Here’s the deal: West Palm Beach’s Downtown Development Authority, with the aid and assistance of WPB City Commissioner Shanon Materio and her family, has put together a summer series of work by two artists and one art dealer. One of the artists, glass sculptor Rick Eggert, is based in Martin…

The sun came out after a long day of rain Sunday evening, lighting the stained glass windows of Hill Top Missionary Baptist church in Riviera Beach, for a rally in memory of Trayvon Martin. Well past nightfall, Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, spoke, but those present were still ablaze with quiet…

Marine scientist John Englander comes across as calm, cool, collected, and concerned. In print and in interviews, he explains, in uncomplicated, matter-of-fact language, what the future holds for coastal dwellers like us if nothing is done to address climate change. In a word, disaster. See also: Keys Hospitals Submerged by…

It takes a special kind of chutzpah to flack for the remains of a publicly funded train wreck. This is particularly true when you bear a major share of the responsibility for it. West Palm Beach City Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell has that special quality. Mitchell was a cheerleader for flim-flam…

A campaign is underway to have Florida Democrats — both the party and elected officials — pledge to refuse campaign finance contributions from global private prison operator GEO Group, the Boca Raton-based company whose history includes a record notorious for human rights abuses. See also: – FAU Students, Faculty, and…

The FAU faculty senate’s academic freedom committee has released its first report on the school’s “Step on Jesus” controversy of last spring. Meticulous and detailed, its conclusions are a blistering indictment of the administration of former school President Mary Jane Saunders. See also: – In Defense of FAU Instructor Deandre…

The latest bugaboo troubling local Tea Party groups is Seven50, a long-range (50-year) plan for sustainable development in the seven South Florida counties from Indian River through the Keys. Though the planners of Seven50 have no enforcement power whatsoever, the Tea Party sees the hidden hand of a “tyrannical” federal…

Florida State Sen. Maria Sachs is back in the headlines again, dogged by questions about where she really resides and what that means for her eligibility to represent District 34. She isn’t the first South Florida Dem to run afoul of residency issues lately, almost as if some foul curse…

That guy Glenn Greenwald? The one who helped spill all those secrets about the gub’mint keeping tabs on everybody’s electronic communications? Like everything else weird in the news, there’s a Florida connection, specifically Lauderdale Lakes in Broward County, where the highly controversial blogger/journalist spent his youth. See also: – Glenn…

That didn’t take long. Within days of being handed a political hot potato — the task of investigating antigay, anti-Muslim Facebook posts made by Roxanna Trinka, a director of the Research Park at FAU — Palm Beach County Mayor Steven Abrams bungled it, solidifying the county’s reputation for official ineptitude…

In a promising start to the post-Saunders era, FAU today renewed the contract of Dr. Deandre Poole to teach summer and fall classes, according to faculty close to the matter. It is a decision likely to draw fire from the political right, including Gov. Rick Scott. See also: – In…

An important early test of FAU’s leaders in the post-Saunders era will be the decision whether to renew the teaching contract of Dr. Deandre Poole. Dr. Poole was placed on leave in March after a dispute arose over his use of a communications class exercise in which students were asked…

The governing body of the Research Park at FAU will refer the matter of its board member Roxanna Trinka’s anti-Muslim and anti-gay Facebook posts to the Palm Beach County Commission, which appointed her to the board. See also: – Facebook Page Reveals FAU Adviser Fears Muslim Law, Gay Rights -…

FAU administrators today distanced themselves from the Islamophobic and homophobic Facebook posts, first reported here, of Boca Raton businesswoman Roxanna Trinka, an adviser to the school’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. See also: – Facebook Page Reveals FAU Adviser Fears Muslim Law, Gay Rights…

At the very moment public hysteria about government snooping has reached a new, fevered pitch, the radical environmentalists of Everglades Earth First! have decided to hold a very public workshop on the art and science of direct action. Non-violent protest that may involve civil disobedience, direct action often takes the…

Roxanna Trinka is President/CEO of a company called Baseline Engineering. She’s also a Director of the Research Park at Florida Atlantic University, an advisor to the school’s College of Engineering, and served on Palm Beach County’s Criminal Justice Commission. It’s a free country. So there’s no reason Trinka shouldn’t be…

We sure do love us some GOP self-destruction. And according to local right-wing website Bizpac Review, Palm Beach’s Republican Party is tearing at its own innards like a frenzied jackal, “cash-strapped and crippled by poor fundraising efforts,” key leaders unhappy with Chairman Ira Sabin’s orders to chill on the birther…

Ever vigilant, Florida’s Tea Party stalwarts have (metaphor alert) a new target in their crosshairs: Common Core. Depending on whom you believe, Common Core is either 1) “a set of standards that stops the regurgitation of facts and starts the critical analysis and problem solving in our classrooms” or 2)…