Fourteen years ago, Miami-Dade County negotiated one of the worst “profit-sharing” deals with a local sports franchise ever put to paper. Taxpayers gave Miami Heat owner Micky Arison $38 million in land and a $6.4 million annual subsidy to build the American Airlines Arena downtown, and in exchange the team…
Sure, President Obama has made some high-profile celebrity friends since taking office. He’s close with Oprah, calls up LeBron for favors, and texts JayZ, but during his presidency Obama has managed to strike up a less public, more personal friendship with none other than former Miami Heat great Alonzo Mourning…
Some Florida Republicans have a weird tendency of writing strange fan-fiction about Charlie Crist. Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam is out with his latest yarn: He thinks Hillary Clinton is already talking to Charlie Crist about being her running mate in 2016…
At a swanky luncheon yesterday inside a softly lit ballroom at the Coconut Grove Ritz-Carlton, former and likely future governor Charlie Crist had a few things to say. Among them: His favorite movie is Philadelphia; his new book costs $25 but will be cheaper in paperback; and his campaign had…
A week ago Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez launched 14yMedio, the first independent online media outlet in Cuba. Today it published its first big “get”: An interview with Vice President Joe Biden. The chat follows a 2009 interview President Barack Obama gave to Sanchez that was posted on her blog…
Americans may hold politicians to sometimes ridiculously high personal moral standards, but we are pretty lax about youthful drug use. Hell, Obama and Bush II have done coke, but Marco Rubio has always refused to say whether he’s ever smoked pot. See also: Marco Rubio Used to Throw Up Drunk…
Yesterday, David Beckham’s team of investors and real estate advisers unveiled an ambitious plan to build a soccer stadium atop what is now a boat slip on Biscayne Bay. “We want to bring the world’s greatest game to the world’s greatest city,” said Beckham’s Bolivian billionaire business partner, Marcelo Claure…
If you’re a scandal-plagued Republican governor, who better to campaign with you than another scandal-plagued Republican governor? Yes, New Jersey’s Chris Christie is in Florida this afternoon to help raise funds and campaign for good ol’ Rick Scott…
Joe Garcia’s life is like some less funny congressional version of Curb Your Enthusiasm. He keeps getting caught in these dumb embarrassing situations, and then we imagine this music plays. After video of him apparently eating ear wax live on C-SPAN 2 went viral yesterday, he went to Twitter to…
Elected as Rick Scott’s running mate, Jennifer Carroll became Florida first black female lieutenant governor ever. But to hear her tell it now it doesn’t appear that Scott was particularly eager to have a woman serving as his number two. In a candid interview yesterday with a Cocoa Beach AM…
Who says C-SPAN is boring? If you watch closely enough, there’s all sorts of entertaining stuff going on. Like Miami-area congressman Joe Garcia digging into his ear and then apparently tasting the bounty during a House Judiciary Committee meeting last week…
Remember when in the summer of 2012, just months before the presidential election, Gov. Rick Scott launched a purge of potentially ineligible voters? Thousands of Floridians — including World War II veterans — mistakenly received the threatening letters. The state spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the effort but…
1. The Marlins are tied for first in the NL East Normally we’d start off with some sort of introduction, but the introduction here is the first surprising fact. Your Miami Marlins are somehow tied for first in their division with the Washington Nationals. Granted, the Atlanta Braves are only…
At this point, Gov. Rick Scott has turned into your embarrassing uncle who won’t stop ranting at dinner about how the government should drug-test everyone, no matter how clearly you explain that such a plan definitely violates the Constitution. Except in this case, it’s the federal court system that keeps…
With Floridians looking more and more likely to pass an amendment that would legalize medical marijuana in November, the issue of where all of this medicinal pot will come from is suddenly relevant. Well, this morning, the Miami-Dade County Commission passed a resolution instructing county staff to consider the possible…
Floridians will vote on a more widespread medical marijuana policy in November, but the Florida legislature has taken the first step. The state Senate passed a bill that would allow some patients to use a low THC and highly regulated strain of marijuana. The bill had already passed in the…
Last year, about one in five Floridians were uninsured. This year, quite a few more have health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The Department of Health and Human Services announced today that 983,775 Floridians signed up for Obamacare plans. That’s the second-highest number of any state, behind only…
In the past two days, two new polls released regarding the Florida gubernatorial race tell two very different stories. One shows Democrat Charlie Crist back up to a two-digit lead over incumbent Rick Scott, but another shows Scott with a one-point lead…
Soon, the undead will arise. Their flesh hanging from their rotten bones like rags, they’ll emerge from cemeteries and mortuaries, wandering aimlessly down Biscayne Boulevard in search of their only sustenance: Brains. Living human brains. Society will quickly devolve into an anarchic fight for survival as the government, military and…
Saturday Night Live may have portrayed Jeb Bush as a wannabe-Coachella hipster desperate to get the youth vote a few weeks backs, but by the funniest thing about his possible presidential campaign is the fact that his own mother, the ever-outspoken Barbara Bush, is publicly against it. Over the past…
The good news first: The Florida Senate passed a bill today that clears the way for craft breweries to sell 64-ounce growlers directly to customers. The bad news: the bill places so many other regulations on Florida’s booming craft beer industry it could kill it before it gets a chance…
Florida is still a long way from legalized medical marijuana. The Sheriff’s Association is waging a fierce campaign against it. The governor has hinted he might not sign any new laws on it. The conservative House has yet to take up the issue. Yet history was made in the Florida…
