Free Republic

MIAMI -- Mayor Carlos Alvarez was ousted Tuesday by voters angry over a property tax rate increase and salary raise for county employees in a county struggling to recover from the recession. With 100 percent of precinct votes counted, 88 percent voted to oust the mayor, making Miami-Dade the most populous area, with more than 2.5 million people, ever to recall a local official. Just 12 percent of the 204,500 who cast ballots were in favor of allowing Alvarez to finish his second term, which ends in 2012. < SNIP > Yolanda Soler, 47, said she voted to recall the...

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Cuban-American couple who worked at a Florida university were sentenced on Tuesday to prison terms for funneling information about Miami's Cuban exiles to the Havana government.(snip)

A Florida professor admitted Tuesday he had been a Cuban spy for nearly 30 years, and his wife -- also a professor -- admitted she knew of his conduct, authorities said. Both Carlos Alvarez and his wife Elsa pleaded guilty to lesser charges in federal court in Miami. The couple entered their pleas as part of a deal to avoid a jury trial on previous charges of being Cuban agents who failed to register with the U.S. government, the Miami Herald reported Tuesday. The more serious offense could have put the couple in prison for a decade, the paper said....

A college professor and his wife, a college administrator, have been charged with being longtime illegal agents of Cuban President Fidel Castro, according to documents filed Monday. Carlos Alvarez, a psychology professor at Florida International University, and his wife, Elsa Alvarez, were charged with acting as agents of Cuba without registering with the U.S. government as required, said the documents filed in U.S. District Court. The two were scheduled to make an initial court appearance Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrea Simonton, according to the documents. An indictment further describing the charges was expected to be unsealed after that appearance,...

As Carlos Alvarez was sworn in Tuesday as Miami-Dade County's new executive mayor, two county commissioners were noticeably absent. The first being Natacha Seijas, a woman of sour disposition no one missed. The other, Joe Martinez. ''I just didn't go,'' Martinez told me Wednesday. But why? After all, like Alvarez, Martinez rose from the ranks of the Miami-Dade Police Department. ``I just didn't go.'' In the four years he has been in office, Martinez has developed a reputation for having an ego that rivals any other on the commission. In addition to asking him why he chose to deliberately snub...

The drive to rid Miami-Dade County's image of scandal and corruption will be led by the county's former top cop, Carlos Alvarez, who won the mayor's race Tuesday over County Commissioner Jimmy Morales. Alvarez, a Republican, had more than half of the votes in the nonpartisan race. The former director of Miami-Dade Police Department will head a county government long plagued by political scandal that operates on a $5.9 billion budget with more than 30,000 employees. In his victory speech at the packed school auditorium of St. Timothy's Catholic Church in West Miami, Alvarez acknowledged it was a tough race...