Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Guest AuthorMarch 27, 2014

We hate children. Oh, stop the breathless denials and heart-tugging, oh-to-the-contrary protestations. We hate our children because we flat out refuse to support public schools. The United States spends $500 billion a year on public kindergarten through 12th grade. We spend $716 billion a year on the military — and that’s after the sequestration and […]

Guest AuthorMarch 11, 2014

Here we are, eight months from Key West’s annual October Fantasy Fest and, right on schedule, we’re talking about naked. More to the point, the definition of naked. Let’s step aside for a moment to bring those who’ve never heard of Fantasy Fest to the party. Cash registers don’t ring much in October. It’s the […]

Guest AuthorJanuary 27, 2014

A couple of gun-owning guys on Big Pine Key, about 30 miles up the Keys from Key West, must have figured it was too far to drive to the mainland to do some weapons practice. They built their own shooting range smack in the middle of the Eden Pines subdivision. Once a week for an […]

Guest AuthorJanuary 21, 2014

With a wry grin and a big swoop of arms, urban forestry manager Karen DeMaria calls herself a tree hugger, Key West style. “So, I’m out there one day,” she tells the Key West Garden Club members, “with my arms all wrapped around one of those huge poincianas and I notice a couple of tourists […]

Guest AuthorJanuary 13, 2014

The world of disappointment is littered with cliches. Sucker born every minute. Too good to be true. Key West has its very own: Ain’t no sweet deals on vacation rentals in paradise. High season starts the day after Christmas and for the next four months shivering mainlanders scour the Internet looking for that sweet deal. […]

Guest AuthorJanuary 12, 2014

So there stands the big guy. Smartly tailored suit, hair with just the right errant wisps. Emotive facial twitches and a stand-up guy winsomeness. Could easily have been the former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich — now serving time for corruption — a couple years ago as he pleaded his case on the national stage. Surely […]

Guest AuthorDecember 16, 2013

OK, deep breath, everyone. One more. Maybe coax a half-hearted smile? There, we’re feeling better. Now, we can perhaps refrain from obsessing about that Fox News-Bill O’Reilly-Jesse Watters silliness that ended up on the front page of The (Key West) Citizen last week. What did we expect from Watters’ World? Surely, we weren’t expecting Jesse […]

Guest AuthorDecember 10, 2013

By most accounts, including his own, 95-year-old Uncle Billy of Clearwater doesn’t need the cane the Veteran’s Administration health care folks insist he use. Until, that is, he did. That’s where I come in. He’s my great uncle, a man I may have met but a couple times decades ago. He’s my mother’s only living relative […]

Guest AuthorOctober 31, 2013

Iguanas and chickens. There was a time when one could start a lively — if not particularly enlightening — Key West cocktail conversation with the invocation of just one of our free-ranging critters. No longer. Iguana and chickens are so last year. We are onto squirrels. You know, those cute things with the fuzzy question-mark […]

Guest AuthorOctober 29, 2013

The nondescript, two-story, white bungalow at 928 N. Main St. in Rockford, Ill., seems an illogical incubator for the 1990s neo-Confederate rhetoric that has shape-shifted into the Tea Party and Evangelical majority within the Republican Party. Today, 928 N. Main is the home of the Rockford Institute, a 37-year-old, internationally recognized, very private, paleoconservative think […]

Tag: Linda Cunningham

Linda Cunningham: Do we love our kids? If so, then let’s fix our schools

Linda Cunningham: Key West grapples with Fantasy Fest exposure

Linda Cunningham: More craziness: a shooting range in a subdivision

Linda Cunningham: Tree hugger is Key West’s ‘keeper of the canopy’

Linda Cunningham: Rent scams: if it sounds too good, it probably is

Linda Cunningham: It helps to be a psychopath to succeed in politics

Linda Cunningham: Fox News makes fun of Key West; islanders not laughing

Linda Cunningham: Kudos to Clearwater cops for tracking down Uncle Billy

Linda Cunningham: Key Westers have moved on from iguanas and chickens to squirrels

Linda Cunningham: Tea Party movement demonstrates unhealed legacy of Civil War