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

Martin DyckmanMay 22, 2017

The Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote a powerful case for Donald Trump‘s impeachment, in the style of an open letter to the “Dear Republicans in Congress,” that I was reading to my wife as she prepared breakfast the other morning. At the part where Pitts asked, “Have you no loyalties deeper than party?” Ivy […]

Martin DyckmanMay 19, 2017

There’s a $71-billion federal welfare program that costs more than aid to needy families, more than the earned income tax credit for working families, and almost as much as food stamps, but goes in great measure to people who don’t really need it. I’m on that dole. You may be, too. It’s the home mortgage […]

Martin DyckmanMay 9, 2017

When the Florida Constitution Revision Commission was debating the election of judges 20 years ago, I sat in the gallery to hear my own words used to attack something that my editorials and columns consistently had supported. The issue was whether all trial judges should be chosen exclusively by appointment, without elections, in the same […]

Martin DyckmanMay 2, 2017

Some things in life ought to be above politics, none more so than a parent’s relationship to a child. How this truth was sorely tested in Florida not so long ago is the subject of a new documentary that we should all want to see. CNN reportedly will air it sometime after it begins to […]

Martin DyckmanApril 30, 2017

The courtroom at the Florida Supreme Court seats 164, which may not be enough for all the attorneys, organizations and individuals who have intervened in the unprecedented case of Aramis Ayala v. Rick Scott. Six groups have weighed in as friends of the court on behalf of Ayala, the state attorney for Orange and Seminole […]

Martin DyckmanApril 23, 2017

When former Florida Gov. LeRoy Collins was nominated in 1964 to head the nation’s new Community Relations Service, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond opposed him aggressively because Collins had renounced racial segregation. “…I hope that as long as the good Lord lets me live on this earth I will continue to grow and to recognize […]

Martin DyckmanApril 18, 2017

He would put it off as long as he could, aides said, and trembled when he finally had to sign a black-bordered death warrant. Despite his profound opposition to capital punishment, LeRoy Collins sent 29 men to their doom during his six years as Florida’s governor. He was in anguish each time. To some people, […]

Martin DyckmanApril 9, 2017

It’s a paradox in America’s ongoing experiment with self-government that we depend on the weakest branch of government to defend us from the more powerful ones. The Founders gave a lot of thought and ink to this. Writing in the Federalist, Alexander Hamilton pointed out that the judiciary would always be “least dangerous” to the […]

Martin DyckmanMarch 22, 2017

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Make room in Florida’s small hall of heroes. If John B. Orr Jr., were alive, he would be welcoming Aramis Ayala. When in 1956, while everyone else in Tallahassee was losing their heads over school segregation, Orr was the only legislator who dared to vote against a scheme to perpetuate it. Speaking on the House […]

Martin DyckmanMarch 21, 2017

The home office pulled me out of a meeting at the Florida Capitol. Former Gov. Claude R. Kirk Jr., was on their line, insisting that I be told right now (!) how much he liked an antibusing provision that the Legislature was considering tacking on the budget. He liked it so much, he told the […]

Martin Dyckman

Martin Dyckman: It’s always about the money

Martin Dyckman: Home mortgage interest deduction, the third rail of real tax reform

Martin Dyckman: Judges are not politicians, nor should they play politics

Martin Dyckman: Elian Gonzalez, a painful chapter in Cuban-American history

Martin Dyckman: Florida needs answers on death penalty discretion

Martin Dyckman: On death warrants, Florida governor’s ‘awesome moral responsibility’

Martin Dyckman: Clemency and Florida’s overbearing ‘politics of death’

Martin Dyckman: Who needs strong, independent courts? We do.

Martin Dyckman: Aramis Ayala’s principled stance on death penalty not out of step with history

Martin Dyckman: Before Donald Trump, there was Florida’s Claude Kirk