• Don't hold your breath waiting for the state legislature to fix Florida's cockeyed Stand Your Ground law. The National Rifle Association owns too many of the Republican lawmakers who could end the madness

  • Doug Varrieur likes to shoot. Problem is, it's 25 miles to the range, where they charge $45 an hour. What's a gun enthusiast to do? Lucky for him, Varrieur lives in Florida. Just erect a makeshift range in the back yard and fire away. It's perfectly legal

  • In Florida, not much is asked of the lieutenant governor. It's a sham job, devoid of responsibility. Your typical day is spent attending dull functions that the governor chooses to avoid. Unless you end up like Jennifer Carroll

  • Governor Rick Scott was one of those tea party stars whom voters believed had the courage of his convictions to block The Affordable Care Act. But recently, Scott made an abrupt about-face, embracing a three-year expansion of Medicaid coverage

  • Rick Scott campaigned for governor on the promise of running Florida like a big business, but the one big business -- Citizens Property Insurance Corp. -- that Florida actually runs is out of control

  • Even in a state of perpetual sleaze, some dirty deals stink more than others. The most recent is a weird little law approved last spring that allows the South Florida Water Management District to enter the commercial billboard business

  • South Floridians are accustomed to the sight of blue-jacketed federal agents swarming a doctor's office and marching out with boxes of files. Normally this is unpleasant news for the doctor. But it's even worse news for Senator Bob Menendez

  • After less than two years in Congress, Rep. Allen West has raised $15 million to get himself re-elected. That's a mountain of money, but you'd need every dime if your job was to make West look like a calm, responsible person

  • The oddest thing about Florida's new state law to punish companies that do business in Cuba is not that it is an election season gimmick to win Cuban-American votes. It's that it would actually help Cuba's dictatorship

  • The story of American democracy has been the expansion of voting rights to more and more citizens. Yet now, conservatives linked to the Republican Party are systematically seeking to constrict the vote

  • It burns -- I tell you this from experience -- to realize people have judged you by a lower standard, especially when you had the ability to meet the higher one all along. So this 'interim' cannot end soon enough

  • Bill Internicola had to show his papers. He received a letter informing him that he was not a United States citizen; however, he was registered to vote. So Internicola had to prove he is an American

  • Another tight presidential election, another Florida voter purge. This time, Republican Gov. Rick Scott's appointed secretary of state, Ken Detzner, is targeting suspected noncitizens

  • Senator Marco Rubio so gifted at age 40, combines passion for his conservative ideas with a humility that could easily spill over into arrogance, if he didn't have a strong sense of self

  • The bad news is that Florida screwed up another big election. The good news is that it doesn't matter this time. By now, Floridians have stoically accepted our laughingstock role in the Electoral College

  • In a campaign season where lying has become a centerpiece political strategy, there is no greater lie than Florida's Amendment 8

  • A new poll finds that voters in the Sunshine State have not just forgiven former Gov. Charlie Crist for switching parties, they would also vote for him as a Democrat in 2014 if he ran against Gov. Rick Scott, who has seen the popularity that pushed him into office plummet so much so he is now the nation's most unpopular governor

  • Florida Governor Rick Scott recently signed a new election bill that is callously designed to suppress voter turnout, making it harder for many disgruntled Floridians to cast a valid ballot in 2012

  • Of all the ways Florida could blow through $1.25 billion in federal recovery funds, a bullet train is certainly the flashiest. Connecting Tampa, Orlando and Miami by high-speed rail is a scheme that's been chugging around for decades, and the prospects for profitability are the same today as they always were: nil.