Free Republic

Florida lawmakers demonstrated wisdom, foresight and fiscal responsibility in 2014 when they combined county expressway authorities in Central Florida into a single, regional agency. Roads don’t stop at county lines, and it’s inefficient and expensive to maintain multiple bureaucracies to control separate stretches of pavement. It’s also a problem when neighboring toll-road agencies have conflicting policies and plans for the future. Yet the rationale behind that 2014 law hasn’t been completely realized yet. It’s time for lawmakers to step in again. Dueling road agencies The Central Florida Expressway Authority now owns and operates 118 miles of toll roads in Metro...

TALLAHASSEE Support is building across Florida for a stronger law banning texting while driving, but some black legislators say they’ll fight the idea, claiming that it could invite more abuses by police. A broad coalition of groups representing police, sheriffs, parents, retirees, doctors, businesses and others is mobilizing to pass a bill to elevate texting from a secondary to a primary offense, meaning police could ticket drivers who text, without needing another reason to stop them. “It’s time to strengthen the law,” argues the FL DNT TXT N DRV Coalition. “Drivers who choose to text and drive are a danger...

A 69-year-old man who law enforcement said was planning a mass shooting of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida is to appear Tuesday afternoon at a bond hearing at the U.S. District Courthouse in Jacksonville. .....Ashraf Shaikh, chairman of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida's board of trustees, said.... "It's very sad that something like this was being planned or threatened in Jacksonville," Shaikh said. "Thank God that our law enforcement (agencies) were vigilant, that they got wind of it and handled it very professionally."

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I didn't realize that hurricane refugee Puerto Ricans could vote in Florida? Is this something to be concerned about?

As authorities in Tampa announced the arrest of a suspected serial killer last week, hearing-impaired people tuning into the news conference got quite a different message from an American Sign Language interpreter. Instead of getting a rundown from Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan on the timeline of the four shootings and what led up to the arrest of 24-year-old Howell Emanuel Donaldson III, interpreter Derlyn Roberts made signs that were gibberish, according to those who watched in confusion. "She sat up there and waved her arms like she was singing Jingle Bells," Rachell Settambrino, who is deaf and teaches American...

Corrine Brown, a former Florida congresswoman from Jacksonville, was sentenced to five years in prison for fraud and other charges related to a fake charity she used to put money in her own pocket while serving in Washington. A federal judge sentenced Brown, 71, to five years in prison and she was ordered to turn herself in to federal authorities no later than Jan. 8. First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1993, Brown, a Democrat, served the Jacksonville area until 2017. Brown was indicted on federal corruption charges in 2016 for stealing money from a fake charity...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown will spend five years in federal prison for her role in a federal corruption conspiracy that involved stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a fake education charity for needy children.

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Being a human in 2017 means that every single fact about you likely exists somewhere on the internet, and if you’ve ever done something tasteless or reprehensible that you’ve tried to hide, evidence of that offense could surface at any time. Joy Reid is currently reckoning with this truth, as a Twitter user dug up internet archives of the MSNBC host’s blog, unearthing crass homophobic jokes. Mediaite reports that the posts come from her now-defunct blog, the Reid Report, which she ran while simultaneously writing for the Miami Herald. According to Twitter user @Jamie_Maz, who accessed the blog using internet...

The concrete house in the Puerto Rican countryside town of Arecibo had been in Sheila Reyes' family for generations; the stately old tree in the yard had weathered so many storms. It took the wrath of Hurricane Maria, which made landfall on the island Sept. 20 as a Category 5 hurricane, to destroy the house that Reyes, 33, and her partner Jose De Jesus Sierra, 36, had turned into a home for them and their three children. They thought it would be the safest place to ride it out. Instead, a tree crashed through one side of the house, destroying...

Florida Senator Marco Rubio admits that the Republican tax cut plan to aid corporations and the wealthy will require cuts to Social Security and Medicare to pay for it. Rubio told reporters this week that in order to address the federal deficit, which will grow by at least $1 trillion if the tax plan passes, Congress will need to cut entitlement programs such as Social Security. Advocates for the elderly and the poor have warned that entitlement programs would be on the chopping block, but this is the first time a prominent Republican has backed their claims. “We have to...

Sub-headline: Florida’s Republican tries to blow up the Senate tax reform. The GOP is pushing forward on tax reform, though a receiving line of Republican holdouts are slow-rolling progress. One who deserves special mention is Marco Rubio, who contributed nothing to ObamaCare repeal and now aspires to dilute the tax bill.On Wednesday Mr. Rubio and his political sidecar, Mike Lee of Utah, announced that they’ll file an amendment to the tax bill to change the $2,000 child tax credit. They want to make the credit refundable up to a person’s payroll tax liability, among other expensive tweaks. To pay for...

The White House said last week that President Donald Trump had no plans to visit Alabama ahead of the state's Dec. 12 election for a U.S. Senate seat. But it didn't say Trump wouldn't visit Pensacola, Fla., about an hour's drive from Mobile -- Alabama's fourth-largest city. The president plans to be in Pensacola on Friday, just four days before Alabama voters decide between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones for the seat once occupied by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And it appears the president has enlisted his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump -- wife of Eric Trump -- to...

President Trump’s re-election campaign announced Friday that he will host a rally in Pensacola, Florida, at the end of next week. Michael Glassner, executive director of Trump's re-election campaign, announced the event hours after former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about Trump transition team contacts with Russia. Glasser said, however, that the timing “could not be better,” as Congress nears passage of tax cut legislation. “As the President’s historic tax reform plan, which he has said will be like rocket fuel in our economy, gets closer to passage, the timing for our campaign...

Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) was denied membership into the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Is it a shocker? No. It has all-Democratic members, but former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) was able to become a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Also, Curbelo could have joined the Republican alternative, the Congressional Hispanic Conference. Whatever the reasons, there’s another that we also probably should have known as to why he was rejected: The all-Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus says they use their meetings to strategize against Trump (via Business Insider): . . .

Illegal immigration costs taxpayers in all 50 states a total of $89 billion, and California, where an illegal on Thursday was cleared of murdering Kate Steinle despite admitting to the shooting, pays the most at $23 billion . ... The costs cover added expenditures for education, welfare, law enforcement, and medical care. When federal costs are included, the price tag nationally soars to $135 billion a year. FAIR’s data also includes the offset of taxes paid by illegal immigrants, though the numbers are much lower. In the state and local column, they are $3.5 billion. Nationally they are $15 billion....

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President Donald Trump will appear at a campaign-style rally in Pensacola, Florida, next week, an event set less than 20 miles from the Alabama border four days before the state’s special Senate election. .....The move comes after the White House insisted that Trump would not campaign in Alabama on behalf of embattled Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore...

Former Alaskan Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin says the illegal alien acquitted of fatally shooting 32-year-old Kate Steinle in the sanctuary city of San Francisco, California, in 2015, was given “more rights, grace and favor” than his victim and her family. ....In an interview with a local news station in 2015, Lopez-Sanchez confessed that he sought out San Francisco because it was a sanctuary city that would not deport him from the U.S. “Sanchez said he knew San Francisco was a sanctuary city where he would not be pursued by immigration officials,” the local report added. Members...