Category Archives: Florida

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.

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.

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 …

Continue reading →

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.

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)