Once again the tactless, abrasive rhetoric of Ronda Storms has transcended an issue. Most recently, it was the Hillsborough County Commission’s “no” vote on the “living wage” proposal. In its 4-3 vote, the commission turned thumbs down on a plan to increase the minimum wage for county employees — and some private-sector, contract workers — [...]
It’s that season again. That magical hockey run is now a warm-fuzzy, Stanley Cup memory. Basketball finally ended, and Kobe is now a full-time defendant. Baseball, where the locals are no longer the Bedeviled Rays or the Bob and Rays, is still in its pre pennant-race prelude. But football is already into its mini camp [...]
This much we know about the search for a director for the Port of Tampa: * It better yield a seasoned veteran who can juggle multiple egos and myriad priorities. The latter include accommodating bulk shipping as well as the cruise business, realizing the container potential, and playing real estate developer and landlord. It puts [...]
How now, Michael Newdow? You don’t have standing on behalf of your daughter to challenge “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. But that’s a technicality, of course, and some other affronted atheist, peeved pantheist or steamed secular humanist surely will take up the clause cause again. Moreover, only three Supreme Court justices flat out [...]
A Tampa Tribune story the other day chronicled how nuns, priests and brothers were no longer the “heart and soul” of Catholic School classrooms. More like skeleton crews these days. The story focused on the 12,000-student Diocese of St. Petersburg, which includes Tampa. The dynamics of this diocese reflect the national trend that has seen [...]
A Tampa Tribune story the other day chronicled how nuns, priests and brothers were no longer the “heart and soul” of Catholic School classrooms. More like skeleton crews these days. The story focused on the 12,000-student Diocese of St. Petersburg, which includes Tampa. The dynamics of this diocese reflect the national trend that has seen [...]
Hillsborough County is in the midst of a rare political parlay. It is home to Florida’s outgoing Speaker of the House as well as the incoming Senate President. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Speaker was Johnnie Byrd. When asked recently at the Tiger Bay Club of Tampa Bay luncheon, what [...]
Ray Charles was born poor and black in the Depression-era South. By age 7 he was blind. By his early teen years he was an orphan. He was a dropout and later a drug addict. But he never played the victim card. That may be the ultimate legacy of Brother Ray’s iconic, eclectic American life. [...]
The Tampa Tribune will be a while living down that fiasco over the wrong editorial that consoled the Lightning over a valiant — albeit losing — effort against Calgary in the Stanley Cup Final. It was among the worst things that can happen to a newspaper — trying to cover your ass on deadline and [...]
It’s been more than a week now that the Stanley Cup has needed serious sunscreen. Presumably all of Canada — and perhaps Philadelphia — have now accepted that the Cup is in the Tampa Bay area, where hockey will never be more popular than football or NASCAR, where Channelside Drive will never morph into a [...]
