Free Republic

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) – Records just obtained by 8 On Your Side reveal a Pinellas County deputy who was disciplined last month for drunken misbehavior at a Mothers Against Drunk Driving conference in Fort Lauderdale showed up at that July statewide training event prepared to party. “The plot thickens,” said former MADD director and anti-DUI attorney Tom Carey after hearing new details. “It seems to be a lot worse than originally presented.” Michael Szeliga packed a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey, as part of his luggage, in his sheriff’s patrol car before driving to the Hyatt Regency Pier 66...

A viral video that shows a Florida man receiving a warning for allowing the smell of barbecue to waft off his property has some smoking mad. Scotty Jordan uploaded a video on July 22 to Facebook that he says shows Pinellas County environmental specialist Joe Graham issuing a warning to Jordan and a friend for violating the county’s air quality law. The video, which has been watched over four million times, shows Graham telling Jordan that there's too much smoke emanating from Jordan's commercial-grade grill. “I just took three pictures of smoke,” Graham explains. “I can smell it again right...

A Pinellas County recovery center's website was hacked by an Islamic extremist group over the weekend. The Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that Footprints Beachside Recovery Center was hit and its content replaced with a message supporting very different ideologies. And it's not the only one. The web page, claimed to be hacked by a group calling itself El Moujahidin, which had numerous misspellings and sentence fragments, threatened to keep hacking if Muslims are killed. John Templeton, Jr. had just gotten back from vacation on Sunday when he decided to check in on the company's website. “Instead of our front...

We’ve got a little Congressional special election going on over on the west coast of Florida to fill the seat left by the passing of Florida Statesman Bill Young, Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Republican David Jolly is running against Liberal Democrat Alex Sink. And the liberal media hypocrisy in covering politics is in full flower. Sink makes frankly bigoted comments on the subject of immigration reform, but of course the media doesn’t call her out on it. During a heated debate against Republican candidate David Jolly on Tuesday, Sink said “We have a lot of employers over...

Former chief financial officer, banker and gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink has been the subject of buzz as a potential candidate for the 13th Congressional District seat that became vacant when longtime U.S. Representative Bill Young died earlier this month. Now, she's made it official. Sink's campaign has issued a news release that points to a new website, alexforcongress.com. She's quoted as saying she finds "a deep frustration" with what she calls the "dysfunctional and reckless politics" in Washington. Her release says she's running to "change the way Washington does business." Sink is one of Florida's few high-profile Democratic politicians. Potential...

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Former Florida Rep. Allen West had harsh words of criticism for nationally known civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who have remained silent on a video showing black teens beating a white boy, on a school bus: “Ya’ll just make me sick.” The video, which went viral this past week, depicts a July 9 assault on a Pinellas County school bus. Three black teenage boys, all age 15, beat a white boy, while the bus driver — who has since resigned — tries to verbally halt the altercation but does not physically intervene. The beating,...

A 20-year-old driver was able to elude Pinellas County deputies at a traffic stop, but then was bitten by an alligator early Thursday. Deputies pulled over a vehicle that was not staying in a lane about 2:47 a.m. Thursday. Bryan Zuniga, 20, stopped the vehicle, but then jumped out of the passenger side door. Zuniga kicked a hole in a vinyl fence so he could escape, deputies said, near the 7100 block of 78th Avenue N. He was found hours later at a hospital being treated for multiple puncture wounds to his face, arm and armpit, police said. He told...

TOWSON--State Prosecutor Emmet C. Davitt announced Friday Wendy W. Rosen, the Democratic 2012 nominee in Maryland's First Congressional District, pleaded guilty in the Circuit Court of Baltimore to charges of voting illegally in Maryland in the 2006 and 2010 general elections. ... Rosen's withdrawal came amid a national debate over whether voter fraud is a major problem, and whether the efforts of some states to require more identification may suppress turnout by the young, elderly and minorities in elections. It is unclear whether voter ID laws would prevent someone from casting ballots in two states for the same national election....

More than two years after enraging right-wing groups by ordering Terry Schiavo's feeding tube removed, George Greer still peers over his shoulder nervously at times. In fact, the Florida judge told a rapt audience Friday at the American Bar Association's annual meeting, he even used an alias when he registered at his San Francisco hotel on this trip. Two years ago, he said, someone in the Bay Area threatened to kill him over his decision to end life support for the brain-damaged Schiavo. And even though that person was prosecuted and jailed, Greer said, he's taking no chances. "It is...

It had the face of Frankenstein and the hands of a werewolf.Outfitted in jeans and flannel shirt, the creature - stuffed with crumpled newspaper - hung by the neck on a homemade gallows outside a home in the Allendale neighborhood.To its owner, "Bob" was a Halloween decoration. But to Omali Yeshitela, it was a racially charged symbol of hate.On Tuesday, as police officers on the scene scrambled to contact the homeowner at work, Yeshitela and others from the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement tore the dummy down.

TALLAHASSEE - State Rep. Everett Rice of Treasure Island, who served 16 years as Pinellas County sheriff, is running for attorney general. His announcement came the same day Attorney General Charlie Crist filed to run for governor. Rice joins two other Republican lawmakers, Rep. Joe Negron of Stuart and Sen. Burt Saunders of Naples, in seeking to replace Crist. None is well-known statewide, and no Democrat has announced. "The job's coming open, and I had a lot of respect for Charlie Crist. He's leaving it and a lot of people have asked me to do it," Rice said. "I think...

Just announced on FoxNews that Dr.Jon Thogmartin, District Chief Medical Examiner for Pinellas County, Florida will hold a press conference at 3:30 PM EST to discuss and answer questions regarding the autopsy that he will perform on Terri Schindler Schiavo.

IS THERE A MYSTERIOUS DARK FORCE THAT HOVERS OVER THAT SPOT CALLED PINELLAS?There is a mysterious feeling around the Schiavo case, and we wish we knew what it was. The feeling is this: Pinellas County or parts of it seem to be under the oppression of a dark spirit. From Scripture we know that powers and principalities are the real force with which we contend, and that they hover over vicinities (see Daniel and the "prince of Persia").Is there one hovering over towns in that county, towns with names like Pinellas Park and Clearwater?These are places, of course, that figure...

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. It was a strange coincidence that Terri Schiavo’s ordeal took place during Holy Week. What she went through, and the nation’s reaction to it, taught us a sobering lesson about suffering and redemption. The things that ordinary, sensible Americans were saying about Terri’s case were shocking and upsetting. “Let the poor woman die” was one of them. But Terri was not dying before her food and water were taken away. She simply needed to eat and drink, just like the rest of us. Then there were the various media...

CLEARWATER - The room is packed with computer consultants, real estate agents, home financing professionals, Web site designers, accountants, hairstylists, artists, interior designers. All based in Clearwater. All Scientologists. Guest speaker Mark DeEulio bursts in. "How are you doing?" he booms. "Great!" comes an enthusiastic chorus. "Who could use more money?" DeEulio teases. Without pause, he launches into the basics of financial planning - as taught by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. It is the weekly meeting of the Clearwater chapter of the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises, business people using Hubbard's business techniques. Akin to a chamber of commerce...

The Florida Supreme Court has vacated James Floyd's 1985 conviction and death sentence, ruling that critical evidence was withheld by the prosecution and that the evidence might have been enough to change the verdict at trial. In its 4-2 decision, the Court ruled that the prosecutor's failure to inform Floyd's defense counsel that an eyewitness had seen two white men entering the victim's home on the day of the murder and saw them leave in a suspicious manner approximately one hour later "severely compromised Floyds' constitutional right to a fair trial." The ruling noted that the state's case against Floyd,...

I rarely post a vanity, but however the Schiavo case comes out, I would think it best that Pinellas County, Folrida, the mildewy backwater that has apparently encouraged this corruption for many years, be boycotted by clear-thinking Americans who do not wish their dollars be pipelined into a swamp such as this. Apparently, Pinellas voters enjoy corrupt public works projects (hospices among them), and corrupt county officials. In fact, Pinellas folks have apparently sanctioned them for years and years. Perhaps they are both amused and enriched by them. Well, no more. Pinellas County, Florida, right ought to be remembered throughout...

ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (AP) -- A gunman fatally shot two people and wounded a third inside a Radio Shack store at a strip mall Thursday night, then shot himself to death, police said. Another customer and an employee managed to escape uninjured from the store at the Gateway Shopping Center, police spokesman Bill Proffitt said.Police did not identify the gunman, but police spokesman George Kajtsa said the man "had some mental issues, according to his family.""He was involved in some kind of a road rage incident today that the Pinellas County Sheriff's Department is investigating," Kajtsa said. He had no...