Bill Koch, the Palm Beach billionaire who criticized his brothers’ support of libertarian causes and has long escaped notice on the national political stage, is emerging as a major supporter of Mitt Romney.Huron Carbon, a subsidiary of Koch’s West Palm Beach-based Oxbow Corp., donated $1 million to Romney’s Restore Our…
Showtime released a 30-minute preview on Saturday to its show The Franchise: A Season With the Miami Marlins, which will chronicle the travails of baseball’s version of a court jester. There’s a scene near the start of the show where loudmouth manager Ozzie Guillen is addressing his new players for…
Florida loves to pass laws solidifying the state’s solid traditional values — there’s the gay marriage ban we put into the state constitution in 2008, the law against sleeping with your roommate, the law against “unnatural” acts, the one completely outlawing commercial phone sex… the list goes on.So, with such a…
There’s been a bunch of news about the proposed immigration detention center in Southwest Ranches over the past week or so, but none of it has been substantive information about, say, whether the contract is actually going through after ICE’s weird about-face last month.As a reminder, that’s when ICE officials…
Florida’s coral reefs have been on the decline for decades, and it looks like things could get a whole lot worse. Seven species of coral found in Florida and Caribbean waters “are extremely likely to go extinct” before the year 2100, and five of those species are the most “imperiled overall,” according to…
The lawyers of Wellington polo mogul John Goodman are trying to get him out of jail while he appeals his March conviction for DUI manslaughter, failure to render aid, and vehicular homicide in connection with the death of 23-year-old Scott Wilson, whom Goodman rammed off the road while he was…
UPDATE, 3 p.m.: Added comment from Bob Hirsh, curator of the Mark Twain Project.The plan for a new Mark Twain commemorative coin includes the phrase “In God We Trust,” a phrase Twain made fun of 150 years ago.Twain had a complicated relationship with religion. In the quote-collection snippets attributed to…
On April 12, a 97-year-old woman was out with her 85-year-old sister, doing what old folks do. Police didn’t say what they were doing, exactly — probably drinking milk shakes and talking about Herbert Hoover or how crazy air travel is or whatever people talk about when they’re pretty much…
Allen West has bulldozed himself so far into Crazy Town that the regular people gawking from outside the fence can barely even see him anymore. He’s back to calling the president “Barack Hussein Obama,” has once again ditched the business suit in favor of a leather vest, and now, in…
Yesterday we told you about the latest charges brought against Tarvess Taylor, a 26-year-old man from Miami Springs who police say mailed five letters containing a powdery substance to the Broward Sheriff’s Office and the Broward County Courthouse last October. He’s set to be arraigned today.Available documents only include tidbits…
Update 5:45 p.m: The jury acquitted Det. Lee Ann Schneider this afternoon.A Riviera Beach detective could spend hundreds of years in prison for helping her boss pad his overtime, while he has escaped testifying at the trial that is largely about him.Detective Lee Ann Schneider is on trial this week…
Just so you know, police just sent out a notice at 5 p.m. today that the Broward Sheriff’s Office SWAT team is conducting a training exercise at the Sun Trust Bank at the intersection of West Hillsboro Boulevard and State Route 441 — the helicopter and heavily armed men are…
Republican Rep. Connie Mack IV’s Senate campaign has hit a bump in the road — a bump shaped like an electorate that doesn’t want to vote for him. He’s come up short in poll after poll, and papers in Florida and elsewhere have pointed it out. Well, one person is…
Making the state’s poorest residents piss in a cup before qualifying to receive welfare benefits was going to save Florida up to $77 million, Rick Scott said when he was campaigning for governor. The goal of the drug tests was “to make sure we don’t waste taxpayers’ money,” Gov. Voldemort…
Update, 4/19: Got comment from Wasserman Schultz’s camp. Added to the story.Original post, 4/17:Between January and the end of March, South Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz donated $73,000 to Democratic campaigns across the country. It’s not surprising — she’s chair of the Democratic National Committee, and $25,000 of that cash…
In February, we brought you 26-year-old Scott Heide’s YouTube dating video, in which he spends three minutes rapping things like “We’ll go to Whole Foods and buy organic grapes” and “I’m not a jerk; I’m a real nice guy/I wear suits, button-ups, and nice ties.” The follow-up interview revealed that he’d…
If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if an old lady plowed a Camry into a supermarket, you won’t believe what YouTube has in store for you.The video after the jump was taken at a Palm Coast Publix store last Saturday. In it, you’ll see a bunch of…
Whenever anyone reports on Congressman Allen West saying something ridiculous, he likes to declare that it makes him “the number-one target of the Democrat Party of the United States of America” because they hate freedom, Abraham Lincoln, and people who tell the truth.But a Politico story yesterday revealed something quite different — not only…
There’s a no-panhandling zone in downtown Miami, and Fort Lauderdale currently prohibits asking for change along the beach. But the Fort Lauderdale City Commission is considering some tough new regulations that would effectively ban panhandling in the entire downtown area. That’s in addition to a proposed $26,000 campaign to tell…
A 26-year-old Miami Springs man is set to be arraigned Friday on charges that he sent five envelopes containing threatening letters and a powdery substance to the Broward Sheriff’s Office and the Broward Courthouse last October, according to newly released documents.Tarvess Taylor sent one powder-filled letter to the courthouse at…
The heyday of pill mills and opiate overdoses in South Florida may be over, but the ill effects of the craze will likely linger for years. One giant bummer of a new study shows that those who opted for opiates as their preferred choice for getting high are 5.71 times more likely to…
James Sanderson had encountered a rare moment of industrial harmony. It was the early 1990s, and the 750 men and women at Georgetown Steel were pumping out wire rods at peak performance. They had an abiding trust in management’s ability to run a smart company. That allegiance was rewarded with…
