Herald doesn't think it merits the front page, but it has an article about Jeb & Co. putting Nader back on the ballot (registration required). The article doesn't add much to the Reuters story.

As the Herald tells it, the state's ruling applies to all ballots not just the foreign absentees, at least in theory, but everyone understands that the courts will have time to rule before it has practical application outside the foreign absentees.

The Herald does not give a definitive answer on the critical timing question: whether a ruling was needed NOW to get the foreign absentees printed in time. The article does quote Miami-Dade election officials as saying the next court hearing would have given them enough time, but also Glenda Hood's claim that other counties have more ballots to print:

A spokesman for Miami-Dade County Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan said her department is under no time crunch to print the ballots, but Hood said that's not the case in counties with large numbers of military voters who are overseas.

And [Jeb] Bush said that if the court's ruling is ultimately upheld, it's easier for the state to remove Nader's name from the general election ballot, even if it's included on the overseas ballots that federal law requires be postmarked by Saturday.

One thing was certain Monday: Florida's highest court will enter the fray. The Supreme Court said in an order Monday night that the case involves “matters of great public importance.”

The Florida Court of Appeals is set to have a hearing tomorrow. The Florida Supreme Court has not yet set a hearing date. [UPDATE: But it has set an accelerated briefing schedule, see Abstract Appeal for all the juicy details.]

My initial gut feeling is that this action will backfire: courts don't like to have their jurisdiction challenged, so this is like poking a stick in the eye of the Florida Supreme Court.

But here's an alternate hypothesis, one whose plausibility turns on Jeb Bush/Karl Rove being even smarter than I think they probably are: Nader has hired Ken Sukhia, a smart GOP lawyer to represent him. Suppose Sukhia concluded that Nader's case is doomed in the Florida courts as the law and the facts are against him. Could the strategy be to try to goad the Florida courts into some rushed and intemperate ruling which can then be appealed to the friendly US Supreme Court, with the suggestion that those nuts in Florida are at it again? (In fact we have a pretty high-quaility state Supreme Court.)

And How Do I Teach My Students About 'The Rule of Law'

Jeb Bush and his minions just announced they will act preemptively to put Nader on the Florida ballot because hurricane Ivan might make it impossible for an appellate court to hear their appeal against a lower court order forbidding it. Note that currently the odds of the hurricane actually striking where the relevant courts sit is actually very low.

How am I supposed to teach a class about the Rule of Law in the face of this? Bush v. Gore already made me decide it would be a long time before I taught Constitutional law again, but am I to be reduced to teaching Law and Film, where at least everyone agrees the representations are fictions?

[Revised Update: This account at Jurist suggests the ruling may only apply to overseas absentee ballots, not all ballots. Since those have to be mailed by this weekend, and presumably cannot be printed instantaneously, the state may have at least an arguable case for its actions since the injunction against it was stayed by the appeal.

Although Reuters's account of the decision buries this fact, having now re-read it, I think that's all that is going on. The questions, then, are (1) how long it actually takes to print the ballots, (2) whether the state informed the courts of the practical deadline, (3) how quickly the Florida courts can act and (4) whether the State's case has a leg to stand on — for if it doesn't then this action is still pretty rank. My sense of the trial court action was that the challengers had a very strong case under Florida law that Nader did not meet the legal requirement to be on the ballot because his party nomination was a sham.]

Politics News Article | Reuters.com

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader's name can appear on Florida ballots for the election, despite a court order to the contrary, Florida's elections chief told officials on Monday in a move that could help President Bush in the key swing state.

The Florida Democratic Party reacted with outrage, calling the move “blatant partisan maneuvering” by Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's younger brother, and vowed to fight it.

In a memo to Florida's 67 county supervisors of elections, Division of Elections director Dawn Roberts said the uncertainty of Hurricane Ivan, which could hit parts of the state by week's end, forced her to act.

The action came in an ongoing legal battle over whether Nader should be allowed on the Florida ballot as the Reform Party candidate.

Nader, an independent nominated by the Reform Party, was a presidential candidate in 2000 when Bush won Florida, and the White House, by 537 votes over then-Vice President Al Gore. Analysts said most of the nearly 98,000 votes Nader got in Florida would have gone to Gore had Nader not been on the ballot.

Florida Circuit Court Judge Kevin Davey issued a temporary injunction last week preventing the state from putting Nader on the 2004 ballot, siding with a Democratic challenge that the Reform Party did not qualify as a national party under state law.

A hearing on a permanent injunction is scheduled for Wednesday. But Roberts said Hurricane Ivan, which is headed for Florida's Gulf coast, had raised “a substantial question as to when such a hearing” will be held.

'PARTISAN MANEUVERING'

As a result, she said, Florida's Department of State had filed an appeal against the temporary injunction. The appeal application automatically lifts the injunction, allowing the counties to put Nader's name on overseas absentee ballots, which must be mailed by Saturday.

“I'm in disbelief,” said Scott Maddox, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. “This is blatant partisan maneuvering on the part of Jeb Bush to give his brother a leg up on election day.”

Do Florida Democrats Have a Death Wish? No, It Only Looks Like It

After the fiasco of the 2000 election, in which the Republicans claimed that all they were demanding was punctilious compliance with formal rules, you might think that the apparent failure of the GOP to file its ballot papers on time (combined with a Republican official turning a blind eye to the error!) in Florida presented a golden opportunity to the Democrats.

Oddly, that's not what leading state Democrats seem to think: Decision2004: Did Bush camp err on ballot papers?:

Florida Democratic Party chairman Scott Maddox said he knew the president's certificate of nomination did not reach the state until Sept. 2, but he said he decided not to make an issue of it.

“To keep an incumbent president off the ballot in a swing state the size of Florida because of a technicality, I just don't think would be right,” Maddox said.

Why not seize the opportunity to beat up the GOP a little and stoke memories of the 2000 elections?

One reason might be that the state Democrats are, by and large, cowed.

Another reason might be that the GOP controls both houses of the state legislature and the Governorship. So they would simply call a special session and change the rule. Which I think would be fully legal. Then they'd stoke their base.

Once you look at it that way, it's a tougher call. But I'd take the chance anyway if it were up to me. A mistake of this type fits the 'Bush incompetence' meme (and the hypocrisy meme) that the Democrats should be pushing at every chance they get. Just imagine that the shoe were on the other foot and ask yourself if Karl Rove would sue?

The Democratic move would be most plausible if there were other people with standing to raise the issue. But answering that question requires a much greater understanding of Florida election law than I command. All I can do is shoot off a couple emails to people who might know….

Nader Kicked Off Florida Ballot

A Florida court has ruled — correctly, given the precedents, IMHO — that Ralph Nader did not meet Florida's ballot requirements because the Reform party convention endorsement was a sham.

My colleague Terry Anderson is one of the named plaintiffs in this case.

More Evidence that Jeb Bush is Dangerous

Here's a fact about the 2000 Florida recount that I didn't know:

Hoodwinked - Why is Florida's voting system so corrupt?: Following the contentious 2000 recount, e-mails on former Sec. of State Katherine Harris' computer revealed that she had been in contact with Jeb Bush during the recount, contrary to both their claims. Miami Herald reporter Meg Laughlin discovered that e-mail messages sent to Jeb Bush from Harris had been deleted after the recount. Harris then had the operating system of her computer changed, a procedure that erased all its data. “What was odd about what she did,” said Mark Seibel, an editor at the Herald, “was that they installed an old operating system—not a new one—which makes you wonder why they did it.”

I think Kerry will need at least a three point lead in Florida to carry the state in the face of absentee ballot stuffing, and of the mischief that a smart, ruthless, Governor can cause when in cahoots with local officials. I hope the polls look good in Ohio…

Is Florida's Temporary Gas Tax Cut a Bribe To Voters?

Maybe I'm too paranoid. When I first heard about the state of Florida's temporary eight cent cut in gas taxes, this is what I imagined:

Suppose you are the Governor of Florida, and you are worried that the voters are restive. Gas prices are up, and people tend to blame the government for that, and then maybe take it out on your brother at the election. Which would not just cost you in the family, but vastly reduce your chances of being the nominee in four years.

Fortunately, your party has a big majority in the legislature (not, however, in the popular vote for the legislature, but that's ok, as you know how to draw legislative districts). So you enact an eight cent drop in the gas taxes — effective only in August.

It's a nice conspiracy theory. But having checked around, I think it's not true.

My first stop was the state of Florida's own PR web site:

The legislation requires motor-fuel terminal suppliers, wholesalers, importers, and retail gas stations to pass on the tax reduction to their customers. The tax cut does not apply to diesel fuel.

This gasoline tax cut is expected to save taxpayers $59.7 million.

The Department of Revenue developed an Emergency Rule to implement the law. TIPs will be mailed in July to all businesses and parties affected by the legislation. See the links below for more information.

Failure to comply with the Florida Motor Fuel Tax Relief Act of 2004 is a third-degree felony and violators could also lose their state licenses to sell motor fuel.

Hmm. Those are unusually draconian penalties. Since when do states punish merchants for not passing on savings to consumers? That seems to support my hypothesis.

But then I started thinking. If this was really designed to affect the election, why end the tax break ends Sept. 1 not, say, Nov. 1? Yes, August is prime holiday driving season, but why not be fully shameless?

Could it be this isn't about the election at all? And indeed, a little more Googling suggests that maybe I jumped too quickly to conclusions. The bill wasn't proposed by a Republican, but by a Democrat:

state Rep. Bob Henriquez, D-Tampa … proposed the tax break as a way to help small business and spur tourism.

“In all honesty we just needed some relief at the pump,” Henriquez said Thursday from Boston, where he was attending the Democratic National Convention.

Turns out it's bad policy though: according to Sarasota's Heraldtrbune.com, the $98 million [note that the state says it's just $59.7 million, I don't know why the two numbers are so different] comes out of the state's transportation fund, which means less money for mass transit…increasing demand for gas in the long run.

Exam Question: Is an Alligator a Deadly Weapon?

AP reports that a Port Orange Florida Man accused of hitting woman with gator:

A man hit his girlfriend [Nancy Monico, 39] with a 3-foot alligator and threw beer bottles at her during an argument in the couple's mobile home, authorities said.

David Havenner, 41, was scheduled for a bond hearing Saturday on misdemeanor charges of battery and possession of an alligator.

Note that Mr. Havenner is not charged with assault with a deadly weapon, and Ms. Monico only says the gator “hit” her not “bit” her. No, the biting comes later in the story:

Havenner's version of the story differed. He told investigators that Monico bit his hand because she was upset that they had run out of alcohol.

Florida: Where Lightning Strikes More Than Twice

Via FlaBlog, Pig bears brunt of lightning strike, apparently saving doctor:

“If I did not have rubber boots on and I wasn't holding onto that pig, I wouldn't be standing here. I'd be dead,” he added. Oh, if I had a dime for every time I've heard somebody say that.

California is, I hear, a dream. Florida (lightning strike leader in the US) is something else entirely.

Florida Vouchers: 'A Disaster Waiting to Happen'

FlaBlog brings me this happy reminder about “Jeb Bush's and the Dept. of Education's refusal to enforce minimal standards for receiving state school voucher money. A draft proposal calls for voluntary rules and if you don't comply, no biggie, you still get state money.”

The voucher program has already had a series of scandals where people started “schools” that only existed on paper, so this is especially evil.

Will Jeb Bush Help Kill Off the Manatee?

The Florida legislature just concluded its annual sitting in the traditional manner—passing a flurry of bad legislation. Here's one example from the ever-informative Florida Politics:

During this year's session, a few Florida legislators — backed by the marine industry — waged a propaganda campaign of lies and half-truths to convince their colleagues that manatees no longer are endangered. Manatee numbers are increasing so rapidly, the lie went on, that the greedy monsters are threatening underwater grasses where fish hide and breed.

Because of those whoppers and a little behind-the-scenes arm-twisting, Senate Bill 540 will be law unless Gov. Bush vetoes it. “Save the manatees, governor”.

Florida Is a Bloghaven?

This is surprising:

=< Halavais: News>=: Where have all the bloggers gone? Well, basically the places you would expect. Lots in Boston, lots in Austin, lots on the coast, and a surprising dispersal in Florida (?)

See the cool map too (albeit only for blogs hosted by Livejournal and Diaryland).

Florida Has A Cement Shortage

First we put half our stuff in storage. Then we moved into the front half of the house, about the size of a NY two-bedroom apartment, putting the kids into a bunk bed. The idea was to start the project in the fall, and finish by about, well, May or June. Then we had permit delays. Then, finally, in January we knocked down the empty half of our house — including a piece of the kitchen — so we could rebuild it better and bigger. Then they started to build, poured a foundation, built some walls, and almost a month ago got ready to pour the beam and install the trusses.

But wait! We failed inspection! The city of Coral Gables has tougher requirements than the County and even though these were noted on the plans, the engineer just did the routine calculations. Three week delay to recalculate, get twice as many trusses, re-inspect. Ok, that takes us to last week. Good to go to pour some beams, right?

Oops. Seems there's a cement shortage. As the contractor tells it, there were three local plants that supplied about 60% of south Florida's needs with the rest coming from abroad. Most of the imported stuff is being diverted to other places, like China, that are willing to pay higher prices than Florida (!). And all three of the local plants are having mechanical problems. The biggest plant has problems so severe that the owners have decided not to repair it, but just to wait for the new plant to come on stream in about a month.

So after a few days extra delay we managed to get a truck to come and bring some of this precious commodity, and we poured yesterday. Except we ran out.

Question: Is it more reasonable to imagine we'll finish in August (contractor's current estimate), December (my guess), or some time after next March….

I Didn't Even Know He Was Running

Ex-N.H. Senator Ends Bid for Fla. Seat: MIAMI - Former New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith on Thursday ended his campaign for a Senate seat in his new home of Florida, citing a poor start to fund-raising.

Darn. I didn't even know he was running, and now we don't have Bob Smith to kick around any more. Oh well, plenty left:

Several Republicans are seeking the Republican nomination to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, including former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez, attorney Larry Klayman, House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, former Rep. Bill McCollum and businessman Doug Gallagher.

Feed the Homeless. Go to Jail.

Unless there's something we're not being told here, this is a sign that some people have lost all sense of morality. Can it really be a CRIME to share your picnic with homeless people? Even if the sharing is premeditated and the picnic somewhat pretextual?

It's legal to feed stray dogs but not hungry people? The ants can have their picnic but not the homeless? You need a FEEDING LICENSE TO GIVE FOOD TO THE HOMELESS IN TAMPA?

3 Arrested During 'Picnic' With Homeless In Park: The feud between the group Food Not Bombs and the police has been going on since at least March 21. Group members, many of whom are students at the University of South Florida, say it is their right to feed anyone, anywhere they see the need.

City officials say any group wanting to gather in the park must pay an application fee and buy insurance. Mayor Pam Iorio has said Massey Park does not have the facilities necessary for feeding the homeless.

Durkin said the group could also affiliate with a recognized feeding organization.

Members of Food Not Bombs, including Anthony Schmidt, say they do not feel they should have to do that.

“It's a contradiction to say we can't have a picnic and share with our friends,'' he said.

(spotted via the aptly-named The American Street)

We should be giving awards to people who feed the hungry, not arresting them.

How low can we go?

Pesky Legal Speedbump for Florida Legislature

Columns: More than one route to the Hill for speaker is a political roundup column that's mostly about how Flordians are not warming to Rep. Byrd, the loathsome, craven, special-interest sellout who is the Speaker of the Florida House. This despite Speaker Byrd's tri-weekly spam emails to everyone in the state, his phoney push polls, and piles of special interest campaign money.

But the really interesting thing in this St. Petersburg Times column is the final tidbit, one that is catnip for constitutional law junkies (spotted via Flablog):

State legislators took this week off, but is it legal?

The Florida Constitution says the Legislature cannot adjourn its 60-day session for more than 72 consecutive hours without passing a concurrent resolution. The House and Senate passed no resolution when they left town last week, merely recessing for 10 days for Passover and the Easter holidays.

Former House Dean Carl Ogden says lawmakers could be forced to call themselves back into special session and re-file all of the bills that are pending or face having anything they do declared invalid by a court.

Indeed, the Florida Constitution states in Article III, Section 3, paragraph (e) that “Neither house shall adjourn for more than seventy-two consecutive hours except pursuant to concurrent resolution.”

Whether it follows that an excessive adjournment amounts to the end of the session isn't 100% obvious to me, although it makes sense if the only other alternative is to say that it's a political question for which there is no relief (always an awful answer in my book). A quick and dirty Westlaw search found little in the way of relevant caselaw. In light of State ex rel. Landis v. Thompson, 125 Fla. 466, 170 So. 464 (1936) (Legislative day can only be terminated by adjournment or some actual dispersing of assembled membership amounting to same thing), the viewpoint that an excessive adjourment terminates the session certainly seems arguble. I think Mr. Ogden has a point, and that the legislature becomes functus officio after 72 hours adjournment without a concurrent resolution. Meaning no more laws this year unless a special session is called…which indeed requires re-introducing them all.

Florida Ballot Initiatives, 2004 edition

In “Starve The Beast”, Junior Division, Steve Koppelman brings me the news of three really lousy ballot initiative ideas being promoted in Florida:

One would somehow “protect patient rights” by limiting malpractice suits. I guess doctors and their insurance companies are patients too sometimes.

Another would require the state to further tax gambling operations and earmark the money for schools. If decades of experience with lotteries and gambling taxation nationwide have taught us anything, it's that “earmarking” the proceeds for education means those proceeds quickly become the only source of education funds and that educational spending doesn't budge upward one bit, as the liberated money once put towards education gets redirected to all manner of other things.

So the medical and insurance lobbies are trying an end run around the trial-lawyer and civil-liberties lobbies. All right. That's to be expected. And yet another generation in yet another state thinks that it's found a magical way to double school funding when all it's really found is a way to give the legislature an incentive to deploy slot machines at every gas station, motel and convenience store in the state. Think Nevada. All right again. That's to be expected.

But then there's that other ballot initiative in the trifecta, the one that would increase the homestead property tax exemption from $25,000 to $50,000. At a time when the crush of newcomers to Florida has schools filling their parking lots with mobile classrooms attached to the mobile classrooms, looming water supply problems to address, and ever-growing demand for more police, more firefighters, more roads, more teachers, more, more, more, there's this.

Despite this, I do not support the Governor and gerrymandered Republican legislature's plan to make it harder to pass ballot initiatives. The Republicans are still smarting from the requirement that they shrink class sizes in schools, which may well require a tax increase — something Jeb wants to avoid at all costs in order to further his Presidential ambitions.

This state is not a progressive bastion, but it is more progressive than the regressive legislature. As they say, this is no accident, but a result of the way the Republicans have drawn the legislative districts plus the fact that the liberal elements are often in urban concentrations. So the ballot initiatives, for all that they are sometimes wacky are a Very Good Thing both in principle and often in practice. And if I don't always agree with the outcomes, much less the proposals, well, that's democracy.

Florida Gator + Electrical Tape

School bus drivers around the nation know not to give a ride to wild animals with large teeth. Except, of course, here in Florida where Gator goes for ride on the bus.

As the article says, “Eleven students. One bus driver. One alligator.” (Spotted via Flablog).

Ok, my headline is accurate, but could be slightly misleading, as you might have thought I meant a different sort of Gator. Things like that seem to be required if you live in the eye of the Hurricanes.

Election Monitors Coming to Florida (Why Not? Nothing Else Seems to Work)

The Poor Man has the links: Election Monitors Coming To Florida — “Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA has announced that it will be sending election monitors to Florida to watch for voting irregularities in the 2004 elections.” The Poor Man also has a long quote from Pax Christi Executive Director Dave Robinson explaining just why Florida deserves this treatment.

Florida Anti-Climax

I was looking forward to voting in a contested primary. But with Florida due to vote next Tuesday, it doesn't look as if my vote is going to count: now that Kerry has effectively wrapped up the nomination our primary becomes something of a meaningless ritual.

Not that in Florida we can ever take having our vote count for granted….

Spam Comes From Florida?

I thought spam came from Taiwan, China and Korea these days. I was wrong.

AOL puts heat on alleged Sunshine State spammers: America Online reported on Wednesday that it has filed a civil suit against four Florida-based individuals who the company believes are responsible for sending massive amounts of spam e-mail to its members.

The giant Internet service provider said it brought the case in the U.S. District Court of Florida, Orlando Division, because the so-called “Sunshine State spammers” violated the Virginia Computer Crimes Act, the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act and Florida common law, by sending an avalanche of unsolicited e-mail to its subscribers. In the suit, AOL seeks damages of $1.6 million in addition to other forms of compensation, including potential asset forfeiture.

According to Dulles, Va.-based AOL, the Florida defendants teamed up with parties in Thailand to barrage AOL members with more than 35 million spam messages over the course of several years. The company said it first became aware of the group in January 2003 via a wave of 1.5 million user complaints and immediately launched an investigation into the spammer's operations. The scheme reportedly involved an onslaught of e-mail messages loaded with hypertext links advertising low mortgage rate offers for AOL members.

As part of its investigation, AOL said it was able to procure some 40 pages of text taken from instant-messaging conversations held between the defendants and their alleged Thailand partners. In those conversations, seized under a court order, the parties openly referred to AOL as a potential “goldmine” for spam and detailed their methods for evading the company's spam protection tools.

…

Florida is known as something of a hotbed for spam-related activity, with the Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) identifying three of the world's top 10 known spammers as residing in the state, more than any other in the United States.

I guess at least it shows not everything is outsourced…

Healthcare for Poor Children in Florida (Not)

Here are the key facts:

After weeks of weathering political assaults from the left, state Republicans announced a plan Tuesday to eliminate a waiting list for tens of thousands of poor children seeking subsidized healthcare.

First, Republican senators said, they would spend $25 million to provide healthcare to about 90,000 children on the list until the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

Second, they proposed freezing enrollment in the KidCare program. That eliminates future lists, which grow by about 2,000 children a week, and the bad press that goes with it.

Also tucked in a proposed bill: measures that no longer guarantee dental coverage and that deny benefits to any child whose working-poor family is “eligible” for insurance, regardless of the expense.

But what's the headline in the Miami Herald? GOP: End wait for poor kids' care!

The portion of the KidCare program in question serves 315,000. It is largely restricted to those children whose families make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but earn no more than double the federal poverty level of $18,400 for a family of four.

Right. End the wait by having fewer people eligible! Kinda gives a new ring to 'No Child Left Behind' doesn't it? But you'd never guess it from scanning the headline (and the article was buried inside the Metro section too).

Florida Taliban (4) -- Rev. Dozier on the Glories of Dozier, Jeb Bush, and the Republican Party

Looks like Rev. O'Neal Dozier knows what to say to keep Jeb Bush sweet: praise him to the skies and preach Republicanism from the pulpit. Here's Dozier speaking on the occasion of Martin Luther King Day a year ago:

The Rev. O'Neal Dozier, senior pastor and founder of The Worldwide Christian Center, went so far as to call [Jeb] Bush “the greatest governor ever.”

(Sun-Sentinel, January 21, 2003, Pride on Display; S. Florida Events Honor the Dream and Legacy of the Civil Rights Leader.)

Consider Black S. Florida Preachers Carry on Fight Against Injustice , a story in the Sun-Sentinal—which until now I always thought of as a decent newspaper. This news story (that's right, news, not editorial) printed a couple of days ago paints a glorious picture of Rev. O'Neal Dozier. It begins,

The Rev. O'Neal Dozier lives the message of Martin Luther King Jr. every day. As pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, he uplifts the downtrodden by feeding them and paying their rent. In his sermons he preaches the importance of character. His leadership has transcended the pulpit to politics.

Somehow this news article never gets around to mentioning that Rev. Dozier might be controversial, or why.

Incidentally, until I read this article, I had no idea that Rev. Dozier was black. Does that mean he gets a free pass on MLK day? Somehow I doubt that King would have approved of Dozier—although that is apparently not Dozier's view, as he tries to wrap himself our secular saint's mantle:

“King didn't separate himself from the white establishment,” Dozier pointed out.

Neither does Dozier. A member of one of the state's Judicial Nominating Commissions, which screen and recommend judges, Dozier is active in the Republican Party and served as host to Gov. Bush at his church last King Day.

“We're not going to make advances for black people by slam-dunking [Republicans],” Dozier said. “We need to take a lesson from Dr. King. He had a peaceful approach.”

But even Dozier acknowledges that racism has not gone away. He thinks black people have not helped their cause much because whites perceive blacks as having lost the moral character they had during 1960s protests.

“If King were alive today, he would still be an activist,” said Dozier. “He would be an advocate for black people looking at character.”

Dozier worries that the younger generation needs to strengthen its character for the black community to achieve King's dream.

“Have you listened to the music? It's horrible. The way we dress with our pants down. The way we wear our hair makes us look like demons,” he asserted.

“How can you pierce the upper-crust establishment, where the money and political people are?” Dozier asked. “We can't unless we change our character.”

The article does, however, include a handsome photo of Rev. Dozier.

A little spell on Lexis suggests that Dozier was also active in the 'Ten Commandments' movement, speaking to support (now-former) Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore. Dozier has also been a prominent supporter of the FCAT, the standardized test relied on by the Florida school system, disagreeing with those who claim that the test is racially biased.

There are also some hair-raising interviews in which Dozier makes clear that he does not separate church and state. Rather, his vision of church — like the Mullahs in Iran — instructs the faithful as to how to vote, to support the wise and virtuous Republicans.

Give him this. He's certainly not shy about it.

“Years ago, I took a closer look at the platform of both parties,” said the Rev. O'Neal Dozier, the church founder, who freely mixes politics and religion. “The [Republican] platform is more in line with the word of God. I am Republican because of conviction.”

(source: Miami Herald, Natalie P. Mcneal, Blacks embrace message of GOP Pompano pastor, congregation find Gov. Bush's politics suit their beliefs, Feb. 3, 2003)

And then there's this amazing and disturbing profile that appears in an article by Wyatt Olson in the Broward New Times, United States of Jesus: The folks who are “reclaiming America for Christ” are pushing an agenda for a Taliban-like state where Scripture is law

“We must teach Christians that they should vote for political candidates that follow the biblical positions on the political issues,” says O'Neal Dozier, who founded the Worldwide Christian Center in 1985 in Pompano Beach. He instructs conference-goers: “The major political issues that you should teach the biblical positions on are abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment, income tax of citizens, affirmative action, right to bear arms, and public school prayer.”

Dozier's congregation is mostly Republican and mostly black — an anomaly in Democrat-heavy Broward County. In 2001, Jeb Bush appointed him to the 17th Judicial Nominating Committee, which is the board that recommends lawyers for judicial seats in Broward County. A former linebacker with the Chicago Bears, Dozier received a law degree from John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Appearing much younger than his 54 years, he sports a dark blue suit as finely sculpted as his flattop coiffure.

Dozier freely mixes politics and religion in the pulpit.

“I do not teach people to become Republicans, even though I am a Republican,” he says. “I do not teach people to become a Democrat. I teach them to know and understand the issues at large. And I know they're going to do the right thing in the voting booth. We want to be very, very careful as Christians not to 'cancel out our salvation' as we enter into the voting booth. Many Christians are doing that. They're praising God on Sundays, then on election Tuesdays, they are 'canceling out their salvation' because they are siding with the enemy, with the devil.”

Dozier expounds on a few “issues at large.” Homosexuality is clearly foremost in his mind. Quoting from the Old Testament book of Leviticus, he declares that it is “an abomination,” which he defines as “something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit.”

“Why is it one of the paramount of sins?” he poses. “Well, it is a very bad kind of sin because it really hurts society in so many ways.” God, however, found a way to punish the homosexuals through HIV-AIDS, he says. “It is a type of judgment for such a sin as this one, homosexuality.”

Then there's the matter of the death penalty.

“Listen, God is 100 percent for capital punishment,” Dozier pronounces slowly and emphatically. “Oh, yeah, God knew some were going to slip through, a few innocent ones. He knew that. But you cannot have a society without capital punishment.” Murmurs of accord rise from Dozier's audience. “You're right,” calls out one woman.

Dozier sees one sure way to ensure that these lofty ideals become the immutable law of the land: take over the world's economy. “We ought to be the ones in charge of economics on this Earth,” he says. “Secondly, we as Christians must take control of the government. We should be the ones in charge of the government. Wouldn't you agree with that?” Everyone nods and mutters in agreement.

They could bring an end to abortions, special protections for homosexuals. “We should take control of every facet of society,” he says.

“The best thing our president has done…” Dozier pauses and then waxes rapturous. “I love that man; I love President Bush. Thank God for President Bush!” The crowd claps wildly. Dozier talks about Bush's drive for faith-based initiatives that would provide federal tax dollars to church-run programs for the poor, elderly, and ill. “Do you know what it would mean for Christ if the church could have the money to take care of the poor?” he asks. “That means that the poor would come to the church and the poor would see Jesus as their God and not the government as their god.”

Charlie Falugo, a salt-and-pepper-haired Miamian, says, “I don't know how to reach my black brothers and sisters who are Christian. I feel very sensitive about that, because it might seem that I'm pushing a party, and I'm not.” How can he change the minds of blacks who are Christians, he asks, “but politically they keep putting the other… you know… in office?”

It starts with the pastors, Dozier quickly answers. “This is what I say to my congregation: 'If you are Christians, then you must adhere to the Bible.' I have in my church, many, many people who used to be…” — the name of that other party is somehow never uttered — “…lost, but now they have been found.”

Fear for the Republic.

Florida Taliban (3)

The Florida Taliban saga continues: Rev. Dozier further displays his total unsuitability to hold any position of public trust, much less one that involves selecting judges. Unfortunately, the Miami Herald buries the story inside the metro section at the end of a “roundup” article with an irrelevant headline.

And Gov. Jeb Bush says he has no intention of removing Rev. Dozier from the judicial selection committee:

“I need someone who is a Christian to tell my story,” began the Pompano Beach pastor and member of a powerful judicial screening committee.

The Rev. O'Neal Dozier was responding to questions about his role on Broward's Judicial Nominating Commission, which interviews applicants and makes recommendations to the governor. As detailed in a recent Daily Business Review article, some attorneys have been unnerved by Dozier's inquiries into their religious beliefs and parenting duties.

Dozier, who was appointed to the nine-member committee by Gov. Jeb Bush, acknowledged that he has asked applicants if they are “God-fearing.” He said he stopped asking the question after an attorney complained, but added: “The citizens deserve someone on the bench who loves God.”

He also said he did ask a single mother with twins about juggling domestic and judicial responsibilities. But he said the question was misinterpreted as showing bias.

State Rep. Dan Gelber, an attorney, has asked Bush to examine Dozier's qualification process. He said the governor should remove Dozier if he is asking inappropriate questions.

“That chills qualified people from applying, and if it is true, the governor needs to act quickly,” said Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat.

Dozier said he had been contacted by the governor's office and that Bush will not remove him.

Dozier went on to blame the “homosexual community” for the dust-up and called homosexuality an “abomination.”

But he said an applicant's sexual orientation would not influence his vote on the judicial nominating commission.

“Let the world know,” he said, “the Rev. O'Neal Dozier loves the homosexuals the same way he loves the fornicators, the adulterers, the thieves and the liars.”

Actually, the term “Florida Taliban” may be unfair. Rev. Dozier really reminds me more of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah al-Uzma Hajj Seyed Ali Khamenei.

Harris Out of Senate Race, Alas

A Harris candidacy would have been a gift to Democrats. Gotta hand it to Rove and Co., they run a tight ship: ABCNEWS.com : Source: Rep. Harris Won't Run for Senate.

'course sometimes the arm twisting does go a bit overboard , but why worry when the prosecutors in Main Justice are not looking to cause trouble unless forced.

Just a Little Blip on the South Florida Weird-o-Meter

Our law school courtyard is usually a quiet place, but every so often a flock of very very very loud parrots, descendants of escapees from Parrot Jungle, a nearby mini-wildlife park, take over the trees and make so much noise you can hardly think.

So I sympathize with the residents of Dania Beach, a couple of hours drive north of here. It seems they have a monkey problem. Welcome to South Florida - and beware of the Monkeys.

Of course, as the Miami Herald accurately observes, “Monkeys apparently don’t cause much of a blip on the South Florida weird-o-meter.”

You know you are not in New York or Chicago when the airport rent-a-car place has signs reminding customers not to feed the monkeys, which have been spied tossing mango pits at people and using trash-can tops as cymbals.

In fact, Hertz is just the latest location in Dania Beach to be beset by a plague of vervets, aka green monkeys, which have been making the small city their own private urban jungle for decades. The monkeys with flattened black faces and white furry beards swing through the trees and sometimes skitter across nearby mobile-home roofs, making a sound akin to a thunderstorm.

They have been known to climb into newly washed cars in the neighborhood and make a mess of their interior. They love to jump on the roofs, trampoline style.

''It's a dominance thing,'' said Ron Magill, a spokesman for Metrozoo, who said the males are especially keen on activities that make a lot of noise.

Debbie White, a grandmother of seven from Amelia Island, ran into about 20 of them while waiting for a Camry on a recent afternoon. On that day, they were quiet but playful.

''It was like being at the zoo,'' she said.

Monkeys apparently don't cause much of a blip on the South Florida weird-o-meter. An employee named Wes, standing near ''monkey row'' near the Hertz car wash machinery, shrugged off the phenomenon, as did several colleagues, who no longer find the monkeys interesting or unusual.

The vervets have deep roots in the Dania Beach area — deeper, in fact, than the Hertz outlet at 2150 NE Seventh Ave. They apparently date back to a roadside primate attraction that closed shop in the early 1950s.

The owner was able to sell off most of the larger primates, but the vervets and a handful of squirrel monkeys didn't find any takers.

According to the locals who have been coexisting with the monkeys for decades, someone at the farm simply opened the cage and set the captives free.

The escapees fled to the forest, where they developed a diet of grasshoppers, beetles, small crabs, and, on occasion, the food in Fido's dog bowl.

So far as I am aware, none of the monkeys have yet sought to enroll here, but with enough monkeys and enough typewriters, surely it's only a matter of time….

Florida Taliban (Update)

Turns out that the source for the info about improper questions being asked by Jeb Bush's people of potential state court judges is the very respectable Miami Daily Business Review, and the article—complete with quotes attributed to local lawyers by name—is online at law.com. (Snagged from CalPundit.)

The quotes did not appear in a written questionaire, and weren't state-level, but rather were asked in oral interviews by county-level interviewing committee members.

Here are some choice quotes from an interview with the source of many of those questions, Rev. O'Neal Dozier, pastor of the fundamentalist Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, and one of the Broward County members of the Judicial Nomination Commission:

“This country is founded on the principles of Christianity, not the principles of Buddhism, not the principles of Judaism,” the South Florida Sun-Sentinel quoted him as saying Nov. 30, 2003. “I don't believe the developers of the Constitution would want us to compromise our Christian values.”

Dozier is vehemently opposed to homosexuality, which he called in the Nov. 27, 2003, issue of New Times Broward Palm Beach “something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit.”

Dozier said he has received complaints from “atheists” who heard about his line of religiously oriented questioning during JNC interviews. But he argues that religion belongs on the bench. “There is no such animal as separation of church and state in the Constitution,” he said.

And this is the guy Jeb Bush nominates, then re-nominates, to help pick judges.

The Florida Taliban

Move over Texas Taliban, make room for the Florida branch. It seems there may be a religious test for appointment to judicial office in the Jeb Bush regime. If not a religious test, there's undoubtedly a strict ideological one. Info, but alas no sign of the source of the info, at TalkLeft, Improper Judicial Questioning in Florida.

Read the update.

Money Grubbing in Florida

Two small articles in the local section of the Miami Herald show the seamy side of the money-grubbing culture in Florida. In one case the state is trying to squeeze prisoners' families for every dollar it can get by requiring them to use overpriced telephone services to speak to prisoners—and just banned a magazine that carries ads explaining how to route around the overcharges. In another case, local lawyers claim that court reporters have been massaging the margins to inflate the length and cost of transcripts.

Corrections Dept. sued over phone flap describes a transparent violation of the First Amendment by Florida Department of Corrections (prisons) officials who have banned Prison Legal News on the dubious grounds that it threatens prison security. The “threat” consists of printing ads from local telephone services which allow inmates to make collect calls to their families more cheaply than the $4/five minutes charged by the prisons.

Yes, you read that right. Inmates are only allowed to make collect calls, and if they want to speak to their families then the families must pay $4 for every five minutes for that privilege. Why is this cost so high? Because the prisons let the telephone contract to the bidder who promised the highest cost, not the lowest — thus maximizing revenue to the prisons.

So we're not only locking up offenders, we're trying to ensure they have minimum contact with their families. Or, if you prefer, we're trying to milk the families — primarily poor people — for all we can. I can call the UK for six or seven cents a minute, but inmates pay about $1.33 per minute to call a nearby town.

But the public sector is no better than the private sector. In Lawyer claims court reporting agency fudging margins and bottom line we learn that Florida court reporters, who are paid by the page, have (allegedly) been manipulating the margins — left, right and bottom — of court transcripts in order to increase the page count.

State law specifies the width of the margins, the number of lines per page, letters per line and the size of the font. Lawyers, governments and individuals pay court reporters by the page. Rates vary depending on individual contracts and the type of proceeding transcribed.

County governments are some of the biggest customers because they pay expenses for many poor criminal defendants. Nan Markowitz, spokeswoman for Miami-Dade courts, said her office audits more than 2,000 transcripts a month and finds problems with about one in 10.

Court reporters give refunds when the counties ask for them, but the private lawyers have less luck , and — no surprise — one of them is bringing a class action claim for redress.

Top Reason I'd Seriously Consider Moving Elsewhere for a New Job

EdWeek—Florida K-12 schools get a D+ for adequacy

Found via FlaBlog who notes mordantly,

Average annual rate of change in expenditures per pupil, adjusted for inflation (1991-2001) — Minus 0.4%

Florida Weird News In Review -- 2003

I suppose given my location, I'm compelled to link to 2003 Florida Weird News In Review. Although if that's the authoritative list, it actually seems like we had a fairly tame year by Florida standards. Especially compared to the national list, 2003: A Dave odyssey, prepared by Miami's own Dave Barry.

I did, however, especially like this item from the Weird News in Review:

Criminal charges were dropped against a Callaway man accused of smashing his way into a neighbor's house and chasing a woman with a knife. A Panama City judge was convinced the man was temporarily insane from drinking jasmine tea.

Jasmine tea is one of my wife's favorites.

Supreme Court of Florida Appoints Committee on Privacy and Court Records

The Supreme Court of Florida has appointed me along with a bevy of state law luminaries to its Committee on Privacy and Court Records. You can read the Administrative Order (.pdf) and the Press Release. There is also a useful webpage with background information.

The tension between online public access to court documents and privacy raises really hard questions for which I have no ready answers. As an abstract matter it isn't easy to say why if a record is 'public' in the sense of being available in the basement of a courthouse somewhere it shouldn't also be available online for all of us who find it hard to get to that basement. On the other hand, as a realistic matter, some filings - especially pro se filings in family law cases - have lots of sensitive (and basically irrelevant) personal information that could easily enable identity theft. Putting that data online exposes people to substantial risks that it would be good to shield them from.

Florida law on procedure and on technology issues often serves as a model for South American courts, and even for other states. By addressing this issue directly, the Supreme Court is shouldering this responsibility in an admirable fashion.

Judging from the press calls I'm getting, the part of today's order that will get people excited is the interim so-called “moratorium” (expiring not later than July 1, 2005) on the provison of certain information for posting online. But if you read the whole order, you see that the Supreme Court exempts large classes of judicial information from what it rightly calls a “limited” moratorium—so at least at first reading it is hard to see what legitimate interests will be seriously harmed by this temporary order.

Democracy Be Damned: Fla Pols Won't Fund Small Classes

The voters of Florida made it clear they want small class sizes in Florida primary schools, passing a state constituional amendment mandating shrinking class sizes over a ten-year period. Then the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, future presidential candidate, made it clear that he intends to subvert the voters' will because nothing, not even children or democracy, is worth raising taxes for.

Now comes the the Republican leadership in the legislature to say that they just won't even try to pay for small classes, because, really, what's the point in doing that unless the voters again make it clear that they really meant what they said. Better first to try to get the voters to repeal the constitutional amendment in the hopes it will all blow over. King says state can't pay for smaller classes. And, hey, lets make the next vote in a special election in August, when turnout in South Florida is likely to be at its lowest! “The people have to speak,” one of the legislative leaders said…ignoring the fact that they already did.

Here's how I previously summarized Jeb Bush's Machiavellian actions on class size:

Schools in Florida, especially South Florida, are beyond overcrowded. Even in rich neighborhoods like mine, classes are taught in trailers, in cramped rooms sub-divided by makeshift partitions that leak noise and light, and in generally cramped and shabby conditions. The voters enacted a cap on class size, codified at Art. IX, , § 1, of the state Constitution that otherwise would never have been approved by our Republican-dominated legislature, and is which is loathed by Jeb Bush because he understands that it will require taxes to pay for it, and new taxes undermine his Presidential ambitions. It’s pretty clear that the voters really do want more spending on education (although not as much as the scary and not very plausible numbers Jeb Bush made up to try to defeat it), and that our state government would have left the kids in huge clases but for this. It’s also pretty clear that Jeb Bush wants to roll it back. He’s spoken of ‘devious plans’ to kill the measure, and even endorsed a second initiative to roll back the first —an idea that got about zero traction other than from some his own appointees to a state education board.

Thanks to South of the Suwannee for spotting the story about the legislature. Now please get an RSS feed….

Alcee Hastings Won't Run For Senate

Hastings Decides Against Fla. Senate Bid. Well, although he had a shot at the nomination, he had no real chance to be elected. Which is sort of a shame, as he is a very impressive human when seen up close.

I guess this partly explains the mystery of Hastings's endorsement of Lieberman — Hastings didn't care about the tactical implications for a Senate race because he wasn't making one.

How School Vouchers (Don't) Work In Florida

As Congressional Republicans plan to violate Washington DC's home rule, and force a school voucher system on the city, I think it's useful to review how vouchers are working here in Florida.

I'll support almost anything reasonably calculated to improve the access of poor people — and rich people too! — to quality schooling for kids. Abstractly, vouchers look like they might do that, subject to a small host of caveats about the effect on kids with serious problems who might end up being treated like the 'lemons' of a primarily for-profit system, or dumped into the vestigial remains of an underfunded public system.

Given the Florida experience, however, one has to ask whether vouchers in practice are in fact reasonably calculated to be helpful on balance. As usual, the Florida Blog is on top of this one, with links to:

• Nonpublic schools wrote own ticket on form
• Come fall, the heat is off: The state's much-touted sworn affidavits are making school vouchers look increasingly like blank checks.
• Avoid state meddling: Start a schooll
• Bush aides considered fabricating voucher explanations
• Cooking up a coverup
• Education commissioner concedes voucher failings

Talk about waste, fraud and abuse! Not to mention special interest lobbying, hogs at the trough, and every other cliche too.

Alcee Hastings Picks a Presidential Candidate: Lieberman

I didn't see this one coming. Lieberman to pick up endorsement of Florida Rep. Hastings

I have no idea how much of this is tactical, and how much is something else like personal friendship. Alcee Hastings is running for Senate in Florida. In a crowded field he'd have a shot at the nomination, but how endorsing Lieberman helps him get that nomination I fail to see. Peter Deutsch will probably get most of the Jewish vote. And the odds of anyone being fooled into thinking Rep. Hastings is a conservative Democrat are pretty low, although he's less predictable and more interesting than most Representatives. I suppose there's some reason to think Lieberman will run strong in Florida, if his campaign has any juice left by the time we have our primary.

It could well be that Hastings just likes Lieberman for some reason. But it's hard to see what that reason could be other than something personal. Lieberman is my least favorite of the major Democratic candiates because of his disgraceful reaction to the courageous decision by Illinois Governor George Ryan to commute the sentences of 167 death row prisoners

“Governor Ryan's action was shockingly wrong,” Mr. Lieberman said … “It did terrible damage to the credibility of our system of justice, and particularly for the victims. It was obviously not a case-by-case review, and that's what our system is all about.”

Sorry, that decision of Governor Ryan's was shockingly right.

Here's Alcee Hastings's political mapping (vintage 2000):



Here's Joe Lieberman's position on the same map:



Hmmm. Less distance than I'd have expected.

Indefinite Lockup (No, Not Gitmo)

The Miami Herald | 11/11/2003 | State's sex predator law goes too far, some argue

The issue is the so-called Jimmy Ryce Act, §§ 394.910-394.931, Fla. Stat.

The statute provides for indefinite confinement of sexual offenders who are currently incarcerated, to continue until they are pronounced ‘cured’ which in the very large majority of cases so far means ‘never’. The statute doesn’t actually say that they must be incarcerated for the sex crime — and the plaintiff in this case committed a rape 20 years ago, was released in 1991, but has been re-arrested since for various crimes of violence.

The Florida Supreme Court has said the Ryce Act is basically constitutional but it has yet to rule on whether the statute can be applied to inmates who committed a sexual offense in the past, but are currently incarcerated for a non-sexual offense.

The 5-year-old law is so sweeping that prosecutors have been using it indefinitely detain people who have served out their sentences for non-sexual crimes. These people, like Tabor, 46, have committed a rape or molestation decades ago, been released, and then re-arrested for some other crime not sexual in nature.

At Monday's hearing in front of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach, judges pointed out that the current interpretation of the law would allow prosecutors to label someone a sexual predator after he was imprisoned for a DUI offense, even if his sex crime dates from the 1980s.

''Is there anything rational about that?'' Judge Larry Klein asked during the hearing. How different is that than rounding up decades-old sex-crime convicts who are just ''out and about?'' he continued.

…

Florida keeps 429 people in a former prison in Arcadia that serves as a treatment center for sexually violent predators.

Many have been locked up since 1999, since the state first opened such a facility.

The state has yet to come up with a clear method of graduating them from treatment and into society. As a result, few have been released.

About 13 other states have similar laws and courts have so far agreed they meet constitutional requirements. Florida's Department of Children & Families, which oversees the state's program, estimates that about 10 percent of the men held at Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia have been detained following prison sentences for non-sexual crimes. Like Tabor, they had long ago served sentences for sex crimes.

If appeals judges decide in Tabor's favor, it would directly affect those cases and many future sexual predator cases.

Of course, the plaintiff in this case is not exactly sympathetic:

Tabor served all his prison time for a rape 20 years ago in a Fort Lauderdale hotel. He was released from prison in 1991 and hasn't been accused of another sexual offense since. He was later arrested for beating up a dog, then, later a cop, among other crimes.

Nevertheless, should he subjected to this:

A psychologists said he had an anti-social personality, but not a sexually deviant personality. Nonetheless, a jury unanimously agreed he was a sexual predator who might commit a future crime if released. The standard for locking someone up as a sexual predator is lower than the ''reasonable doubt'' standard used in criminal cases.

At Tabor's civil commitment trial, jurors also learned about a 1976 case in which Tabor beat a man in Miami with a steel rod shortly before someone else killed the man. They also heard information about a 1979 sorority rape charge against Tabor that was never prosecuted.

Although this verdict has a ring of rough justice to it — Tabor doesn't sound like my ideal sort of neighbor! — the trouble is, the statute is about claims of being a 'sexual predator' not about predictions of future dangerousness generally. Those predictions are hard to make in a scientific fashion, and the Supreme Court hasn't said, and isn't that likely to say, that the fear of mere ordinary dangerousness without a finding of insanity is enough to lock people up after their jail terms have expired. And indeed, that rule would be pretty dangerous.

Katherine Harris, Superstar

The Florida Blog points to this stimulating but very high-bandwidth Flash animation about possible Florida GOP Senate candidate Katherine Harris: GRAND THEFT AMERICA.

I do have two and half beefs with the show. First, I'd have liked footnotes for the statistics. Second, it leaves out my favorite Katherine Harris story, in which she demonstrated ignorance of the laws she was supposed to administer. And (the half), there's an explitive that may offend sensitive viewers, especially the sort not already sickened by electoral manipulations.

The Harris Scenario in the Florida Senate Race

Harris turns eyes toward Senate suggests that if Katherine Harris runs for the GOP senate nomination and gets it, her presence on the ticket will energize Democratic voters. There's a lot to that. Being as amazingly inept as she is, she may turn off Republicans too.

But there is a scenario in which she gets elected. It goes like this: the primaries don't have run-offs — whoever gets the most votes wins. The Democratic primary is going to be crowded, and may become ethnicized, with votes split up between one Hispanic (Miami's own, tarnished, Alex Penelas), one Jewish candidate, Rep. Peter Deutsch, one Afro-American, Rep. Alcee Hastings, and several Anglos. If either Penelas or Hastings were to win the nomination, Harris might win the general election.

Hasting's negatives are being Black, unabashedly liberal, and too smart. I've met him. Boy, is he smart. Very, very impressive, but I don't think that will play well upstate.

Penelas's negatives are complex, and not strictly racial: he's widely considered to have sabotaged the Gore campaign in 2000, and there are also allegations of fundraising irregularities. Worst of all, from the point of view of a state-wide election, Penelas said he would not support the operation of the ordinary legal process in the Elian affair.

Just from an electablity perspective, Harris would be an awful candidate for the Republicans, yes. But, don't underestimate the Florida Democrats' ability to nominate an even less electable candidate.

Patrick Gudridge on the Schiavo Case

The New York Times quotes my colleague Patrick Gudridge's charateristic appraisal of the Florida legislature's hasty action in the Schiavo case. See In Florida Right-to-Die Case, Legislation Puts the Constitution at Issue. I especially like the comment that “It's beautifully badly drafted.”

The Jeb Bush-Arnold Schwarzenegger Connection

The Forida Blog asks (and answers) a real good question, one which will be of particular interest to Californians and to polticial junkies everywhere, “Who is Donna Arduin? And how is it she's advising Arnold Schwarzenegger while on Florida's payroll?”.

Earlier Orlando Sentinel coverage (also via the Florida Blog) contains this jem:

Those who know Arduin predict Californians will soon be handed a conservative diet of program cuts, the use of one-time tax dollars to pay for recurring state services, the privatizing of state work, and tax cuts to stimulate the economy.

Some creative math might also be thrown in to help balance the books, as well as a few clashes with lawmakers, observers said.

So, would that be Bush-Schwarzenegger, or Schwarzenegger-Bush in '08?

Actually, if I had to bet, I'd say Schwarzenegger goes the way of Jesse Ventura.

Horrors of Implementation

South of the Suwannee is an excellent blog on Southern history and politics. And, for all that those of us in South Florida joke that “you have to go North to get to the South,” or “Miami is New York's sixth borough,” the fact remains that much of Florida, and much of its government, is Southern or at least Southern-like.

Today, South of the Suwannee offeres The Harvest of Shame Continues, which includes a pointer to a St. Petersburg Times column on how the state bought up agricultural land for $120 million to prevent agricultural run-offs that had destroyed a lake.

Closing down the farming meant throwing 2,500 very poor people out of work. The state set up a $5 million fund to help them — but implemented the program in a way that ensured almost none got any money, or indeed any help. Local officials instead diverted the money to other projects that don't have anything to do with helping the farmworkers.

Years ago Aaron Wildavsky and Jeffrey Pressman taught us that Implementation is everything. The full title of their book is “Implementation : how great expectations in Washington are dashed in Oakland : or, why it's amazing that federal programs work at all, this being a saga of the Economic Development Administration as told by two sympathetic observers who seek to build morals on a foundation of ruined hopes”. Most of what they wrote is still just as true today; if anything there's less shame about it all as government has been so delegitimated.

In the same vein, today's Miami Herald weighs in with another installment of a long-running local scandal—the failure to do much of anything for our worst neighborhood, Overtown. There, however, at least half the problem seems to be that the private parties relied on by the government just somehow never got around to spending the money in the ways that they promised. Real money has been spent on Overtown, some $70 million over the years, but almost none of this spending has resulted in any actual tangible changes in Overtown:

• “Almost every investor who got a city loan to rehabilitate multifamily housing in the past 20 years went into default. Some of those rehabilitated buildings have now been demolished, and the city has had mixed results in recovering its money.


• “The city's Community Redevelopment Agency, charged with reviving parts of the historic black community, has spent almost $35 million in the past decade without financially spearheading a single major housing development. Only five of its 36 proposed projects have been completed.


• “St. John Community Development Corp., one of the largest nonprofit builders and property owners in Overtown, has not completed a single low-income housing unit during the past 10 years and is not expected to finish any new housing projects before 2004. In the past decade, the city gave St. John $1.7 million in funding for its projects, but the corporation spent only about $300,000 before the city pulled the money, city records show.”

I guess that means we are reaching Stage Four of the six stages of implementation. The six stages, of course, are:

1. Wild Enthusiams
2. Disillusionment
3. Confusion
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Promotion of the Incompetent

Scandal Fatigue?

The Florida blog wonders why so few people, and so few newspapers, seem excited about the highly curious decision of the Florida Pension fund (Jeb Bush, future presidential candidate, proprietor), to bail out the financially unsound Edison Corporation (privatized-schools-'r-us) by buying 96% of its soon to be worthless stock, paying off its debts, and providing a line of credit for operating expenses.

I suppose Governor Bush likes the irony of using public school teachers' pension funds to prop up the folks trying to reduce if not eliminate the public schools. But that doesn't excuse making what appears to be at best a highly risky sweetheart investment, and at worst betraying a fiduciary duty.

Of Pigs and the Ballot Box

In Legalizing Miss Daisy, my item on pigs' rights in Florida, I neglected to mention that pigs have state Constitutional rights in Florida—or rather, pregnant pigs will have state Constitutional rights as of 2008, thanks to an Initiative Petition adopted in the 2002 election.

Article X, § 21 of the Florida Constitution, bans “cruel and inhumane confinement of pigs [helpfully defined as 'any animal of the porcine species'] during pregnancy.” (Full text quoted below.) The initiative that produced this amendment was amazing. I have never been stopped so many times by so many passionate people who wanted my signature. On every occasion I refused, suggesting there were more important issues that we might be spending our time on. Most of the petition gatherers were politely incredulous at this reaction; only one or two were really rude about it.

Despite this example of voter silliness, on balance I actually think that the ballot initiative process has served the state of Florida well. For example, the voters have approved some environmental measures that might well have not gotten through a legislature in which well-funded businesses seem to have a lot of clout.

But the best example is the recent class size initiative.

Schools in Florida, especially South Florida, are beyond overcrowded. Even in rich neighborhoods like mine, classes are taught in trailers, in cramped rooms sub-divided by makeshift partitions that leak noise and light, and in generally cramped and shabby conditions. The voters enacted a cap on class size, codified at Art. IX, , § 1, of the state Constitution that otherwise would never have been approved by our Republican-dominated legislature, and is which is loathed by Jeb Bush because he understands that it will require taxes to pay for it, and new taxes undermine his Presidential ambitions. It's pretty clear that the voters really do want more spending on education (although not as much as the scary and not very plausible numbers Jeb Bush made up to try to defeat it), and that our state government would have left the kids in huge clases but for this. It's also pretty clear that Jeb Bush wants to roll it back. He's spoken of 'devious plans' to kill the measure, and even endorsed a second initiative to roll back the first —an idea that got about zero traction other than from some his own appointees to a state education board.

Here's the text of the pregnant pig amendment:

Article X, § 21
Limiting cruel and inhumane confinement of pigs during pregnancy.—Inhumane treatment of animals is a concern of Florida citizens. To prevent cruelty to certain animals and as recommended by The Humane Society of the United States, the people of the State of Florida hereby limit the cruel and inhumane confinement of pigs during pregnancy as provided herein.

(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to confine a pig during pregnancy in an enclosure, or to tether a pig during pregnancy, on a farm in such a way that she is prevented from turning around freely.

(b) This section shall not apply:

(1) when a pig is undergoing an examination, test, treatment or operation carried out for veterinary purposes, provided the period during which the animal is confined or tethered is not longer than reasonably necessary.

(2) during the prebirthing period.

(c ) For purposes of this section:

(1) “enclosure” means any cage, crate or other enclosure in which a pig is kept for all or the majority of any day, including what is commonly described as the “gestation crate.”

(2) “farm” means the land, buildings, support facilities, and other appurtenances used in the production of animals for food or fiber.

(3) “person” means any natural person, corporation and/or business entity.

(4) “pig” means any animal of the porcine species.

(5) “turning around freely” means turning around without having to touch any side of the pig's enclosure.

(6) “prebirthing period” means the seven day period prior to a pig's expected date of giving birth.

(d) A person who violates this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082(4)(a), Florida Statutes (1999), as amended, or by a fine of not more than $5000, or by both imprisonment and a fine, unless and until the legislature enacts more stringent penalties for violations hereof. On and after the effective date of this section, law enforcement officers in the state are authorized to enforce the provisions of this section in the same manner and authority as if a violation of this section constituted a violation of Section 828.13, Florida Statutes (1999). The confinement or tethering of each pig shall constitute a separate offense. The knowledge or acts of agents and employees of a person in regard to a pig owned, farmed or in the custody of a person, shall be held to be the knowledge or act of such person.

(e) It is the intent of this section that implementing legislation is not required for enforcing any violations hereof.

(f) If any portion of this section is held invalid for any reason, the remaining portion of this section, to the fullest extent possible, shall be severed from the void portion and given the fullest possible force and application.

(g) This section shall take effect six years after approval by the electors.