Free Republic

Charlie Crist, the Democrat candidate for Florida Governor, just announced that his running mate will be Karla Mats. Interestingly, her nickname has been “Karla Marx” due her public statement regarding Fidel Castro. It’s a weird position to take in a location to which people came to escape the squalor and depravity of communist Cuba under Castro. Her public praise of a communist dictator isn’t all she has going for her. She’s also the President of a teacher’s union, the United Teachers of Dade, which covered up for and protected a serial sexual predator for more than a decade. It was...

Between 10 and 14 May 2004 a dozen members of the UT Dallas SPS chapter conducted a series of experiments in order to determine the origin of the mysterious lights commonly seen near the town of Marfa, TX. The Marfa mystery lights are a phenomenon that occurs after dusk outside the town of Marfa, Texas where lights are observed to appear, disappear, and move about seemingly at random on the horizon.

Juan Martinez can barely pay the bills, even with the income from his second job as a security guard. Now he hardly sees his family. Juan Carlos Martinez sits in a lonely Miami office tower late on a Sunday night, fighting back yawns as the rumble of passing trucks shake the empty building. He's miles from home, where he'd rather be, helping his children get ready for bed. But he needs this job as a weekend security guard. Martinez is a Miami-Dade teacher with a master's degree in education and ten years of experience. For that, he earns $38,050 a...

Even now, as federal agents pore over the financial records they seized from his union headquarters in Miami, Pat Tornillo remains a legend among Florida teachers. He led the nation's first statewide teachers' strike, a bitter walkout that kept 1-million Florida children out of school but gave public employees the right to bargain collectively. He built the largest labor union in the South, securing higher pay for teachers who paid him millions of dollars in dues - money he used to help elect dozens of Democrats to public office. But the 77-year-old Tornillo now faces the biggest battle of his...

he president of the teachers' union in Miami-Dade County, Fla., is under federal investigation, union officials said on Friday, after reports that he had spent $350,000 in union money on a way of life that included $175 python-print pajamas from Neiman Marcus and a $49,715 three-week vacation to Australia, New Zealand and California. The union official, Pat Tornillo, who has been president of United Teachers of Dade for more than two decades, took an unpaid leave of absence after the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the union's office in late April.Union officials said that Mr. Tornillo, who earned $243,000 in...

Carl Hiaasen Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in South Florida. He joined The Herald in 1976 and worked as a general assignment reporter, magazine writer and award-winning investigative reporter before starting his column in 1985. He is also the author of many novels, including Basket Case, Sick Puppy, Tourist Season and Strip Tease, which was made into a feature film starring Demi Moore and Burt Reynolds. Hiaasen's column appears regularly on the Other Views page. ---------------- Ten questions that should be on FCAT test by CARL HIAASEN The following are 10 timely questions for the next round of FCATs:...

The United Teachers of Dade has failed to pay $300,000 for thousands of members' supplemental insurance coverage, further evidence of a financial crisis that has leaders considering selling their new showcase headquarters. New union managers say they do not know where the insurance money went, and a former union officer said it was used to cover payroll and other expenses. Both the insurance company and national union officials promised the teachers' coverage would be protected, but the revelation fuels concerns over who was protecting the educators' money at the 14,000-member UTD. The discovery comes three weeks after FBI agents raided...