OK, I’m old school. There are, I’d like to believe, worse afflictions. The most recent manifestation: A skeptical reaction to what amounted to “The James Wilder Jr. Show” last week — live from Plant High School in South Tampa. For the uninitiated, Wilder is a very, very good, high school football player and by all [...]

When it comes to a position on the Cuban embargo, it’s all too predictable. The pro-embargo crowd consists of the usual hardliners, including many who literally take it personally, and those they can influence. Often that means intimidate and buy off. Self-serving politics first, the best interest of America–from economic to geopolitical–a distant second.   [...]

Not that it was a total surprise, but it’s still a shocking statistic.  A study by the Cambridge, Mass.-based Schott Foundation for Public Education has singled out Pinellas County for national notoriety. It graduates, states Schott, the lowest percentage of black males of any major school district in the country. In the COUNTRY. Approximately 20 [...]

Now we seem headed toward a rhetorical 9/11. A zero-sum collision of views more imbued with heat than light over that proposed Muslim complex near New York’s Ground Zero. The one with the secularly-sanitized name, Park51, that threatens to further polarize this politically-partisan society as well as ratchet up the global confrontation between Islam and [...]

I’m sure some of you can identify. Ever check the daily newspaper staple that notes what celebrities are sharing a birthday–and the revelation makes you feel like an alien in your own culture? Who the hell are these people? After Betty White and Harrison Ford, you’re clueless. Then there are reviews of movies, especially summer [...]

Part of politics is the endorsement game. It can elevate a campaign’s profile and credibility. But it can be a double-edged sword, as we well know. Former Democrat Pam Bondi, the Republican candidate for Florida attorney general, was recently endorsed by Sarah Palin. It came, we are told, as a surprise. Word is Bondi, the [...]

OK, it’s probably nit-picky. But I think the Tampa Bay Host Committee for the 2012 Republican National Convention could have done a better job with the design of the logo that accompanies its website. The downtown skyline, the undulating lines of a waterfront and a prominent palm tree all work, but that’s generic Florida. Could [...]

* “As my wiser professors used to tell me, history doesn’t repeat itself; historians and economists repeat each other.”–Zachary Karabell, Time magazine, in underscoring that comparisons of the current recession with the Great Depression are overplayed. * “The President didn’t send me over here to seek a graceful exit.”–Gen. David Petraeus, commander of American and [...]

While attending a Tampa City Council session the other night–one that devolved into a welter of confusion over byzantine, anomalous and “patchwork” land-use zoning–I was confronted with this sobering reality. Have we ever had a less impressive City Council?  Raw rookies and confirmed lightweights dominate. And Charlie Miranda, more wise guy than elder, too often [...]

With the start of a new school year imminent, Hillsborough County is now geared for year one of its $200-million partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One that will hopefully kick start the process of yielding ever better, more accountable, properly rewarded teachers — the key ingredient in the learning process. To be [...]