The revelation today that the Department of Justice secretly seized business and personal phone records of Associated Press journalists drew criticism from former TV journalist and freshman Rep. Trey Radel, R-Fort Myers.

“It’s appalling, it’s the most disgusting use of authority we’ve seen in a while,” Radel told Buzzfeed.com. “For me, it’s just scary.”

Radel said the DOJ records seizure, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups and the scrubbing of terrorist references from initial talking points on the September Benghazi attack are all part of a “culture of protecting this administration politically at any and all cost,” Radel told Buzzfeed.

The White House was not aware of the IRS targeting or the DOJ phone records seizure, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

According to a press pool report this evening, Carney said: ““Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP. We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department. Any questions about an ongoing criminal investigation should be directed to the Department of Justice.”

Former President George W. Bush, in an ABC News interview, says his younger brother Jeb Bush would be a “marvelous” candidate if the former Florida governor decides to run for president in 2016.

“He would be a marvelous candidate if he chooses to do so. He doesn’t need my counsel because he knows what it is, which is ‘Run!’ ” Bush told Diane Sawyer. “But whether he does or not, it’s a very personal decision.”

The former president said the possibility of a Jeb Bush-Hillary Clinton contest in 2016 will make for “a fantastic photo here” at today’s opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University near Dallas. Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are expected to be on hand, along with former presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio‘s attempts to get conservatives to support — or at least not vehemently oppose — immigration reform continued Tuesday night with an appearance on Sean Hannity‘s Fox News show.

Rubio played on the right’s dislike of President Barack Obama, arguing that the administration has done a poor job of handling of border security and contending that passing immigration reform would force the administration to get tougher.

“I think people have a good reason to be skeptical about immigration reform at the outset, because this administration has not done a good job of enforcing the law. What I have found over the last few days is that one of the biggest obstacles we face here is a lack of trust in the administration’s willingness to enforce the law,” Rubio told Hannity.

“But my point is, if we don’t do anything, that’s exactly what you are leaving in place. The only way that I know how to make the administration, this administration or a future administration, secure the border, is to pass a law that forces them to secure the border. And that’s what I’m working on, and that’s what our bill does. It requires them to spend upwards of 5.5 billion dollars on a border security plan, on a fencing plan. In addition to that, it requires the full implementation of e-verify. It requires the full implementation of an entry-exit tracking system. That is just so much better than what we have in place right now. And so, if we don’t do anything, or if we can’t get those things done, then what stays in place is what we have right now. How is that good for us?”

After most Senate Republicans and a few red-state Democrats blocked legislation to expand background checks for gun buyers last week, GOP megadonor Al Hoffman blasted those in his own party who oppose “reasonable” gun control.

Hoffman, a former Republican National Committee finance chair and ambassador to Portugal who lives in North Palm Beach, says Democratic President Barack Obama is right on gun issues and the GOP could suffer because of it in 2014.

“I think this has given Obama a perfect position, a perfect ploy to claim the higher ground. And the higher ground is based upon appealing to the grass roots … who feel that the majority of Americans want reasonable gun control,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman’s analysis is disputed by many, including Tallahassee-based Republican strategist Rick Wilson, who maintains that even though polls show most Americans support background checks, most of those voters don’t regard gun control as one of their top issues.

Regardless, Hoffman’s opinion carries some weight within the GOP. He has personally given more than $272,000 to Republicans over the last five years and helped the GOP raise far more than that. And Hoffman says he’ll be reluctant to raise money in the future for candidates who don’t share his views on guns.

If a Republican who opposes “reasonable” gun measures comes to him for financial help, Hoffman said, “it would be a tough sell for them…I would have to really think hard about it before I would choose to support them financially.”

Read about it in this week’s Politics column.

Republican mega-financier Al Hoffman of North Palm Beach is at it again.

The former Republican National Committee finance chairman and George W. Bush-appointed ambassador to Portugal rankled many conservatives in 2011 when he took to the op-ed page of the New York Times to urge the GOP to accept higher taxes as part of a “grand bargain” on the deficit.

Now Hoffman has written a letter to House Speaker John Boehner urging him to support “reasonable gun control legislation.”

In an interview today, Hoffman said the gun issue could hurt Republicans at the polls.

“I believe that the Republican Party — and I’m a conservative Republican — I believe the Republican Party faces irrelevancy if we as a party don’t gain a little rational nexus as far as gun control is concerned. I personally believe President Obama is right on the issue of gun control…We really ought to follow what the American public wants and there’s a clear consensus that they’re in favor of stricter gun control,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman said too many Republicans fear being targeted in primaries if they run afoul of the National Rifle Association and its executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre.

“We’re being terrorized by the NRA and Wayne LaPierre right now,” Hoffman said. But Hoffman said siding with the NRA now could give Democrats a weapon against Republicans in the 2014 elections.

“Obama has a great shot at getting a lot of Republicans defeated in the next election if he doesn’t get his gun legislation,” Hoffman said.

This week’s Politics column explains why state Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, and other lawmakers circled March 4 on their calendars.

Nearly $1.1 million in campaign cash flowed to House and Senate incumbents on that date, with Sens. Maria Sachs, D-Boca Raton, and Joe Negron, R-Stuart, leading local recipients.

Also this week: U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, supports President Barack Obama 93 percent of the time, but he’s taking the lead in opposing one Obama proposal.

And find out what it cost the Palm Beach County GOP to raise $180,000 at a February Lincoln Day dinner at Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago.

Read all about it by clicking here.

Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, stated her opposition to President Barack Obama‘s proposal to use a slightly less-generous inflation calculation for Social Security increases during a teleconference with seniors from her district Wednesday night.

Frankel’s office arranged for automated phone calls to be placed to about 55,000 senior households in her Palm Beach-Broward District 22. About 6,600 people ended up on the hourlong call, Frankel spokeswoman Sarah Rothschild said.

Max Richtman, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, was Frankel’s guest on Wednesday and spent nearly as much time talking to Frankel’s constituents as Frankel did.

Obama’s budget plan, released Wednesday, calls for slowing down future Social Security benefit increases by modifying the formula used to calculate cost-of-living increases. The “chained CPI” formula would save an estimated $130 billion over 10 years.

Frankel and Richtman both spoke against the idea. Some have touted the chained CPI as part of a “grand bargain” with Republicans on deficit issues, but Frankel disagreed.

“I’m for compromise,” Frankel said. “I’m just not for compromise that will hurt our senior citizens.”

Some tweets from the event can be found on Twitter at @gbennettpost.

UPDATE: President Obama reacted to Gov. Rick Scott’s demands that the federal government reimburse Florida more than $100 million for two port projects.

“The President believes that the Port of Miami can enhance the competitiveness of workers and businesses throughout the region and in the nation as a whole. That’s why the Administration has taken a number of steps to fund and facilitate improvements at the Port, including a $340 million TIFIA loan to help finance the Port of Miami tunnel project and a $23 million TIGER grant to restore freight rail service between the Port and the Florida East Coast Railway, as well as completing the permitting for the Port’s dredging project on an expedited timeline last August as part of the Administration’s push to cut red tape around infrastructure construction,” White House spokeswoman Joanna Rosholm said in an e-mail.

Gov. Rick Scott used President Obama’s visit Friday to the Port of Miami to tout his own jobs record and demand that president “step up to the plate” and pledge to reimburse the feds’ share of ports funding.

“We’re certainly glad President Obama’s coming to the Port of Miami tomorrow but he’s late to the party on Florida port investments,” Scott said in a conference call with reporters this morning.

Florida’s spent $425 million on ports since Scott took office, including fronting the federal share of $75 million for the Port of Miami and $36 million for the Port of Jacksonville, according to Scott.

“We could not wait for the federal government to come to the table with their share of the project,” Scott, who is running for reelection, said.

Obama is visiting the Miami port and will speak about the economy, according to a White House press release.

Sounding like someone on the campaign trail, Scott repeated his recent mantra of comparing Florida’s current economic and jobs state of affairs compared to “the four years before I became governor” without naming his predecessor Charlie Crist. Crist, who switched parties and is now a Democrat, is mulling another run for governor next year.

And he took a swipe at Obama and Congress while saying he “welcomed” the president.

“The federal government, they keep raising regulations. Permitting time takes longer, raising taxes, spending all these things. We’ve done way better than they have,” Scott said. Obama expedited federal infrastructure reviews last year for both the Miami and Jacksonville ports. Right now, they ought to reimburse us the money we’re spending on our ports…so we can create more jobs.”

Serial presidential adviser and CNN political analyst David Gergen kicked off the lecture series at former Sen. George Lemieux‘s new Center for Public Policy at Palm Beach Atlantic University on Thursday night, speaking to a crowd of about 400.

(Click here to read a news story about the event.)

Gergen — who advised Republican Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford and Democratic President Bill Clinton — revealed that he voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, but not in 2012. But Gergen said he didn’t vote for Republican Mitt Romney last year.

“I didn’t vote Republican this last time around,” Gergen said during a question-and-answer session with LeMieux as both sat on leather chairs in the school’s DeSantis Family Chapel. “I voted for Mayor (Michael) Bloomberg, a write-in, because he’s my kind of leader. He’s very socially liberal but he’s very tough-minded on the fiscal side and I think he’s been a great leader.”

Florida voters favor Democrat Hillary Clinton as a 2016 presidential candidate over Sunshine State Republicans Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released this morning.

By a 51-to-44 percent margin, Floridians say they support “stricter gun control laws,” with 91 percent favoring background checks for all gun buyers, 56 percent favoring an ban on “assault weapons” and 53 percent favoring a ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

When asked “Who do you think better reflects your views on guns, President Obama or the National Rifle Association?” 45 percent chose the NRA and 44 percent chose Obama — a virtual tie considering the poll’s 3.1 percent margin of error.

By a 57-to-33 percent margin, Florida voters said gun ownership “does more to protect people from becoming victims of crime” rather than “put people’s safety at risk.” By a 60-to-31 percent margin, respondents said allowing the ownership of assault weapons makes the country more dangerous.

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West Palm Beach eye doctor and Democratic donor Salomon Melgen, whose ties to New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez have come under scrutiny, also posed for a picture with President Barack Obama at a 2010 fundraiser and flew Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to Boston on Melgen’s private plane, Politico.com is reporting.

Melgen’s office was raided by federal agents in January in what appears to be an investigation of his Medicare billing practices. He has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing.

Menendez has made at least three trips to a Melgen home in the Dominican Republic on Melgen’s plane and didn’t pay for two of the flights until this year, after New Jersey Republicans had filed an ethics complaint. Menendez has gone to bat for Melgen in a dispute between the doctor and the federal government over Medicare billing. Menendez has also urged State and Commerce Department officials to press the Dominican Republican to revive a port security contract that would benefit a company the Melgen has an ownership stake in.

The Melgen-Menendez relationship first drew attention last year when the conservative Daily Caller website published allegations that Menendez consorted with underage prostitutes at Melgen’s home in the Dominican Republic. Menendez has said he’s the victim of a conservative “smear campaign,” and Dominican police recently said three women making the allegations were paid to lie.

OXON HILL, Md. — Part-time Palm Beacher and celebrity capitalist Donald Trump called entitlement and immigration reform losing issues for the GOP, said Republicans lack a leader to energize voters and didn’t rule out running for president in 2016 during a visit to the Conservative Political Action Conference today.

During a wide-ranging speech and wider-ranging session with reporters, Trump took a shot at rising Republican star Bobby Jindal and said Paul Ryan was a poor choice for Mitt Romney‘s running mate in 2012. But Trump put in a good word for soda-regulating New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a favorite target of conservatives.

Trump got in a few plugs for his golf courses around the world, including a new one in Scotland (“they’re saying it may be the greatest course in the world”) and the recently purchased Doral Country Club in Miami (“I’m going to make that place incredible.”)

He also mentioned his personal ties to everyone from Newt Gingrich (“He’s a member of a great club right down the road that I happen to own, so I love Newt”) to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (“Chris is a very good friend of mine. I have a lot of property in New Jersey.”) to OPEC ministers (“I hate to tell you, they’re friends of mine, I know them all.”)

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Gov. Rick Scott’s task to get his push for Medicaid expansion through the Legislature got a bit tougher Tuesday — with House Speaker Will Weatherford openly deriding the plan and accusing the Obama administration of trying to “buy off” states.

“I am opposed to Medicaid expansion because I believe it crosses the line of the proper role of government,” Weatherford told the House in an address on the session’s opening day.

“I believe it forces Florida to expand a broken system that we have been battling Washington to fix, and I believe it will ultimately drive up the cost of health care,” he added.

Weatherford said the Obama administration is trying to “buy off” states with Medicaid cash, that for Florida would amount to $26 billion over the next decade. Florida would have to put up $3 billion for the aid, which is seen as helping extend health coverage
to about 1 million of the state’s 4 million uninsured.

Scott, however, has said that expanding Medicaid for at least the next three years – when the federal government promises to fully finance it – makes sense for Florida.

 

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Congress should stay in session through the weekend and for however long it takes to agree to a plan to replace the automatic spending cuts that are scheduled to take effect Friday, a trio of South Florida Democratic freshmen said this afternoon.

U.S. Reps. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach; Patrick Murphy, D-Jupiter; and Joe Garcia, D-Miami held a conference call to promote their “No Fix, No Break” proposal and to reiterate Democratic demands that the looming cuts be replaced by a mixture of tax hikes and spending reductions.

Republicans say taxes shouldn’t be on the table after Congress approved a 10-year, $600 billion package of tax hikes on upper-income filers in January. GOP leaders say the automatic spending cuts, which are called “sequestration,” should be replaced with other, more targeted cuts.

When the House was out of session last week, Frankel and Murphy attended a Palm Beach County commission meeting in which Commissioner Paulette Burdick scolded leaders of both parties for spending too little time in Washington.

“Get to work,” said Burdick, who said she was conveying a message from her constituents.

Frankel said she disagreed with the House’s decision to adjourn today and return next week.

“We want our folks back home to know that although we consider when we go back to our district we work, it’s not vacation, the fact of the matter is we disagree with the decision to leave here today,” said Frankel, who plans to return to her Palm Beach-Broward district for work-related events while the House is not in session.

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Gov. Rick Scott lashed out Wednesday at President Obama, saying it is up to the White House to resolve the congressional deadlock over looming budget cuts that could slash millions of dollars from Florida’s economy.

A week ago, Scott antagonized many supporters within his own Republican Party for embracing Medicaid expansion, which Obama envisioned as a key component of the Affordable Care Act. But Scott this week has been apparently trying to bolster his conservative bonafides – with the budget cuts called sequestration emerging as his latest platform.

“If your administration fails to do its job to responsibly managed the budget, thousands of Floridians will lose their jobs under sequestration,” Scott said Wednesday in a letter to the president. The italics are Scott’s own.

“There is no doubt that budget cuts must be made at the national level, just as we do here at the state level,” Scott added. “But it is the responsibility of the administration to administer spending reductions responsibly. Instead of cutting with a scalpel, your sequestration process is a meat cleaver.”

In 2011, as part of a last-minute agreement to avoid defaulting on the nation’s debt for the first time, Congress and the White House formed a bipartisan committee to develop a comprehensive plan to cut how much money the nation owes.

The deal included a clause that essentially said that if that committee could not reach a deal, the government would face $85 billion in arbitrary and painful cuts to both domestic and defense programs this year.

The White House has said that if another budget deal is not reached by Friday, about 750 teachers and aides could be laid off in Florida; 31,000 Department of Defense workers would be furloughed; 1,600 children would lose their place in day care; and thousands fewer will receive vaccinations.

Airport delays linked to a reduction in federal personnel also is forecast as hitting the Sunshine State hard.

White House officials said Wednesday that Obama has invited congressional leadership to a meeting Friday, after the cuts have gone into effect. The tactic suggests the administration does not expect much action from a deadlocked Congress before then.

Scott has been under fire within conservative ranks after dropping his long opposition to Medicaid expansion. But Wednesday’s letter prodding Obama comes only a day after Scott lashed out when a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ban on a 2011 law requiring drug-testing of state welfare recipients.

Losing for a second time in court only seemed to raise Scott’s conservative hackles. After the ruling, Scott said Tuesday he he intends to take the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here is Scott’s letter to: President Obama

Florida Gov. Rick Scott was again a no-show at the National Governors Association annual meeting this year as the states’ chief execs met with President Obama and White House staff to discuss looming budget cuts that will impact virtually every sector of their economies.

Scott dropped Florida’s membership in the non-partisan group last year, saying the $200,000 annual fee could be better spent. Scott is a member of the Republican Governors Association, the political group that helps elect GOP governors.

The governors met with President Obama, who also hosted a gala dinner for the group last night, today at the White House.

In addition to meetings with White House staff and the president on the sequestration budget cuts slated to go into effect on Friday, the governors are also discussing Medicaid costs that consume huge chunks of their state budgets.

Scott, who launched his political career fighting what later became the Affordable Care Act, last week made national news when he announced Florida would expand its Medicaid program, a linchpin of the federal law. The expansion requires the support of the state Legislature, however, and GOP House and Senate leaders have not said whether they would endorse Scott’s plan.

When asked why Scott skipped this year’s meeting, spokeswoman Jackie Schutz said in an e-mail the governor had other things on his agenda today and over the weekend.

When pressed, Schutz said :Florida is not a member of the NGA – Florida’s membership would be nearly $200,000.”

Scott had no events on Saturday and attended the Daytona 500 on Sunday. He spent this morning in Apalachicola and the rest of the day in Tallahassee.

President Barack Obama, who’s arriving at Palm Beach International Airport tonight for a golf weekend in the Treasure Coast, won’t be accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama or his daughters, the White House confirmed this afternoon.

The rest of the family is on a “ski trip out West with family and friends,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in Chicago this afternoon, according to a pool report.

Obama has no official business scheduled this weekend. He’s expected to play golf — with some tips from legendary instructor Butch Harmon — at the Floridian Golf Club in Palm City. The private course is owned by Houston Astros owner and big Obama donor Jim Crane.

Obama played 113 rounds of golf in his first term, but none were in Florida, a key swing state where there are 1,100 courses and the sport was estimated to be a $7.5 billion industry in 2007.

Elections supervisors would be able to hold early voting from eight to 14 days for up to 12 hours per day and have a broader array of early voting sites under a proposal unanimously approved by the House Ethics and Elections Committee this morning.

The plan also would impose a 75-word limit on the constitutional amendments placed on the ballot by the legislature but only for the first attempt. The full text of amendments struck down by the court and rewritten by the attorney general would be allowed.

The changes are the legislature’s attempt to do away with the long early voting and Election Day lines that once again cast an unwelcome national spotlight on Florida’s fall elections. The proposal mirrors the supervisors of elections’ legislative wish-list, also backed by Secretary of State Ken Detzner, and a yet-to-be-released proposal from the state Senate.

The GOP-controlled legislature shrank the number of early voting days from 14 to eight in a sweeping 2011 bill (HB 1355), signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.

Rep. Dennis Baxley, the sponsor of HB 1355, said Wednesday morning the new plan should help fix some of the problems voters encountered in the 2012 elections but stopped short of saying his bill that shortened early voting was a mistake and that supervisors needed the full two weeks.

“They need something. And that’s what they asked for and said would help them. So we’re trying to be responsive. I think allowing them more discretion and more time is certainly part of the answer,” Baxley, R-Ocala, said after the vote.

Republicans have repeatedly pointed out that the long lines were isolated in just a handful of counties, including Palm Beach where some voters waited more than eight hours to cast their ballots.

Sonya Gibson, a West Palm Beach educator and activist with the left-leaning Florida New Majority, shared her voting experience with the committee Wednesday morning.

She said she waited about nine hours to vote at the Westgate Community Center before giving up and returning on Election Day with her three daughters, who also voted. She said they waited at the same location for nearly 10 hours on Election Day before casting their ballots.

Former GOP officials and consultants, including former Gov. Charlie Crist, said the 2011 law was designed to curb Democratic turnout after Obama’s Florida victory in 2008.

Gibson called the House measure a “face-saving” measure for Republican lawmakers but a good start.

“At this point, it is time to move forward,” she said. “It’s not anymore about who did what, who didn’t say what or who did say what. It’s about moving forward so you can get the best results for our fellow Floridians, so that we can be an example.”

House Democrats, who withdrew nine amendments to the bill, vowed to push to broaden the bill, including doing away with a requirement in 1355 that forced more voters to cast provisional ballots if they moved outside of the county. Provisional ballots have a greater chance of not being counted and take longer to process at the polls. But they, too, agreed the bill was a good starting point.

“The reality is that this bill ggoes a long way towards repairing the damage that 1355 caused. Democrats spoke extensively against 1355 because we anticipated the problems that actually occurred. This bill starts to remedy that situation,” said Rep. Jim Waldman, D-Coconut Creek, who does not serve on the committee but is one of House Democratic Leader Perry Thurston’s top lieutenants.

Admit it — unless you’re an Indiana politics junkie or fan of former OMB directors, you probably don’t have any particular visual recollection of Mitch Daniels‘ 2012 GOP response to the State of the Union.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, on the other hand, provided a memorable image Tuesday night when he gave the Republican response. In the midst of accusing President Barack Obama of laying out “false choices,” Rubio briefly ducked out of camera range to grab a water bottle and take a quick swig.

Rubio made light of the incident immediately afterward, sending out a picture of the Poland Springs water bottle on his Twitter account. Today, on ABC’s Good Morning America, Rubio hoisted a larger water bottle during a live interview with George Stephanopolos.

“I needed water – what am I going to do? You know, it happens. God has a funny way of reminding us we’re human,” Rubio said while smiling broadly.

For a more substantive take on Rubio’s speech, check out our Laura Green‘s account by clicking here.