Rick Stone has been a journalist in Florida for most of his career. He's worked in newspapers and television but believes that nothing works as well as public radio. He and his wife, Mary Jane Stone, live in Broward County.
T-shirt vendors and extremely committed Obama supporters have been lining up since before dawn at the Delray Beach Tennis Center for a rally with the president that's scheduled to begin at 10:15 a. m. For everybody else, the big post-debate story this morning will be traffic. Police are advising drivers to avoid West Atlantic Avenue near the Tennis Center and public transit commuters should be ready for today-only changes on routes 1, 70, 80 and 81.
Must be awful to be objectified like this, particularly if you're a serious state senator like Ellyn Bogdanoff (R-Hollywood) or Maria Sachs (D-Delray Beach). They're running for their second terms against each other in the Senate's only incumbent-on-incumbent cage match.
Reporters from Politico are among the media mob in Boca Raton, where President Obama and Mitt Romney will meet for the last debate tonight at Lynn University, and what they have detected is a pronounced Republican swagger.
Why is the GOP so confident of its chances in the nation's largest swing state? Polling, mostly, among other persuasive reasons, plus the great gift of our state economy remaining in the tank. But the Democrats are not wholly despondent, writes Politico:
The other big debate today is about the Miami Herald's maybe historic (but maybe not) bay front headquarters and what its new owners, Genting Resorts World, will be allowed to do with it.
The Boy Scouts' "perversion files" have been released and the names of at least 160 Floridians are among the 1,000 former Boy Scout leaders and volunteers accused of sexually abusing Boy Scouts between 1965 and 1985.
Lawyers involved in the case say the Boy Scouts of America kept careful records of the suspects and allegations but never reported them to authorities. Many were flagged as "ineligible to volunteer."
When Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan rally in Daytona Beach Friday night -- and somebody should tell them this right away -- they'll be worshipping at a temple of deficit spending, Keynesian economics and executive power unconstrained.
Fact checkers were up all night after Wednesday's Senate debate between Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson and his Republican challenger, U. S. Connie Mack. Facts and truth were relative things, many agreed, during the one and only chance Florida voters will have to see the candidates debate.
Mack is enjoying a bounceback after trailing in the polls for several weeks and the debate at Nova Southeastern University was animated with a few excursions into testy.
Topics included Cuba, foreign policy, health care and the candidates' respective records.
Margie Menzel reports on the case from Tallahassee.
State Rep. Barbara Watson will keep her 13-vote Democratic primary win over fellow Rep. John Patrick Julien. A Tallahassee judge ruled Wednesday that, despite some suspicious signatures on several absentee ballots cast for Watson, there wasn't enough evidence to overturn the result.
As Julien considers his options, Watson is preparing for the general election which she is likely to win. Heavily Democratic District 107 produced only a write-in candidate to oppose her.
Florida resident Ricardo Devengoechea had what the Venezuelans needed: an actual lock of Simón Bolivar's hair that could be used to authenticate the bones stashed in Caracas' National Pantheon. Reportedly, he lent them the hair, the match was made and Bolívar's certified skull was used to make the digital facial image that you see on this page.
Reconciliation. Redemption. Binding up the nation's mostly self-inflicted wounds. There's going to be a need for all of that after this bitter election cycle is over.
And that need is where Election Communion Day comes from. More than 300 churches in 44 states have signed on to conduct services and offer communion right after the polls close on Election Day.
For debate watchers, this MAY help you understand what you're seeing tonight. Mark Halperin at Time magazine has obtained the official 2012 presidential debate rules and put them on his blog. This is the agreement reached by the two campaigns and neither the Commission on Presidential Debates nor the moderators were parties to it. Highlights below, see it all here.
What would happen if another candidate qualified for the debates.
There's been a big consumer protection settlement for people who lost their homes to foreclosure and checks could be on the way early next year. Did you lose your home to foreclosure? And was your mortgage serviced by Ally/GMAC, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase or Wells Fargo? The Sun-Sentinel is reporting you may be eligible for a $2,000 check.
Questions arise after the sudden death of 18-year-old Christopher Valdes. Are there more bacterial meningitis cases in Miami-Dade County? And was this one misdiagnosed? Even after a specific plea to consider meningitis, doctors sent him home with painkillers and nausea pills. A few hours later, he was dead. Christopher's father tells the Miami Herald, "I feel they were negligent."
Records and emails collected by The Palm Beach Post depict state officials as too absorbed with political goals to warn the public about a tuberculosis outbreak.
Recent research and a new book by the son of a Soviet insider are putting the Cuban Missile Crisis of a half century ago in a scary new light. Juan Tamayo of the Miami Herald reports we were closer to nuclear war than we have realized. Here's the part about the 98 nuclear missiles that Nikita Khrushchev almost left with Fidel Castro.
Dismayed after black citizens, voting early, handed Florida to President Obama in 2008, state Republican leaders showed up in Gov. Charlie Crist's office to demand a law that restricts early voting.
John Errol Ferguson is scheduled for execution on Thursday for a six-victim murder that horrified South Florida more than 35 years ago. At the time, as the Miami Herald's David Ovalle reminds us in this backgrounder, it was the worst mass murder in local history. Is he fit to execute?
The Republicans' chance of retaking the Senate is about a quarter of what it was two months ago, according to the New York Times' great meta-pollster, Nate Silver. Despite Mitt Romney's comeback, Democratic Senate candidates like Florida incumbent Bill Nelson are also holding their own. Check the tables on Silver's blog at fivethirtyeight.com.
WLRN's Phil Latzman met Erin Dimeglio and produced this profile.
It's hard to imagine a more completely successful senior year. Here’s Christy Cabrera Chirinos' story in the Sun-Sentinel about how 17-year-old Erin DiMeglio got her homecoming tiara...during halftime. Click the Listen link to hear Phil Latzman's profile of the groundbreaking athlete.
From dreaming of touchdown passes to…sporting a tiara?
Mitt Romney is getting his nose rubbed today in one of the most durable memes of the 2012 campaign, his hapless dog Seamus strapped to the roof of the family van during a long vacation road trip.
Only it’s not the dog this time. It’s Big Bird. Memes aren't memes, you know, unless they adapt.
Barry Richard performs the robocall he sent to Palm Beach County absentee voters.
A misprint on 60,000 absentee ballots means vote-counting in Palm Beach County will be sort of special again this year.
Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said each of those ballots will have to be examined, the intent of each voter discerned, and the vote transferred to a properly printed ballot so it can be read by a tabulation scanner.
Here He Comes Again: A presidential motorcade much like this one that tied up Miami traffic in 2010 will inject itself into the Brickell area rush hour today.
President Obama makes an appearance this afternoon at BankUnited Center on the University of Miami's Coral Gables campus. It's a grassroots rally with free admission for those who got advance tickets. Doors open at 1 p. m.
After that, Brickell Avenue will close at Southeast Seventh Street at 4 p. m. as the president makes his way to another event at the J. W. Marriott Marquis Hotel.
He's supposed to arrive at 5. But the Miami Herald warns downtown drivers need to make three and half hours worth of plans:
A third person has died after yesterday's collapse of an under-construction parking garage at the Doral campus of Miami Dade College.
Miami-Dade police identified the latest victim as 53-year-old Samuel Perez. He was pulled from the rubble early this morning. Also killed in the sudden collapse were Carlos Hurtado Demendoza, 48, and Jose Calderon, 60. Another person is still missing.
Perez was the man whose legs had to be amputated so rescuers could get him to safety. He was hospitalized in critical condition and died today at 4 a. m.
WLRN's Phil Latzman covers the aftermath of the Venezuelan election with this double interview. Miami Herald reporter Jim Wyss is on the ground in Caracas and El Nuevo Herald editor Teresa Frontado describes the expatriates' journey to vote in New Orleans.
This is El Nuevo Herald's Melissa Sanchez describing the mood collapse in Doral as Sunday's vote count turned against Chavez challenger Henrique Capriles.
In South Florida's Venezuelan enclave of Doral this weekend, happy confidence turned to shock and dismay in about the time it took to count the ballots in Caracas.
Fifty-eight-year-old Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had won his third re-election campaign decisively, defeating Miranda state Gov. Henrique Capriles by a margin of more than 10 percent.
Univision news anchors Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas grilled President Obama during this Sept. 20 event at the University of Miami. Mitt Romney was on the same stage two days before.
What Justice Fred Lewis said to a forum audience in Tallahassee.
It's not what they signed up for. But three justices from the liberal side of the Florida Supreme Court have been turned into politicians by an unusual campaign to remove them from the bench.
If there are any undecided voters left in Florida, just weeks before the election, chances are they're educators.
Many say President Obama and Mitt Romney have strong education platforms that differ so subtly it may take a teacher's practiced eye to tell them apart.
"They're both strong on testing and accountability," says Doug Tuthill, who runs a nonprofit in Tampa for low-income K-through-12 students. "They both believe that student achievement should be included in teacher evaluation systems.
After her emotional speech Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention, Ann Romney resumed the campaign today with a visit to St. Petersburg where she cut the ribbon to open a new physical therapy playground at All Children’s Hospital.
During the event, she found some common ground with 11-year-old Seth Morano of Sarasota.
Seconds after the pieces of red ribbon had fluttered to the ground in the shady playground Seth leaned back in his wheelchair, tilted his head for maximum projection and shouted a short message.
Powerful businessman Norman Braman is casting a long shadow over the Miami-Dade County Commission election. He's backing a slate of four candidates against four incumbents, ostensibly in the name of reform and good government.
Braman, a civic activist, car dealer and former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles football team, was the prime mover in the recall of former county mayor Carlos Alvarez. He was also a bitter but unsuccessful opponent of the Miami Marlins stadium deal. Braman favors reforms that would limit spending and commissioners' political power.
