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Marlins are no help for Dolphins.  The proposal by the Miami Dolphins to fund approximately $400 million in stadium renovations through county hotel taxes and state general funds is not getting a warm reception.  And it’s probably not because of reports by economists showing that events like the Super Bowl don’t contribute significantly to the host communities. 

When Richard Blanco takes the stage Monday at President Barack Obama's second inauguration, the poetry community of South Florida will be paying especially close attention.

Blanco was born to Cuban parents in Spain. The family immigrated to the United States and settled in Miami when Blanco was a toddler. He trained to be a civil engineer but a class at Florida International University later launched his poetry career.

Blanco's poetry is full of images from a childhood in South Florida and a Cuban-American household. 

On the Florida Roundup: The Miami Dolphins ask the public to go halfsies with them in a $400 million proposition to improve the Sun Life Stadium. But is hosting a Super Bowl really worth it? A skeptical public might be tougher to persuade after the Marlins ballpark deal.  

We take your calls on whether public money fund the stadium facelift.  

All this week, we're bringing you stories from the Key West Literary Seminar which runs through this weekend. Shayne Benowitz originally posted this piece on the KWLS blog.

Reading Pico Iyer’s The Man Within My Head is one way to get under the influence of Graham Greene. Another is by sampling the cocktails at this year’s seminar.

South Florida businessman Norman Braman is calling the  proposed plan to renovate Sun Life Stadium with the public dollars "plain welfare for a multi-billionaire."

He contends that Miami Dolphins owner Shephen Ross’ football team is a private asset and should not receive any public money. 

TALLAHASSEE -- Senators looking into the state's efforts to make budget information available online are expressing skepticism about Transparency 2.0, a site developed under a $5.5 million no-bid contract that is nonetheless endorsed by some ethics advocates.

The hesitance by members of the Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee, which surfaced at a Thursday meeting, raises questions about whether the project has any prospects for revival.

Florida teachers and other public employees are shocked and angry today, now that the state Supreme Court has upheld a two-year-old state law that requires them for the first time to contribute to their own retirement plans.

Under the law, passed by the 2011 Legislature, three percent of most pension-eligible paychecks are deducted for the state pension system, which the state alone has funded since 1974. Most state employees have received no pay raises since 2006.

The state's election bureaucracy and local elections officials have already agreed that more early voting days would shorten the lines that kept voters waiting for hours on Nov. 6.

Now, Gov. Rick Scott -- who promoted and then signed the 2011 bill that reduced the early voting period -- has joined the chorus. He said Thursday county elections supervisors should have the option to conduct early voting on as many as 14 days, the number there was before the Legislature reduced it to eight.

If you’re a judge and you’re Facebook friends with a lawyer and that lawyer winds up in your courtroom to try a case, does that mean you have a conflict of interests?

That's what the state appeals court based in West Palm Beach wants the Florida Supreme Court to decide. It's the same court that took Broward County Circuit Judge Andrew Siegel off of a case because, it decided, his Facebook friendship with the prosecutor made it impossible for him to be impartial.

To kickstart our Town Hall project, we start with the question: Who runs Tallahassee?  

Our guests are: The Miami Herald's Tallahassee bureau chief Mary Ellen Klas and Dan Krassner, executive director of Integrity Florida, an ethics watchdog group, which proposes the unconventional idea we can make the government more accountable if we get rid of limits on state campaign donations. 

Join us on this site on Tuesday, Jan. 22 at 4pm or tweet us at #FL2013.  To read more about the Town Hall project, click here.

Our partners at The Takeaway have been following responses across the country to last year's string of mass shootings.

Their last stop, Texas, focused on the story and activism of Suzanna Gratia Hupp, who said that a mass shooting she witnessed in Texas would have turned out differently had she been allowed to carry a gun.   

All this week, we're bringing you stories from the Key West Literary Seminar which runs through this weekend. Shayne Benowitz originally posted this piece on the KWLS blog.

All this week, we're bringing you stories from the Key West Literary Seminar which runs through this weekend. Shayne Benowitz originally posted this piece on the KWLS blog.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office is seeking funding for teams of social workers and deputies who can respond 24/7 to anonymous citizen complaints of suspicious behavior by others.

Sheriff Ric Bradshaw's second-in-command, Chief Deputy Michael Gauger, announced the program at a community forum on Wednesday. He said early vigilance and quick response might have prevented the school shootings in Newtown. The Palm Beach Post was there:

South Florida gun dealers are warning that a ban on assault weapons, as President Obama is asking from Congress, will result only in a new flood of higher-priced weapons on American streets.

Hialeah gun factory owner Antonio "Tony" Vega says fundamental economic principles kick in every time gun owners feel their rights are under threat.

TALLAHASSEE -- Lawyers for a group of teachers asked a Leon County judge on Wednesday to throw out a nearly two-year-old state law aimed at tying teacher's pay and evaluations more closely to student performance.

Gov. Rick Scott's 2010 campaign dog, Reagan, has been located -- safe, but probably a little bitter -- on a horse ranch somewhere in southwest Florida. Tampa's WTSP Ch. 10 reports he's now known as Pluto.

This should close out a week of speculation about whatever happened to the rescued Labrador that Scott acquired, named through a Facebook contest and campaigned with...

...before the dog mysteriously disappeared!

With lawmakers taking a new look at Florida's "stand your ground" law, the mother of the young man whose death brought the law back into focus urged lawmakers Wednesday to repeal it.

"How many lives do we have to lose?" Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, asked outside the legislative chambers. "How many children have to be killed? How many times are we going to bury our loved ones and not do anything about it?" 

At Muvico Broward 18 – better known as “Muvico Pompano” -- there's a red carpet rolled out in front of Cinema 6.   Inside, the projectionist is running "Edge of Salvation," a new film by Los Angeles-based director Luciano Saber.

"Actually, my publicist suggested it because she had opened another movie here,” says Saber.  “So I said, 'Alright, let's do it in Pompano Beach, Florida.  Why not?' "

The Miami Dolphins' proposed deal to use state and local tax dollars to renovate Sun Life stadium is getting some big endorsements.

But the  benefits a renovated stadium would bring  the county are questionable, some economists say.

In another step toward transforming Medicaid into a statewide managed-care system, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration said Tuesday it has chosen five health plans to provide coverage to seniors who need long-term care.

  If you think writers from all around the world have been descending upon Key West for 31 years to escape cruddy winter weather while knocking back a rum runner or two and discussing their work, you probably won’t get an argument from them.

The Key West Literary Seminar attracts some of the finest authors – and their fans – for two consecutive weekends.

This year’s four-day event started on Jan. 10 and the second session picks up on Jan. 17 and ends on the 20th, with a Writers’ Workshop Program sandwiched in between.

The Cuban-American Democrat. It is an unusual breed in Florida.

Since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 made the Democratic administration of John F. Kennedy look bad, and caused many Cubans to flee their homeland forever,  El Exilio community in South Florida especially has been strongly Republican.

But that's beginning to change. Some exit polling indicated Cubans nearly split their vote between President Obama and Mitt Romney this past election, something that has never happened.

Rocky credit history? A bill that would prevent potential employers from weighing a job applicant's credit history unanimously passed the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee Tuesday.

Some say the bill (SB 100), sponsored by Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, is an effort to ease the job search process for Floridians.

In an unusual case of pre-emptive historic designation, Miami Beach preservationists are trying to protect a decrepit Star Island mansion from being torn down by its new owner.

That would be plastic surgeon Leonard Hochstein, who bought the waterfront place at 42 Star Island Drive for $7.6 million and then found it too far gone to be renovated.

Gov. Rick Scott's hour-long sit-down with the Legislative Black Caucus on Tuesday was frostily correct and almost completely nonproductive for the black lawmakers, according to two accounts of Tuesday's session in Tallahassee.

The Tampa Bay Times and the Palm Beach Post described the governor as almost completely unyielding on voting rules, ex-felon rights and appointments to the judiciary and other state positions.

As to the 2011 voting law that many say turned the 2012 election into a Florida disaster, the governor said he should not be blamed for that.