Guest Author, Author at Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Guest AuthorSeptember 9, 2013

Many people are still outraged about Miley Cyrus and the bootylicious twerking she did with Robin Thicke on a recent television show, but angry adults won’t make the tackiness go away. Instead, let twerking work for us. Floridians of all ages should get their rumps rolling and their tongues dangling, just as Miley did when […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 9, 2013

When I was a student at St. Joseph school in downtown Lakeland during the Vietnam War, I was recruited routinely to serve as an altar boy for the funerals of local soldiers who had lost their lives in combat. I remember the solitude of the funeral Mass, praying that my three brothers who were serving […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 8, 2013

There’s no official score keeper for these kinds of things so I’ll take a wild guess this is correct: Miami-Dade has produced more indicted mayors than any county in Florida. Surely no county turns them out two or three at a time. Last month the Feds snared the mayors of Homestead, Sweetwater and Miami Lakes […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 8, 2013

Last week, Florida House Criminal Justice Subcommittee Chair Matt Gaetz published a thoughtful and well-reasoned column on Context Florida in defense of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. Gaetz urged readers to recall the state of self-defense law before Stand Your Ground. “Consider an elderly woman in a dimly lit parking lot or a college girl […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 8, 2013

With attacks on the Common Core State Standards for education coming from both sides of the aisle, what are parents to think? I’ve heard Common Core is President Obama’s agenda to indoctrinate our children. I’ve heard it’s an unconstitutional federal takeover. I’ve even heard it’s a scheme to perform experiments nationwide on our next generation. […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 7, 2013

Did the 2012 Florida election have a mysterious appearance of 238,764 ‘Ghost Voters’? That’s what the voter data may indicate. Obama beat Romney by just over 74,000 votes in a surprise Florida election upset. Could the Ghost Voters have been the difference in the presidential election in Florida? In the State of Florida, as in […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 5, 2013

In late August, three teenagers in Oklahoma targeted and murdered a random jogger for no other reason than because they were bored. The story is heartbreaking, maddening, and chilling, and it’s made even more so by their explanation: boredom. Were these kids really saying that their own entertainment was the most important thing in the world, more important […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 5, 2013

“A person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.” Chapter 776.012, […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 5, 2013

Terry Jones’ Sept. 11 picnic checklist: Matches? Check. Lighter fluid? Check. Three thousand Korans? Check. Ignorance and intolerance? Double check. Bring your own hot dogs. Jones – onetime anti-Islamic pastor and now anti-Islamic public nuisance – is up to his old tricks again. Say what you will about him, he is certainly single-minded. He really, […]

Guest AuthorSeptember 5, 2013

Former Gov. Buddy MacKay often included in his speeches a reference to Matthew 16:26: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” He used the quote to illustrate why Florida should protect its natural and cultural treasures or risk losing the very things that make our […]

Guest Author

Mark O’Brien: Florida should encourage twerking for folks of all ages

U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross: No military action in Syria

Doug Clifton: Miami-Dade has lots of crooked mayors, but Broward had Lomelo

Gregory Newburn: Revisiting Florida’s “10-20-Life” law

Wendy Howard: Stop bickering and support Common Core standards

Bob West: “Ghost voters” in the 2012 Florida election

Nathan Holic: When we say we’re bored, what are we really saying about ourselves?

Matt Gaetz: Keep divisive politics out of review of ‘Stand Your Ground’

Cary McMullen: The unquenchable vengeance of Terry Jones

Jim McClellan: The Cultural Cost of Florida’s Net Ban