Free Republic

The media didn't talk about it but in the 2000 election contest the Democratic strategy if they couldn't get the vote count to go their way was to tie the results up in the court so that Florida wouldn't be able to field electors. This would have cut 25 electors from Bush's total and given Gore the election. The Florida state legislature was dominated by the Republican party who let it be known that they could appoint the electors and with the Supreme Court decision the Democrats effort to win the election by disenfranchising Florida was shelved. In the primary...

A police officer was hit with his own Taser while trying to take a shoplifting suspect to jail in southwest Florida. St. Petersburg police say Officer John Douglas was transporting 37-year-old Jason Lee Benedict to jail after he allegedly stole three bottles of cough syrup and drank them in the grocery store bathroom. As the officer handcuffed Benedict on Friday, authorities say he punched and kicked the officer. Police said Benedict bit the officer's hand and reached for his Taser, causing it to discharge in the officer's left hand. The suspect was initially taken to a hospital, but was in...

A video of a shark pulling a Florida fisherman from his kayak is going viral right now. Captain Ben Chancey was grouper fishing on his kayak in Florida when he got a big surprise. He was reeling in a giant Goliath grouper but he said the fish broke free from the line and left his bait floating in front of bull sharks swimming around him. An 8 1/2-foot bull shark took the bait and Chancey hung on to the reel while he was still seated in his 14-foot kayak. The shark ended up flipping Chancey’s kayak and tipping him into...

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) -- Police say a fight over gumbo spices ended with the fatal stabbing of a Florida restaurant worker and former Florida State mascot. Panama City police say 33-year-old Caleb Joshua Halley was working at Buddy's Seafood Market last Tuesday when he and a co-worker, 26-year-old Orlando Thompson, began arguing about how much spice to add to the restaurant's gumbo.

Accompanies story about Naked Nurse Attack. 590 mugshots of Orlando society.

Woman taken into custody in Palm Bay PALM BAY, Fla. - A home healthcare nurse was taken into custody for observation after she stripped off her uniform and attacked a patient under her care, Palm Bay police said. The incident happened about 2 p.m. Sunday at a home in the 800 block of Hawaii Avenue after someone at the residence called police to report that the nurse removed her clothing and was acting erratically. "It was in the patient's home. The patient was also battered," Palm Bay police Lt. Greg Latulippe told Local 6 News partner Florida Today. "The whole...

Police in Florida say an argument over pizza ended with a man throwing a hot slice at his roommate. According to the Tampa Tribune, the man's roommate called police after she says Daniel Allen Plunkett, 50, tossed a hot slice of pizza at her. She says it struck her left hand. The arrest report also states the woman had sauce on her shoulder. She was not injured. Plunkett denied throwing the pizza, telling officers it was actually his roommate who was throwing pizza. Officers did note that Plunkett was shirtless and had sauce on his chest. After further investigation, officers...

Orlando community activist Ahmad Saleem drove to a Clermont-area house intending to meet a 12-year-old girl he had been chatting with online for sex in a vehicle with a specialty "Invest in Children" license plate, authorities said Tuesday. But when the door opened, there were no children in sight. Instead, detectives quickly brought Saleem to the ground and arrested him. Saleem, founder of the Saleem Academy, an organization dedicated to empowering Muslim youths globally, was one of the 101 people arrested in an undercover cybercrime prostitution and child-sex sting by the Lake and Polk county sheriff's offices. Lake County Sheriff...

In a new study published Monday in the journal Current Biology, Stony Brook University researchers working with Florida scientists discovered seven endangered sawfish living in two rivers conceived through a process called parthenogenesis — the production of offspring without sex or male sperm, or in simpler terms, “virgin birth.” So ladies, take a bow. Apparently we can do it all. Scientists have long known that insects, crabs and other invertebrates can reproduce without partners. Female birds, reptiles and sharks in captivity have also occasionally surprised scientists with virgin births. But until now, researchers never knew whether the behavior happened in...

Police have arrested an 82-year-old Lake Wales, Florida, man for slashing a woman's tires because he claimed she was sitting in his favorite bingo seat. WTVT-TV reports Fred Smith was charged with criminal mischief last Monday when police say he took an ice pick to 88-year-old Ethel Britt's van during a weekly bingo game at the Lake Ashton Retirement Community Club House. Police say Smith stormed out of the bingo hall and punctured two of Britt's tires because she was sitting in a chair he usually sits in. Smith was caught on surveillance video in the act. Lake Wales Deputy...

It’s not every day that someone gets bitten in the head by a shark and lives to tell about it. But that’s what happened to 70-year old Rick Neuman, 200 stitches later. Neumann said he was spearfishing in about 40-feet of water off the coast of Jupiter on Friday when a bull shark came out of nowhere. “I think the shark got confused and just lashed out and hit me like a freight train,” said Neumann. “It’s not the shark’s fault, he got confused, the water was dirty, and things can happen. Neumann said he has no hard feelings against...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was born in 1970, six years after events refuted a theory on which he is wagering his candidacy. The 1964 theory was that many millions of conservatives abstained from voting because the GOP did not nominate sufficiently deep-dyed conservatives. So if in 1964 the party would choose someone like Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, hitherto dormant conservatives would join the electorate in numbers sufficient for victory. This theory was slain by a fact — actually, 15,951,378 facts. That was the difference between the 43,129,566 votes President Lyndon Johnson received and the 27,178,188 that Goldwater got in winning...

"Elizabeth Drew@ElizabethDrewOH 3H...Admin officials told Bibi that if he's reelected, his egregious ambo to US Ron Dermer, co-plotter with Boehner, has to go"

Residents of Lakeland, Fla., probably didn't notice anything odd, but a private plane flying overhead Thursday followed a unusual flight path. Aviation buffs who use FlightRadar24, the popular site that can track planes in flight around the world, got a clearer picture. The plane's path described a the shape of a phallus.

A Florida veteran who is facing foreclosure for insisting on displaying a small American flag in a flower pot on his front stoop is telling his homeowner's association to "bring it on." “The flag is worth fighting for,” 73-year-old Larry Murphree, of Jacksonville, told FoxNews.com Friday. “If they want to foreclose, bring it on. I’m getting calls from all over the county to stand up. That’s what I'm going to do.” Murphree's homeowners association at Tides Condominium at Sweetwater began hitting him with fines of $100 a day last year for violating his homeowners association’s flag display rules. But instead...

The child arrived at a Florida school Friday with bruises all over. But it was the T-shirt the child was wearing that gave it away. “I currently have all F’s in all of my classes. I am not aloud to have a boyfriend no time soon,” the shirt read. “So back off before I get another good woopin like I got last night.” That attempt at public shaming led to the arrest Friday of Melany Joyce Alexander, 31, who was charged with child abuse. She posted a $2,500 bond a day later. “She beat the child with a belt, and...

....ABC News has learned Martin’s family will soon be notified that the Justice Department will not be filing charges against George Zimmerman, who shot the 17-year-old after a confrontation in 2012. Thursday marks three years to the day since Martin was killed. Federal prosecutors concluded there is not sufficient evidence to prove Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Fla., intentionally violated Martin’s civil rights, sources told ABC News.

Just saw a local Miami tv station using video from the government web site with an "interview" of Obama, where he spews some crap about how his goal is to outline for the nation how he is going to make sure things are fair, now that we have "made it through the crisis". I nearly spit my coffee out. We are not out of a crisis. My point is that these kind of videos are NOT a proper use for news....and I expect that if a REPUBLICAN president put out this type of "interview", the media would ignore it....on the...

Miami-Dade County will become the first place in Florida to allow same-sex couples to marry on Monday, 13 hours before a gay-marriage ban that has been ruled unconstitutional is lifted in the rest of the state.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more perfect caricature of America's wildest, bawdiest and most unintelligible impulses than Florida Man. As the Internet's most notorious citizen, Florida Man isn't a single person, let alone a single resident of Florida. He's an amalgamation of the characters who populate the ridiculous news stories that often trickle out of the Sunshine State. Florida Man is a raunchier version of the Onion's mild-mannered Area Man, a caricature, with a wink and a nod, to our fellow Americans. Florida Man is best known for his outlandish conduct, which ranges from the bizarre (carrying a meth...