When you’re a baby boomer and the music of your formative Philadelphia years was a continuous loop of Elvis, Jerry Lee, Fats, Little Richard and tons of Doo-Wop, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame evokes a special time. Not what Canton, Ohio or Cooperstown, NY are to football and baseball fans, but close enough. [...]
The homeland war on terrorism impacts relatively few terrorists. Security concerns necessarily inconvenience the masses. It’s the nature of asymmetrical warfare. It’s also the price we pay not just to improve our chances of avoiding an atrocity and staying alive – but living our way of life. Having said that, we can still do some [...]
It’s not quite stop-the-presses news, but it is now official. Long-shot, wild card Al Fox is in the race to succeed Jim Davis in Congress. And that means something else is also a certainty. The other Democratic candidates – Hillsborough County Commissioner Kathy Castor, State Senator Les Miller and Tampa attorneys Michael Steinberg and Scott [...]
Good call by Hillsborough Circuit Judge Wayne Timmerman in barring public access to graphic police photos of Debra Lafave. Let’s hear it for common sense and good taste. Three points: First, the letter of the law permits genital photos for identification purposes, whether the accused is drop-dead comely like Lafave or androgynously weird like Michael [...]
A couple of observations from a recent trip to Boston: *Speculation keeps revving up that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is positioning himself for a run at the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Ideologically, he’s working hard on his GOP bona fides. He’s increasingly disinclined to compromise on gay marriage; is now gearing up to take [...]
Here we go again. St. Petersburg, which is quite the happening place and the downtown model for what Tampa would like to be, still has an identity crisis. Over the Devil Rays. Seems that the national media persist in occasionally confusing Tampa Bay with Tampa, thus short shrifting St. Petersburg as the actual site of [...]
Perhaps you saw the photo. If not, you’ve seen their like before. It showed a seventh grade English teacher in Tampa taking a whipped cream pie in the face, much to the delight of an auditorium full of middle schoolers. The context: It was part of the school’s celebration of a successful magazine fundraising drive [...]
As local news stories go, it was a one-day wonder. Mayor Pam Iorio announced an initiative and named a committee to spearhead it. Another day at the office. Then it was back under the headline radar, giving way to disaster contingency jurisdictions, the fiscal ’06 budget, storm water fees, the art museum soap opera and [...]
As local news stories go, it was a one-day wonder. Mayor Pam Iorio announced an initiative and named a committee to spearhead it. Another day at the office. Then it was back under the headline radar, giving way to disaster contingency jurisdictions, the fiscal ’06 budget, storm water fees, the art museum soap opera and [...]
It’s no secret that the relationship between Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa seems like a wreck in progress right now. As a concept, the city-as-economic-hub might as well be the quantum theory to the county commission. Tampa, along with Plant City and Temple Terrace, is seemingly just another incorporated city – only one [...]
