A federal judge in Pensacola has ruled the federal health care law unconstitutional in a lawsuit filed by former Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum last year and joined by 25 other states.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said a provision requiring people to buy health insurance by 2014 or face penalties violates the Constitution. A judge in Virginia made a similar ruling last year, but Vinson went further and said the provision can’t be severed from the rest of the legislation and therefore the entire law must be struck down.
Two other federal judges have upheld the insurance requirement in the health care law, so the next step is likely to be the U.S. Supreme Court.
Freshman U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, is one of 19 Republican House members being targeted by a new Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee blitz of radio ads, automated phone calls and Internet advertising.
Here’s the text of the radio ad: “Did you know Congressman Allen West has a plan to cut education and research by 40 percent that will cost hundreds-of-thousands of jobs and make America less competitive? Tell West to choose jobs.”
The 40 percent figure is based on a nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of where spending would be in 2021 under the GOP plan compared to current levels adjusted for inflation over the next decade. For the jobs claim, the DCCC cites a recent radio interview by liberal Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
Gov. Rick Scott will attend the annual Alfalfa Club dinner in Washington tomorrow night after holding a series of meetings and appearing on national television.
The dinner, a black-tie affair highlighted by a light-hearted roast of politicians, is the club’s apparent only purpose for existence and is held each year on the last Saturday in January in honor of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s birthday.
The Alfalfa Club membership, restricted to about 200, is comprised of the nation’s elite politicians and businessmen.
The name of the club, according to Politico, is “in honor of a plant known to do anything for a drink.”
Scott, a near teetotaler, met with U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Education Secretary Arne Duncan today.
DEERFIELD BEACH — About 400 people turned out for new U.S. Rep. Allen West’s first town hall meeting Thursday night and gave the Republican lawmaker a standing ovation.
West presented an array of graphics illustrating the nation’s fiscal problems and said “We cannot continue to let big three entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – run on autopilot.”
After chairing the Enterprise Florida board meeting in downtown Tallahassee this morning, Gov. Rick Scott quietly fired the public-private economic development agency’s president John Adams, the governor’s office confirmed.
Adams, who earned $293,400 last year, was hand-picked for the job five years ago by then-Gov. Jeb Bush.
Scott’s move, which will require some action by the board but which his office will take effect immediately, took Enterprise Florida Board member Hal Valeche by surprise.
“I’m shocked. That’s just completely out of the blue,” said Valeche, president of York Street Capital Advisers, who served on Scott’s economic development transition team. “Wow. Boy. When I left the hotel, he was still there. I said goodbye to him and nothing had happened.”
Valeche said severing Adams’ contract was not discussed during the board meeting.
“It just seems very odd,” he said.
Florida TaxWatch CEO Dominic Calabro was also unaware of Adams’ firing, but it would not be an unusual move for the new governor.
“He’s going to be the chief economic officer. So it stands to reason that he should feel comfortable with the CEO of Enterprise Florida or whoever’s going to serve in a similar capacity,” Calabro said. “I’m not saying I agree with it. I don’t know enough. I think John’s served well in the area of economic development for the past four years.”
Gov. Rick Scott is holding fast to his support for an Arizona-style immigration reform for Florida despite recent comments from state GOP leaders, including Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, that it could be bad for business.
Scott, who campaigned on the issue, said this morning that law enforcement officers should be able to ask for immigration documentation, including during routine traffic stops.
“The federal government needs to secure our borders. We need to have an overall immigration policy that is logical and that works and is fair to Americans and fair to people that want to come to our country that we invite to come to our country,” Scott told reporters this morning.
“At the same time, I also believe that if you’re in our country and you do something illegally, you should be able to be asked just like I get asked for my ID if I ever get a traffic ticket, they should be asked if they’re legal or not. I clearly don’t believe in racial profiling,” Scott said.
Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said yesterday he does not favor an Arizona-style law.
And Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, fresh from a decade in Congress trying to address the immigration issue, said he believes an Arizona-style law would be bad for tourism and finance in Florida.
Gov. Rick Scott proposes the creation of a new Department of Commerce coordinate the state’s economic development efforts, the new governor told a meeting of the public-private Enterprise Florida this morning.
Scott was skimpy on details but said that the economic development czar would work in his executive office.
The new department would be a combination of the Agency for Workforce Innovation, Enterprise Florida and the governor’s Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development, Scott said.
Scott’s indicated he’s intent on shrinking state government, proposing to slash the state’s workforce by 5 percent and combine or do away with certain agencies altogether.
A Commerce Department isn’t a new idea. Back in 1996, the legislature canned the department and merged it into Enterprise Florida. Jeb Bush once led that agency under former Gov. Bob Martinez.
Unlike some previous governors, Scott stayed at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Tallahassee for the duration of the three-hour meeting, drawing kudos from the crowd.
Three months after winning her Palm Beach-Broward seat, state Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, is hitting up donors for 2012 reelection cash at events next week in Palm Beach and Broward counties.
The host committee for Bogdanoff’s Tuesday night event at McCormick & Schmick’s restaurant in West Palm Beach includes Palm Beach County Commissioner Steven Abrams, state Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, state Reps. Bill Hager, Pat Rooney and George Moraitis and Mayors Jose Rodriguez of Boynton Beach and Susan Whelchel of Boca Raton.
Bogdanoff also has a Feb. 3 fund-raiser in Fort Lauderdale at the Tripp Scott law firm.
Bondi issued the emergency order making the drug – Methylenedioxypyrovalerone or MDPV – illegal in time for spring break in the Panhandle, where law enforcement officials say they’ve seen a rash of overdoses caused by the drug.
The drug allegedly makes “you think you are seeing monsters and makes you think you can fly,” Bondi told reporters this afternoon.
“There are a lot of balconies out there,” she said.
The drugs, sold under the name Vanilla Sky, Ivory Wave, Ocean Burst and Bolivian Bath, are sold at convenience stores, head shops and other retail outlets in malls, Bondi said, for $30 and up.
The substance is usually snorted and sometimes injected, Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen, who brought the drug to Bondi’s attention last week, said.
McKeithen said it 11 law enforcement officials were unable to control a man high on the drug who “tore the radar unit out of the vehicle with his teeth.” In another incident, a young woman tried to behead her mother with a machete because she believed she was a monster, McKeithen said.
Bondi’s emergency order will last 90 days, giving lawmakers time to outlaw the bath salts during the legislative session that begins March 8.
Bondi said she received a letter from McKeithen Friday and issued the order today.
“I frankly had a nightmare last night that someone was going to overdose on this and we hadn’t done anything,” she said.
Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, stood beside Bondi at the press conference late this afternoon, said that lawmakers would “act quickly” to permanently ban the substance.
He praised Bondi for her quick action. “This is what leadership is all about.”
In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal outlawed the bath salts by an emergency order after the state’s poison center received more than 125 calls in the last three months of 2010.
Martin County Sheriff Robert Crowder is a Republican who crossed party lines to endorse Democrat Alex Sink over Republican Rick Scott in the 2010 race for governor. Crowder appeared in an ad criticizing Scott for invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 75 times during a deposition from 2000 involving a lawsuit against his former hospital chain.
Crowder said he met Scott for the first time Tuesday night and came away impressed.
“I trust him…I think he’ll do well,” Crowder said today after meeting Scott at a Florida Sheriffs Association gathering in Amelia Island and talking briefly with the new governor.
Scott was working the room before a dinner. Said Crowder: “He had this little smile on his face. I said ‘I guess you know who I am’….He’s not holding grudges. He wants to move forward.”
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters in Washington this morning that he won’t be joining the Senate’s new Tea Party Caucus. Rubio, a favorite of the tea party movement, has voiced reservations in the past about giving inside-the-Beltway formalization to a decentralized, grass-roots movement.
Lest anyone question Rubio’s tea party cred, the rookie Senator’s first piece of legislation is co-sponsorship of a Senate version of the House-passed bill repealing the 2010 health care law.
President Barack Obama threw out a few items in his state of the union speech that sounded as if they could have been lobbed by Gov. Rick Scott.
Obama’s already launched a review of rules and regulations with an eye on getting rid of those that hamstring businesses – the same thing the Republican governor started on his first day in office earlier this month.
And the president plans a massive reorg of the federal government, merging agencies to get rid of redundancies, another plan of Scott’s.
But Scott’s statement issued just after the conclusion of Obama’s hour-long talk didn’t mention any similarites. Instead, Scott derided the president’s “Sputnik moment” while making some big promises about his own budget, scheduled to come out Feb. 7 – three days later than he was supposed to deliver it to state lawmakers.
House and Senate leaders will hold at least 20 public hearings throughout the state regarding the drawing of Florida’s legislative and Congressional seats, Senate Reapportionment Committee Chairman Don Gaetz announced today.
House Speaker Dean Cannon, who yesterday asked to join the lawsuit challenging one of the amendments approved by voters barring lawmakers from drawing districts that favor incumbents or parties, has yet to appoint his members to the House’s redistricting committee.
But Gaetz said that should happen soon and that the House and Senate will hold joint meetings around the state to get the public’s input on the new districts.
Florida lawmakers should be able to begin drawing new districts as early as the end of March when the block-by-block census data is scheduled to be released.
Lawmakers draw the new districts for legislative and Congressional seats every 10 years.
But they’ll have to do it differently this year based on two amendments overwhelmingly approved by voters in November that bar lawmakers from drawing districts that favor incumbents or parties.
Lawmakers fiercely opposed the amendments last year and tried to put their own redistricting amendment on the ballot to counteract Amendments 5 and 6, or the “Fair Districts” amendments, placed on the ballot through the petition initiative process. But the Florida Supreme Court threw out the legislature’s amendment, ruling it was misleading to voters.
The House of Representatives today passed a resolution that calls for limiting non-security spending to fiscal 2008 levels for the remaining eight months of the current fiscal year. It passed 256-to-165, with 17 Democrats joining 239 Republicans in support.
U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, sent out a statement hailing the measure as saving $60 billion and ending the federal government’s “spending spree.”
Three minutes later, U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, sent out a statement blasting the resolution as “political theater” and lacking “seriousness.”
UPDATE: A spokesman for Gov. Rick Scott responded to his withdrawal of redistricting amendments for federal approval.
“Consistent with Governor Scott’s effort to assess the rules, regulations and contracts of the previous administration, he has withdrawn the letter requesting a DOJ review of Amendments 5 and 6. Census data has not been transmitted to the state yet and the Legislature will not undertake redistricting for months, so this withdrawal in no way impedes the process of redrawing Florida’s legislative and congressional districts,” Scott spokesman Brian Hughes said in an e-mail.
In his first few days on the job, Gov.Rick Scott quietly withdrew the state’s request for a federal go-ahead to move forward with two redistricting amendments overwhelmingly approved by voters in November.
Scott sent the request to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has to sign off on any changes to Florida elections laws affecting voters’ rights, on Jan. 7, just two days after he announced the reappointment of Department of State Secretary Kurt Browning. After Browning left Gov. Charlie Crist’s administration last year, he headed up a political committee that fought Amendments 5 and 6, aka the “Fair Districts” amendments. Crist’s temporary secretary of the state department submitted the application for “preclearance” to DOJ officials on Dec. 10
Scott’s move, offered with no explanation to the feds and no public announcement, left Democrats and supporters of the amendments hopping mad, and the state’s top Democrat is demanding Scott resubmit the preclearance application.
Gov. Rick “Let’s Get to Work” Scott won’t roll out his first budget on time.
Scott asked lawmakers for a one-day delay to hand over his budget proposal, due Friday, Feb. 4. House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, and Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, signed off on Scott’s request, meaning the governor has the weekend to finish before presenting it to the legislature on Monday, Feb. 7.
Lawmakers are anxiously awaiting Scott’s budget plan as they wrestle with an anticipated $3.62 billion budget hole, not including any money they might sock away for emergencies.
GOP leaders in the House and Senate have been skeptical of Scott’s promise that he can cut spending enough to close the spending gap and even move forward with his plans to reduce property taxes and lower corporate income taxes.
U.S. Reps. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, and Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, plan to sit with each other at Tuesday night’s State of the Union speech in Washington, their offices confirmed this afternoon.
In the aftermath of the Jan. 8 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., several lawmakers have discussed making a bipartisan show of unity and civility by sitting alongside one another without the traditional partisan separation when President Obama delivers his speech to a joint session of Congress.
Florida’s two Senators — Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Marco Rubio — have already announced plans to sit next to each other.
The Deutch-Rooney pairing is contingent on their ability to find each other Tuesday night and then locate a pair of seats together. The House chamber can be “kind of a madhouse” before a presidential address, Rooney said.
U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, called the civility effort “nice,” but said he’s “planning to sit wherever I can sit.”
U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, said he’ll honor tradition by sitting on the Republican side of the chamber.
Nick Loeb and Sofia Vergara talk politics with Billy Bush on the Golden Globes red carpet in this Access Hollywood video.
Palm Beach County has seen one rich guy with Hollywood ties enter a U.S. Senate race. But wealthy Delray Beacher Nick Loeb, considering a 2012 GOP run for Sen. Bill Nelson’s seat, tells The Palm Beach Post he’s nothing like 2010 Dem candidate Jeff Greene.
Mary McCarty in prison khaki with husband Kevin during one of his recent visits to the federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
Former Palm Beach County commissioner Mary McCarty, serving time for a felony federal honest services fraud conviction, sat with a Palm Beach Post reporter last week for an exclusive interview at the minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
She talked about feeling “entitled” to play by her own set of rules when she was a commissioner, about her daily routine at the prison camp, about former colleagues/felons Tony Masilotti and Warren Newell, about the recent Supreme Court decision that narrowed the honest services fraud law and about the questions that arise among her fellow inmates when they see the avalanche of mail McCarty gets.
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