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Florida Tag

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 09, 2017 15 Comments
Details continue to come out about the Fort Lauderdale airport shooter, Esteban Santiago, who appears to have had a history of mental health problems and was under psychiatric care. Slowly, information has also come out about the victims of that horrific attack, which killed five and wounded eight. While not all victim information has been released, it appears at least four couples have been separated by death. Two of the victims were an Ohio couple heading for their 51st wedding anniversary.
Tragedy struck an Ohio family when Shirley Timmons was slain and her husband critically injured during the airport attack. The couple had flown to Fort Lauderdale on Friday to join the rest of their family for a cruise, WILE-FM (http://bit.ly/2iODNWI) reported.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 07, 2017 13 Comments
Mary wrote yesterday about the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood international airport that killed five and wounded eight others.  Details are now being released about the shooter, Esteban Santiago, and it appears that he had a history of mental health problems and was under psychiatric care. The Broward County Sheriff's office has posted the following about the incident:
A lone gunman, Esteban Santiago, 26 (DOB 3/16/90), opened fire in the baggage claim area, killing five people and wounding eight others.

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 06, 2017 28 Comments
Authorities have reported five fatalities and ight injuries in a shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Officers arrested the lone suspect. https://twitter.com/browardsheriff/status/817441537655181313 TSA has stated that an active shooter remains at the airport, but no one has confirmed that yet.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 13, 2016 7 Comments
The Bay Pines VA Healthcare System in Tampa Bay, FL, left the dead body of a veteran in an unused for shower for nine hours before transporting it to the morgue. The Tampa Bay Times reported:
Once the veteran died, hospice staff members made direct verbal requests to an individual described as the transporter for the body to be moved to the morgue. The transporter told them to follow proper procedures instead by contacting dispatchers. That request was never made, so those responsible for taking away the body never showed up. At first, the body was moved to a hallway in the hospice, then to a shower room, where it stayed, unattended, for more than nine hours.

Posted by Andrew Branca on November 27, 2016 27 Comments
The scientific journal JAMA Internal Medicine has published a paper utterly devoid of scientific or public policy merit, fraught with abject error and ignorance, and utterly lacking any arguable purpose other than to deceive gullible readers about the nature and merits of Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground law. The JAMA study follows another supposedly scientific study by others I have previously debunked: Published on Monday, Nov. 14, the JAMA paper is entitled: "Evaluating the Impact of Florida’s 'Stand Your Ground' Self-defense Law on Homicide and Suicide by Firearm: An Interrupted Time Series Study." How this paper passed peer review and why it has not already been withdrawn is a question left to the reader.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 29, 2016 14 Comments
The Florida Senate race is starting to look a lot like the presidential race, at least in terms of wildly fluctuating numbers amongst polls and significant changes reported almost daily. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is running against newly-mined Democrat and Representative of Florida's 18th district Patrick Murphy (D-FL), and the race currently stands . . . who knows?  Polls show that Rubio is up as much as 10 points, 6 points, or maybe only 3.6 points (the latter two down from a 7 point lead earlier this month). Murphy, so far, is not leading and has not led in any poll, but that hasn't stopped Democrats from taking another look as polls fluctuate and the race appears to tighten. Following the DSCC pulling its money out of the Rubio-Murphy race less than two weeks ago, Roll Call reports that two super PACs, one backed by Harry Reid, are quickly getting Murphy some small amounts of cash.
Florida Rep. Patrick Murphy is getting a cash boost from donors and a Democratic super PAC as his campaign shows signs of life in his Senate race against Republican incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 24, 2016 40 Comments
There is a possibility that Texas, a state typically owned by Republicans, could turn blue next month since Donald Trump only leads Hillary Clinton by three points. However, Clinton only leads Trump by three points in Florida. From CBS News:
The poll numbers show voters’ frustration about the dialogue in the race – and what may amount to a wasted opportunity for both. Sixty-nine percent feel Donald Trump is talking about things that he, himself cares about, while fewer, 46 percent say he’s talking about issues they care about. Clinton has much the same gap.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 21, 2016 6 Comments
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) chapter in Florida has sued Broward County Supervisor of Elections Dr. Brenda Snipes after citizens said their mail in ballots did not include Amendment 2 to legalize medical marijuana:
It asked a county court judge to require that the elections office distribute new ballots to all voters who have received vote-by-mail ballots and to include information that explains that Amendment 2 had not been included on previous ballots.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 17, 2016 22 Comments
Do you ever think Hollywood will ever learn that not everyone thinks the way they do? Yeah, neither do I. Well, in Tampa Bay, people booed and stormed out of Amy Schumer's comedy show when she insulted Donald Trump, calling him an "orange, sexual-assaulting, fake-college-starting monster," and called for more gun control. The group of people was relatively small, but large enough for others to notice:
Schumer scanned the crowd for Trump voters, and invited one up to the stage. He identified himself as Dave, an attorney and RINO (Republican In Name Only) who hadn’t voted for a GOP candidate since Reagan. He said he just felt safer with the country in Trump’s hands than Clinton’s.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 17, 2016 20 Comments
Instead of election officials rejecting mail in ballots because the signature does not match the one on file, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ordered that Florida extend the same courtesy it extends to those who don't sign their ballot at all: a chance to correct the problem. The Miami Herald reports:
Calling existing rules “obscene” disenfranchisement, a federal judge in Tallahassee declared late Sunday that Florida must provide a method for voters to fix signature problems that might arise when they vote by mail in the presidential election. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker’s ruling was a victory for the Florida Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee, which sued the state Oct. 3 arguing Florida canvassing boards shouldn’t immediately reject a ballot if a voter’s signature doesn’t match the one on file. The state gives voters who forget to sign their mail ballots a chance to fix the problem before Election Day — but doesn’t offer voters with mismatched signatures the same opportunity. Walker ruled the “bizarre” double-standard was unconstitutional.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 14, 2016 8 Comments
The problem with Florida's death penalty began earlier this year when the Florida legislature rewrote the death penalty law in light of the Supreme Court ruling that its existing law was unconstitutional.  The rewrite was flawed and resulted in a challenge that resulted in today's rulings that Florida's death penalty is (still) unconstitutional. The Miami Herald reported at the time:
Lawmakers have approved a crucial rewrite of Florida’s death penalty sentencing law, hoping it passes muster after the current version was recently declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The bill, passed overwhelmingly by the state Senate Thursday, now heads to Gov. Rick Scott for his signature. . . . .  Florida’s new law requires juries to unanimously vote for every reason, known as aggravating factors, to warrant a death sentence. A trial judge must sign a written order confirming those findings.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 07, 2016 5 Comments
You may remember Lane Pittman, the Jacksonville-area rocker whose July 4, 2015 guitar riff of the Star Spangled Banner got him in hot water with the cops, Florida man arrested for playing Star Spangled Banner on 4th of July rejects plea deal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuEGn8Cn6ms The video of the performance received over 320,000 views on YouTube. Things turned out okay for Lane, as the charges were dropped and he became something of a legend, as I recounted in my post over a year later, Update: Remember Florida rocker charged for playing national anthem on July 4?
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