Florida | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 37
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Florida Tag

As we look toward the 2018 midterms, it's interesting to note that the GOP has reportedly given up on Florida's 27th District.  The district is in the Miami-Dade area and is largely Cuban-American, including as it does "Little Havana."  Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) has served this area when it was the 18th and now that it's the 27th since 1989.

Term-limited Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) cannot run for governor again, and the 2018 Florida governor's race is starting to heat up.  President Trump tweeted his support for Representative Ron DeSantis (R-FL06), saying that DeSantis would make a "GREAT" governor of Florida. While DeSantis hasn't yet entered the race, it's an open secret that he intends to do so.  DeSantis was the early fundraising front-runner in the 2016 Senate race until Senator Marco Rubio (R) announced that he was going to run again after losing the GOP presidential nomination.

Roll Call has unveiled another instance of taxpayers paying for a lawmaker to hide his disgusting behavior. This time, us taxpayers forked over $220,000 so Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) could settle a sexual harassment lawsuit:
Winsome Packer, a former staff member of a congressional commission that promotes international human rights, said in documents that the congressman touched her, made unwanted sexual advances, and threatened her job. At the time, Hastings was the chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, where Packer worked.

Safe spaces are all the rage on campuses. The safety promised is not physical safety, but emotional safety from ideas that do not fit the progressive and social justice warrior narrative. At Vassar College, my planned lecture on "hate speech" and free speech was so *scary* to the intolerant far-left that they not only engaged in a smear campaign against me, they also organized safe spaces replete "coloring books, zine kits, markers, construction paper etc."

The all Democrat Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CBC) rejected Rep. Carlos Curbelo's membership bid. The CBC actually thinks HIS motives were political, even though he is a Cuban American and "represents a Latino-heavy district in Miami." So why wouldn't they want him? Well, according to Politico, the Democrats have eyed his seat for the 2018 midterms.

Florida has seen an influx of Puerto Ricans since 2000, and in the wake of Hurricane Maria, many more Puerto Ricans are fleeing their devastated homes and moving to Florida. It's not clear how many of these newly-arrived Puerto Ricans will stay, but as many as 100,000 could impact not only the state's politics but national elections. Writing two years, Pew reported that Florida's Puerto Rican population increased 110% since 2000.

Naples was expected to be Irma's bullseye, but first reports suggest the storm may not have caused the damage everyone expected. On CNN this morning, Chris Cuomo interviewed Naples city manager Bill Moss. After the introduction, Cuomo said, "we didn't expect what happened yesterday, making history in the wrong kind of way, with the gusts we got, and then that surge."

(Updates added to end of post) The nation's eyes are on Florida this weekend, as Hurricane Irma storms through the Sunshine State. Once rated as a Category 5 tempest, Irma has expended enough energy buffeting the coast that it now "merely" meets Category 3 criteria.
Hurricane Irma bludgeoned Florida on Sunday, snapping trees like matchsticks and turning Miami streets into rivers. And there's plenty more damage to come. Naples and Marco Island will endure some of the strongest winds in the next few hours, the National Hurricane Center said.

I get not liking someone and especially elected officials, but for all the talk of Trump's policy decisions being "cruel", you'd think there'd be a bit more self-awareness when wishing a monster storm rain fire, brimstone, and destruction on someone's home. And yet... Many, most in fact, invoked their Climatology religion (that's really what it's become), in their prayers for destruction of Trump's Mar-A-Lago estate.

“Stand-Your-Ground” was back in the headlines against over the just-concluded Independence Day weekend, thanks to a 14-page decision by Miami-Dade Circuit judge Milton Hirsch that recent legislative changes to Florida’s self-defense immunity law were unconstitutional, reports the Bradenton Herald newspaper and other sources. (That decision is embedded below.) Specifically, the recently signed law switched the burden of persuasion on pre-trial self-defense immunity from the defendant to the state, and changed the standard of evidence required from a preponderance of the evidence to one of clear and convincing evidence. (We wrote about these changes more extensively here: “Florida Changes Burden of Proof of Self-Defense Immunity.”)

Yesterday, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed into a law a modification to the state's self-defense immunity statute, according to Reuters and other news sources. The self-defense immunity, generally mis-identified by media as a "stand your ground" law, provides for criminal and civil immunity for a use of force that is determined to constitute lawful self-defense.

Investigators in Florida have torn apart a sex trafficking ring in Florida that took place across two counties, which forced women to have sex with at least 100 men a week. Authorities arrested three men who face accusations "of forcing women to have sex with dozens of men a day." CBS12 discovered "at least six women from different counties were sex trafficked out of several brothels" that existed in Martin and Palm Beach Counties and Lake Worth.

Last summer, we blogged about former Florida Rep. Corrine Brown's legal woes. Brown faced, "24 counts ranging fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, making false statements, wire fraud, and more," reported First Coast News in July of 2016. Brown was accused of creating a fake charity called One Door, raising over $800,000, and then using the cash as her own personal slush fund. The charity only dished out $1,200 in donations, according to the prosecutor. Thursday, Brown was convicted on eighteen federal fraud charges.