Tag Archives: Florida

May 23, 2013 · 11:43 AM

Cleared of charges after explosion, Florida teen gets full scholarship to space academy

I’m happy to see that this story, which started horribly, has a nice ending, thanks to  18-year NASA veteran Homer Hickam…

Daily Kos

By now you’ve heard about Kiera Wilmot. She’s the Florida teen who was arrested for setting off a small explosion in her science class:

Kiera, 16-year-old junior, was arrested after the incident, which happened outside about 15 minutes before the school day began. No one was hurt, nor did she cause any damage.The school’s resource officer arrested her on two possible felony charges, possessing a weapon on campus and discharging a destructive device. Kiera was suspended for 10 days, sent to an alternative school, which she still attends, and told she faced expulsion.

Her headline-making nightmare hit one NASA veteran hard:

The explosion struck a chord with 18-year NASA veteran Homer Hickam, a former lead astronaut training manager for Spacelab, and later for the International Space Station.In the late 1950s, Hickam had a brush with law enforcement for allegedly starting a forest fire. State police came to his high school and led him and his friends away in handcuffs, but his high school physics professor and school principal came to the rescue, clearing him of wrongdoing.

Hickman became determined to see Kiera Wilmot succeed:

“I couldn’t let this go without doing something,” Hickam said. “I’m not a lawyer, but I could give her something that would encourage her. I’ve worked closely with the U.S. Space Academy, and so I purchased a scholarship for her.”

Great news! But it gets even better:

Learning of her twin sister, Hickam raised enough money so Kiera and Kayla could attend space camp together. Hickam runs several scholarships for kids with potential, and hopes to create an ongoing Space Academy scholarship. The twins will attend in July.

Both Wilmot sisters are headed to the Space Academy! Sometimes good things really do happen to good people. Three cheers for Homer Hickam!

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May 16, 2013 · 7:45 AM

Charges dropped against Florida teen over amateur science experiment

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(Kiera Wilmot, seen in a screengrab from MSNBC’s All In w/ Chris Hayes)

I’m happy to see that charges has been dropped against a student who was demonstrating a science project that went bad.  Florida’s record of arresting minority school age children is abysmal…

MSNBC

The Florida teenager who was arrested two weeks ago for causing a small explosion on the campus of her high school will not be charged with a crime. Kiera Wilmot, 16, was arrested by police in Bartow, Florida, after conducting an unauthorized science experiment which lightly damaged an eight ounce plastic water bottle.

At the time, Wilmot faced possible charges for “possessing or discharging weapons or firearms at a school sponsored event or on school property.” If she had been convicted, she could have faced up to five years in prison.

Wilmot’s arrest became a national story, as members of the press and the scientific community insisted that Wilmot was the victim of a massive overreaction from law enforcement. A crowdfunded legal defense fund netted over $8,000 to cover Wilmot’s potential legal fees, and a Change.org petition to get the charges dropped received nearly 200,000 signatures.

“Even though I don’t have the privilege of knowing Kiera, I believe we all have the responsibility to stand up with one another whenever there is injustice and felt I had to do whatever I could to make sure the unjust felony charges were dropped,” said Maggie Gilman, the creator of the petition, in a statement circulated by Change.org. “I’m very thankful to the 195,000 people who stood with Kiera and signed the petition on Change.org!”

Wilmot has already served a ten-day suspension, and is now attending another high school, according to her attorney.

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April 15, 2013 · 2:34 PM

What country does the Tea Party represent?

What country does the Tea Party represent?

Salon

House Republicans are no longer swayed by public opinion, imperiling the GOP and grinding government to a halt

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

With an assist from some long-term demographic trends, House Republicans have redistricted, propagandized and policed themselves into another country.

As a result, they have become unmoored from the political incentives that typically drive law-makers’ decision-making process. Public opinion no longer sways them, and that is creating a potentially insurmountable problem for the party establishment’s efforts to broaden the GOP’s appeal beyond angry old white people.

House Republicans may care about the GOP’s national fortunes in the abstract, but too many are impervious to what the public at large wants because of the nature of the districts they represent. At the same time, a steady stream of spin from the conservative media provides insulation from the realities of American politics, and deep-pocketed outside groups punish Republicans for any deviation from right-wing orthodoxy.

This isn’t just a serious problem for establishment Republicans. It’s ground our government to a halt, as Congress is virtually incapable of action, even on issues where there is something approaching a consensus among the public at large — like universal background checks for firearm purchases, for example. They’re supported by 80-90 percent of voters, but face a steep uphill climb in the House.

How did this happen?

The Great Gerrymander of 2010

In 2012, Democratic House candidates got 1.4 million more votes than Republicans, but came away 33 seats short of the majority – only the second time since World War Two that such a reversal has taken place. That was the fruit of a well-funded, multi-year plan by the Republican State Leadership Committee to take over state houses before the 2010 Census, and control the redistricting process that followed.

And they gerrymandered with a vengeance. As Princeton University scholar Sam Wang noted, “although gerrymandering is usually thought of as a bipartisan offense… partisan redistricting is not symmetrical between the political parties.”

By my seat-discrepancy criterion, 10 states are out of whack: [Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin] plus Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Illinois and Texas. Arizona was redistricted by an independent commission, Texas was a combination of Republican and federal court efforts, and Illinois was controlled by Democrats. Republicans designed the other seven maps. Both sides may do it, but one side does it more often.

Surprisingly absent from the guilty list is California, where 62 percent of the two-party vote went to Democrats [which] exactly matched the [proportion of the] newly elected delegation.

Democrats Are “Inefficiently Distributed”

But, as a number of observers pointed out after the mid-terms, even this aggressive effort to redraw districts in their favor wasn’t quite enough to lock in Republicans’ control of the House. This is where the organic trend comes in. Political scientists Jowei Chen of the University of Michigan and Jonathan Rodden of Stamford explain (PDF) that as a result of migration and urbanization, Democrats tend to be “highly clustered in dense central city areas, while Republicans are scattered more evenly through the suburban, exurban, and rural periphery.” This results in what the authors call “unintentional redistricting,” with “a skew in the distribution of partisanship across districts such that with 50 percent of the votes, Democrats can expect fewer than 50 percent of the seats.”

Hyper-Partisan Districts

Those two trends have resulted in a dwindling number of competitive districts. As the New York Times’ numbers-guru Nate Silver pointed out, the number of “landslide districts” – which he defined as those that went for one party by 20 or more percentage points than the electorate as a whole – has doubled since 1992, while the number of swing districts has fallen from 155 to just 64 over the same period.

When you look at the racial composition of districts, the trend becomes even more pronounced. According to the Census Bureau, 111 House republicans represent districts that are at least 80 percent white.

Continue below the chart, here…

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April 5, 2013 · 4:26 PM

On Peter King, Republicans, Fleas…and Marco Rubio

Republican Party - The Dark Side : http://mariopiperni.com/

I’m such a fan of Mario Piperni’s work…

Mario Piperni

GoldenBoy Marco Rubio shows up in New York to fundraise and one of the state’s Reps, Republican Peter King, protests.

“Guys like Marco Rubio in Florida. All the money that your people have gotten in Florida over the years from every hurricane that came along. And this guy has the nerve to vote against money for New York and then come up here and try to raise money. You know, he can forget it.”

“I made it clear any of those people who voted and postured against money coming to New York and New Jersey and comes up here and wants to take money out of our pockets – forget it, stay home.”

A couple of thoughts on King’s little rant…

a) Consider Rubio to be another Mitt, only shorter and with a better command of Spanish. The man is a fraud who will say or do what he must to get the votes he needs in his quest to become the GOP candidate in 2016.

 

Marco Romney : MarcoRubio / MittRomney http://mariopiperni.com/

After leading the Republican charge on immigration reform, Rubio is now hesitating as a bipartisan agreement is within sight. Why? Because the GOP base whose support he needs, opposes any form of amnesty for undocumented workers. In effect, Rubio finds himself in the exact same position that Romney was in – trying to appear to be a rational and reasonable politician while appeasing the crazies in the party.

He’ll discover, like Romney did, that it cannot be done.

b) King is upset with Rubio for voting against Sandy funding for New York and New Jersey. Cry us a river. How the hell did King expect Republicans to act? The man is a standing member of a political party that can best be described as suffering from severe sociopathic personality disorder – manipulative,  paranoid and delusional, showing lack of empathy, remorse, guilt or shame, callous in nature with a strong tendency toward pathological lying. And King himself shows many of these traits.

  • He opposed the 2009 stimulus package.
  • He voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.
  • He opposes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
  • He’s an Islamophobe. “There are too many mosques in this country… There are too many people sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them.”
  • He voted for the Ryan budget that would slash social programs like Medicare and Medicaid that form the socials safety net for the aged, poor and middle class.
  • He’s voted to defund Obamacare despite the fact that it would help many of the 50 million Americans who cannot afford health care insurance.

Word of advice for Peter King. Don’t bitch about waking up with fleas when you lie down with dogs.

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March 13, 2013 · 12:04 PM

GOP Florida Lt Gov Jennifer Carroll Resigns Amid Racketeering Probe

jennifer carroll

I’m not too surprised.  After all, former Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll was Governor Rick Scott’s number two.  Scott has been involved in a scandal or two prior to his election to office, was accused of Medicaid fraud through a hospital he was financially attached to.

This entire saga conjures up”birds of a feather” metaphors…

PoliticusUSA

Florida Republican Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll resigned abruptly Tuesday amid a gambling scandal and racketeering probe into Allied Veterans, a firm for which she once did public relations work. Her resignation comes two days after Florida Law Enforcement officers interviewed Carroll about her work with Allied Veterans of the World, and top officials with the organization were arrested and charged with racketeering.

Carroll’s resignation was first reported by The Florida Times-Union:

Rick Scott tapped Carroll, a Navy veteran, to be his running mate during a 2010 news conference outside Jacksonville Naval Air Station. Allied Veterans is accused of money laundering, using money from a nonprofit for personal gain and misrepresenting the amount donated to charities. Authorities say the group donated just 2 percent of its $290 million in proceeds to charities over about five years. They also say the former president received more than $1.5 million and the national commander got $250,000 from the organization. A firm Carroll owned, 3N & JC, did consulting work for Allied Veterans, and she starred in a commercial for the nonprofit in 2010. …

In 2011, the Times-Union reported that Carroll used falsified documents to make her firm eligible for a Jacksonville program that offers grants to minority-owned companies. Her firm was located in Clay County, but relied, in part, on falsified lease documents to appear based in Jacksonville, which was a program requirement. Additionally, former Carroll aide Carletha Cole was arrested after being charged with giving a reporter a recording of a secret conversation between her and Carroll’s chief-of-staff. The case has brought a lot of unwanted attention to the Scott administration. In court filings, Cole has accused Carroll of having an inappropriate relationship with another female staff member.

Knowledge of how to defraud the government that Republicans claim to hate so much may be a résumé requirement in the Scott administration.

The Miami Herald explained the investigation into Allied Veterans:

Investigators said that Allied Veterans tried to scheme and defraud the public and governmental agencies by misrepresenting how much of its proceeds were donated to charities affiliated with Veterans Administration.

Carroll was nominated by Gov. Jeb Bush to run Florida’s Department of Veterans Affairs and served as one of the national chairpersons for Mitt Romney’s “Black Leadership Council”.

She served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2003-2010, and during that time was paid by Allied Veterans for her consulting work. She also proposed legislation to legalize the gambling games Allied Veterans was running in Florida Internet cafes, but later withdrew the bill claiming her staffer had “erroneously” proposed it.

Read her resignation letter here.

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March 5, 2013 · 7:21 AM

Tuesday Blog Roundup – 3-5-2013

Health care will be an Obama legacy
Julian Zelizer says Republican officials now see powerful incentives for them to embr..

Now here’s some real movement on gun control
This is probably the most significant movement in the debate over gun reform that we&..

U.S. and China Said to Agree on North Korea Sanctions
United Nations diplomats said Monday that the United States and China have reached ag..

Jeb Bush: No path to citizenship in immigration reform
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Monday that he does not support a pathway to citiz..

Video: Sandra Day O’Connor on social shifts, Bush v. Gore
Sandra Day O’Connor, former Supreme Court Justice and author of “Out of Order,” talk..

84% of world’s fish not safe to eat more than once a month
I’m not sure how happy I am eating something that’s so poisonous you can only eat one..

McCain, Graham again vow to hold up Brennan nomination
Now let’s say we want documents about the War of 1812. It’ll be hilarious. Yep, we’r..

GOP open to ‘grand bargain,’ as long they don’t have to bargain
They’ve got some beachfront property they’d love to sell you. Congressiona..

Even Switzerland passes executive pay limits, why can’t we?
If the country known for its huge banking & pharmaceutical industries can pass e..

Menendez accuser says she was paid to make up prostitution claims
Looking back, there may have been signs it was a fake. Amazing. Only days before the..

 

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February 20, 2013 · 9:12 AM

Wednesday Blog Roundup 2-21-2013

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Sequester!
Is it worse than option b? No idea. I have no idea what option b is.

Black history month

Video of that McCain Townhall
Here’s video of that McCain townhall where he got a taste of some pretty serious res

Tiger Woods: Obama Has ‘Amazing Touch’
Tiger Woods says President Obama is a pretty good golfer. They played as a team over

White House, Rubio spar on immigration
Sen. Marco Rubio’s office released a statement insisting that the plan the Florida Re..

WSJ Hides Rubio’s Obstructionist Past
The Wall Street Journal ignored key parts of Senator Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) Senat..

Simpson Bowles and the mythical, arbitrary “center”
Like a pair of aging crooners hoping to recapture past glory with a long-awaited reun..

GOP “makeover” hits a snag: Unwillingness to change
Over the weekend, Paul Ryan reiterated his party’s refusal to agree to any new ..

Video: Former Senator Scott Brown triggers bullpucky alert
Rachel Maddow mistakenly thinks a bullpucky alert is the result of an accidental but..

Conservatives Celebrate ‘National Marriage Week’ With Sexism
Last week, conservative groups held “ National Marriage Week ,” an attem..

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February 18, 2013 · 4:09 PM

Trayvon Martin Update, In Case You’ve Not Been Following It…

Since the very beginning of the case, TFC has made an effort (thanks to The Root) to cover every weekly report on this case since Trayvon Martin’s death.

Alan Colmes’ Liberaland

Here’s what’s been happening in the Trayvon Martin case, in case you’ve not been paying attention.

1. Zimmerman has spent over $300,000 in donations over the last year and is desperate for more funds to finance his defense.

2. The trial has been set for June 10. Zimmerman recently asked for a delay of the trial until November but a judge denied his request.

3. New forensic analysis “casts doubt on Zimmerman’s timeline on the night he shot and killed the unarmed teen.”

4. Zimmerman has gained 105 pounds.

5. The defense team acquired Trayvon Martin’s school records. According to Zimmerman’s lawyers “some information in Trayvon Martin’s file could be relevant in the defense of George Zimmerman.”

6. Zimmerman is suing NBC News. In the suit, Zimmerman claims NBC unfairly portrayed him as a “racist and predatory villain.”

7. The judged denied Zimmerman’s request to be removed from GPS tracking.

8. Trayvon Martin would have turned 18 on February 5.

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February 12, 2013 · 8:22 AM

NRA Dismisses ‘Connecticut Effect,’ Suggests Grief Over Newtown Tragedy Will Be Short-Lived

What pat of “National tragedy” do those folks at the NRA not understand?  The Newtown shooting took place in mid-December.  The tragedy in Newtown is not going away…

Think Progress

The National Rifle Association will wait until the “Connecticut effect” has subsided to resume its push to weaken the nation’s gun laws, according to a top NRA lobbyist speaking at the NRA’s Wisconsin State Convention this weekend.

Though the NRA had been tight-lipped about how the Newtown tragedy would affect their efforts, lobbyist Bob Welch, who represents the Wisconsin NRA group, was anything but during their yearly meeting.

“We have a strong agenda coming up for next year, but of course a lot of that’s going to be delayed as the ‘Connecticut effect’ has to go through the process,” Welch, a former Republican state senator, told the Wisconsin’s NRA State Association during the legislative update. The group’s president, Jeff Nass, had previously mentioned that they would push the Republican-controlled legislature to pass a Stand Your Ground law, the likes of which became famous following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida.

Welch went on to bemoan the fact that the public’s focus on Newtown was preventing the NRA from pushing such bills through the legislature, but his remarks soon turned to braggadocio about the NRA’s legislative influence. He relayed an anecdote about how, following the Connecticut shooting, a pro-gun Democrat in the legislature had mentioned his desire to close the gun show loophole. “And I said [to him], ‘no, we’re not going to do that,” Welch boasted. “And so far, nothing’s happened on that.”

WELCH: We have a strong agenda coming up for next year, but of course a lot of that’s going to be delayed as the “Connecticut effect” has to go through the process. [...] What’s even more telling is the people who don’t like guns pretty much realize that they can’t do a thing unless they talk to us. After Connecticut I had one of the leading Democrats in the legislature—he was with us most of the time, not all the time—he came to me and said, “Bob, I got all these people in my caucus that really want to ban guns and do all this bad stuff, we gotta give them something. How about we close this gun show loophole? Wouldn’t that be good?” And I said, “no, we’re not going to do that.” And so far, nothing’s happened on that.

Listen:

One of the ways the NRA remains so effective is through a massive level of political spending. Last year alone, the group spent $32 million in an effort to weaken the nation’s gun laws, including $6 million on lobbyists. Such an onslaught of political spending gives Welch the belief, whether true or not, that even those who advocate for stronger gun laws “realize they can’t do a thing unless they talk to us.”

In reality, however, the NRA is much more of a paper tiger, and its weak record in elections hardly justifies the kind of deference lawmakers pay toward the gun lobby. An analysis of the NRA’s spending revealed that “NRA contributions to candidates have virtually no impact on the outcome of Congressional races,” and recent polling suggests voters are more likely to punish a candidate for having NRA backing than to reward allegiance to the gun lobby.

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February 7, 2013 · 4:24 PM

8 Reasons Why Marco Rubio Is Not ‘The Republican Savior’

I completely agree with Think Progress…

Think Progress

Since Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) abandoned his opposition to providing undocumented immigrants with a pathway to citizenship and embraced a bipartisan framework for comprehensive immigration, political pundits and Republican leaders have anointed the Florida Congressman the future of the GOP.

Consequently, the likely 2016 presidential candidate has become a media darling, appearing on conservative talk shows and mainstream outlets to tout his reform principles and convince skeptics of the wisdom of reforming the nation’s broken immigration system. The media idolization reached its zenith on the cover of this week’s issue of TIME magazine. The publication prominently features a picture of a defiant Rubio under the headline, “The Republican Savior: How Marco Rubio became the new voice of the GOP.”

But dig beyond Rubio’s newfound embrace of immigration reform, and you’ll find that the GOP’s future appears stuck in the past, as the great hope of the party still espouses many of the extreme policies voters rejected in November:

1. Refused to raise the debt ceiling. Rubio voted against the GOP’s compromise measure to temporarily suspend the debt limit through May 19 in order avoid defaulting on the national debt. In a statement posted on his website, Rubio insisted that he would hold the debt ceiling increase hostage “unless it is tied with measures to actually solve our debt problem through spending reforms.”

2. Co-sponsored and voted for a Balanced Budget Amendment. “Now more than ever, we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Rubio proclaimed in 2011. A Balanced Budget Amendment would force the government to slash spending during an economic downturn, driving up unemployment and making the downturn worse, in a vicious cycle. If the amendment were in place during the last financial crisis, unemployment would have doubled.

3. Signed the Norquist pledge. Rubio pledged to never raise taxes under any circumstances and even voted against the last-minute deal to avert the fiscal cliff, since the deal included $600 billion in revenue. “Thousands of small businesses, not just the wealthy, will now be forced to decide how they’ll pay this new tax,” Rubio noted in a statement.

4. Backed Florida’s voter purge. Rubio defended Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) attempted purge Democratic voters from the rolls, brushing off its disproportionate targeting of Latino voters. He also defended Florida’s decision to shorten its early voting period from two weeks to eight days by pointing to “the cost-benefit analysis.” After Election Day, several prominent Florida Republicans admitted that the election law changes were geared toward suppressing minority and Democratic votes and researchers found that long voting lines drove away at least 201,000 Florida voters.

5. Doesn’t believe in climate change. During a recent BuzzFeed interview, Rubio claimed has “seen reasonable debate” over whether humans are causing climate change. Scientists have long agreed that the debate is now over.

6. Opposed federal action to help prevent violence against women. Rubio voted against the motion to proceed to debate the Violence Against Women Act, noting that he disagrees with portions of the bill. Rubio claims he supports a scaled-back version of the legislation.

7. Believes employers should be able to deny birth control to their employees. Rubio co-sponsored a bill — along with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) — that sought to nullify Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide contraception to their employees without additional co-pays by permitting businesses to voluntarily opt out of offering birth control.

8. Recorded robo calls for anti-gay hate group. Rubio has previously boasted the endorsement of anti-gay hate groups like the Family Research Council and during the election recorded robocalls for the National Organization of Marriage urging Americans to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians. He recently wouldn’t take a position on legislation that would prohibit employers from firing employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identify and wouldn’t say “whether same-sex couples should receive protections under immigration law.”

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