Free Republic

TALLAHASSEE - The debate over Florida's public campaign financing program turned ugly Thursday when Republican Sen. Ronda Storms mocked President Barack Obama as "The Messiah" and a Democratic colleague made a vulgar retort. It didn't escalate beyond that, and they agreed that voters should be able to decide whether to get rid of the program that gave statewide candidates more than $11 million in taxpayer money during 2006 elections. The Senate Transportation and Economic Development Appropriations Committee unanimously approved putting a proposal to repeal the public campaign financing program on the 2010 ballot.

TAMPA - A tbt* pop music critic resigned Thursday after acknowledging she had posted negative comments on a Myspace.com profile that parodied Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms. The messages posted by Gina Vivinetto, a columnist for the free tabloid daily, which is published by the St. Petersburg Times, were "inappropriate," Neil Brown, the Times' executive editor and vice president, said late Thursday. The comments, which Brown declined to describe in detail, were "mocking Ronda Storms in a somewhat sexual nature," he said. The postings by Vivinetto were discovered Wednesday, two days after the fake profile was pulled from Myspace, Brown...

The people trying to open a bikini bar in Valrico say they have been singled out for unfair treatment by Hillsborough County government, and they've filed a lawsuit claiming their constitutional rights have been violated. While that's a matter for the courts to decide, the county's treatment of the bar application has been unusual to say the least, even for a government whose hallmark is battling public prurience. Consider: --County planners initially approved the project in a routine staff-level review. But after intense scrutiny that was anything but routine, they rescinded their approval on grounds that the bar's parking spaces...