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Florida Senate President Don Gaetz (R-Niceville) is ready to toughen ethics laws, reform campaign finance, streamline the Florida ballot...just about every issue of timely significance, he told the Orlando Sentinel editorial board, except for gun control.

Welcome to the Key West Literary Seminar edition of Tweet Us A Story! 

Starting at 5:00, we'll be writing a story with KWLS author Geoff Dyer.

Dyer has graciously given us the first line of a tale. It's up to you to help us finish it.

You can join in on the storytelling in the space below. Check out the rules at the bottom of the page.

It's election year in the region's largest city and the race for Miami mayor has just become a little more interesting. City Commissioner Francis "Frank" Suarez, 35,  will officially announce a challenge to incumbent Mayor Tomas Regalado today.

As lawmakers decide how --- or whether --- to move forward with parts of the federal Affordable Care Act, House and Senate select committees plunged Monday into issues such as a potential expansion of the Medicaid program and the law's effects on Florida businesses.

In back-to-back meetings, lawmakers heard testimony from people with far-different perspectives about the controversial health overhaul, which Florida Republican leaders resisted for more than two years.

If Gov. Rick Scott didn't know this before, he sure knows it now: If you're in politics, your dog can make you or break you.

A hilarious  story in the Tampa Bay Times tells how the Scott family's photogenic but slightly psychotic Labrador, Reagan, failed to work out as a gubernatorial dog and was discreetly gotten rid of. 

Tony Bennett drove from Indiana over the weekend to start his first day as schools chief in Florida on Monday.

Last month the State Board of Education hired Bennett, a Republican who served as Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction for one term.

He lost his re-election bid there after Democrat Glenda Ritz organized a grassroots campaign with help from the teachers union.

Bennett was viewed by some as being too aggressive towards teachers and not showing enough compassion when he pushed new policies, such as merit pay. 

The Miami Dolphins say they're willing to foot most of the bill for a badly needed facelift for Sun Life stadium -- and are hoping state and local funding will supply the rest.  But lingering taxpayer anger over another stadium deal could be hanging over the proposal like a dark cloud.

On the one month anniversary of the Newtown, CT school shooting, mayors across South Florida and the country called for stricter gun regulations on Monday. Among them was Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado.

I had set out to find a real cafè con leche during the half-hour break in the Key West Literary Seminar, and the task proved to be more difficult than anticipated. As I sat on the curb at the corner of Whitehead and Fleming, sweating and sipping my reward, I spotted a family walking my way.

They were obviously tourists, probably from the Midwest and looked fresh off the cruise ship.

The couple was about to pass me when the wife noticed the sign on the nearest pole, directly in front of me. "It read ‘Begin US1. Mile 0."

With an ailing Hugo Chavez still in Cuba, and perhaps on his deathbed, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans now living in South Florida are anxiously awaiting word of what happens next.

El Arepazo 2 on N.W. 79th Avenue in Doral is their unofficial headquarters.

Inside the restaurant, the walls are covered with major league baseball cards, honoring players from Venezuela's most popular sport, such as reigning MVP Miguel Cabrera and Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio.

Holdouts against amnesty for millions of undocumented immigrants in the U. S. are bracing for the lobbying pressure they are certain to experience as President Obama, grassroots groups and converts in Congress prepare for the Big Immigration Bill.

Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has an appointment with reporters today to discuss his plans to go after public funding to renovate Sun Life Stadium.

The cost estimate is $400 million, says the Miami Herald, some of which Ross apparently hopes to raise from state and local government sources.

As states start phasing in Common Core standards in public school classrooms, no Common Core textbooks have been written yet, and new assessments are still being developed.

So, teachers are creating their own lesson plans as they begin to implement the standards.

They’re not doing it alone.

Corals are not as visible as panthers, manatees or dolphins.  But scientists say they deserve just as much protection -- and respect -- as other animals beloved by Floridians. 

The National Marine Fisheries Service has proposed extending federal protection to 66 species of coral, including seven local species that scientists say are nearing extinction.

This post is featured thanks to our friends at the Key West Literary Seminar. Read more of their material here.

Affordable Care Act issues are expected to dominate discussions of insurance in the Legislature in the weeks ahead but lawmakers will also take swipes at workers compensation, hurricane preparations and Citizens Property Insurance Corp when they return.

The work of a biographer might seem straightforward enough.  Although the general public might consider the genre a sub-category of nonfiction writing, the best works transcend that title, and stand apart as a class of their own.  Biographies contain facts and historical documentation about the life of particular subject, and in this way meet the criteria for nonfiction.  In a talk at the Key West Literary Seminar on Saturday, however, acclaimed biographer Jay Parini declared, “All biography is a work of fiction.  It's an illusion of a life that may relate to reality.”

At the Shanker Blog researcher Matthew Di Carlo reviews the effectiveness of the suite of education policies often called the “Florida model.”

These ideas include assigning A through F grades to schools and school districts based in part on standardized test results, retaining low-performing third graders, expanding school choice, teacher evaluations and others.

Those of us who speak more than one language are aware of the power and issues related to translation.  For many of us it is a constant internal dialog, full of traps and the dangers of double entendres.  The anxiety that the process brings about is the very reason why skillful translators are so valued.
In it's essence, the act of translating is a multi thronged process.  There is the literal, and then there is the intangible, the true root that translation attempts to illuminate.  In the end the translation inevitably fails to some degree to reach this ultimate goal.

This post is featured thanks to our friends at the Key West Literary Seminar. Read more of their material here.

The enthusiasm of WLRN's Twitter followers combined with the 31st annual Key West Literary Seminar has inspired the second round of Tweet Us A Story.

Last time, author Junot Diaz kicked off the Twitter event. We'll be grabbing a first line this weekend from one of the KWLS authors.

Here's How It Works:

As states start phasing in Common Core standards in public school classrooms, no Common Core textbooks have been written yet, and new assessments are still being developed.

So, teachers are creating their own lesson plans as they begin to implement the standards.

They’re not doing it alone.

University of Arkansas education professor Jay P. Greene has weighed in on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s conclusions about its teacher evaluation study.

While the rest of the country (except for maybe the folks in Alabama) might be suffering from cold weather and holiday hangovers this time of year, the sun never stops in South Florida. Winter is when our events move outside.

Florida's county elections supervisors are preparing to approach the Legislature with their own fixes for the voting problems that worsened the state's already-sketchy reputation for competence last year.

Their plan: Require at least eight day of early voting with an option for 14 in counties that need it, and hold lawmakers to the same 75-word limit on ballot questions for constitutional amendments that citizens must observe with their own ballot initiatives

On The Florida Roundup:  Saturday marks the third anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti.  How has it affected us in South Florida, home to the nation’s largest Haitian diaspora?   We take your calls on what you have seen in Haiti and what responsibility we have to this country less than 700 miles away.   Why has development been so slow after so many promises?

Forty-five states and the District of Columbia are working toward full implementation of Common Core standards.

But there's a split in the way states will measure what students have learned. Two different testing systems are on the table.

One test will average a series of test results to determine a student’s score. The other is a single, adaptive test which tailors questions based on a student’s past answers.

The tests are being designed now for use by 2014-15.

Just because you can’t drive down for the 31st annual Key West Literary Seminar, doesn’t mean you can’t take part.

WLRN is teaming up with the KWLS folks to bring the conversations online.