Free Republic

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Founded in the 1920s as a fantasyland of Mediterranean architecture, this affluent Miami suburb, one of the nation's first planned communities, has a long-standing reputation for zealous aesthetic policing, ruling over everything from hedge heights to what colors residents may paint their homes. Now a guy in a pickup truck is threatening the social order. Lowell Kuvin, 44, wound up on the wrong side of the local code one night four years ago when he parked his forest-green 1993 Ford F-150 outside the house he was renting. The city defines pickup trucks, even those for personal...

For more than two years, Rev. Jim Potter has fought Anderson County officials for the right to leave up a giant Christian cross he erected near I-75. On Monday, a judge sided with the county, ordering Rev. Potter to remove the cross. County officials argued that the cross, located on private property near exit 122, violated building and zoning regulations. But Rev. Potter said he believed that because of the significance of religious structures, his cross should be exempt from the zoning regulations. "I think it (the cross) should bring to knowledge the fact that Jesus Christ did die for...