Last week presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigned in West Palm Beach and drew a big crowd and induced a lot of buzz. The Democratic senator from Illinois called on attendees at the Kravis Center to fight cynicism and embrace a new kind of politics. But in order to successfully fight that good fight against cynicism [...]
He may be the best reason to watch a Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ game – and yet you’ll never see his name in a box score. He’s TV broadcaster Joe Magrane, 42, the Rays’ conversationally perceptive, engagingly witty, occasionally irreverent color-analyst. He defies the broadcast typecast: former player capitalizing on name recognition and frequently reminding [...]
When Saddlebrook Resort opened a quarter century ago, there was no mistaking what it was. It was a resort designed for meetings. Exclusively. Nearly 500 rustic, Wesley Chapel acres – about 30 miles north of Tampa International Airport – devoted to the care and comfort of corporate America away from home. Plenty of places to [...]
A recent “Newsweek” poll indicated that a majority of the public – 58 per cent – believes the firing of those eight U.S. attorneys was politically motivated. Question: Given that all such U.S. attorneys serve at the “pleasure” of the president, why wasn’t the poll response 100 per cent? Isn’t this debacle a subset of [...]
Lighten up, America. It’s a prank. And a fairly funny one at that. The U.S. Supreme Court is now considering the merits of Morse vs. Frederick. Deborah Morse is a high-school principal who contends that a student’s 14-foot banner proclaiming “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” was an unacceptable pro-drug message. She suspended its creator, Joseph Frederick. [...]
Tampa’s declining crime rate — 36 per cent over the last four years — was a linchpin in Mayor Pam Iorio’s recent State of the City address. Now that drop has been noted in the March-April issue of AARP magazine, which lists 10 cities “where your chances of running into a criminal decreased in the [...]
“Oil-Rich Nations Turning Attention To Alternative Fuels” read recent headlines across the country. The main, but hardly exclusive, focus was on the United Arab Emirates, the number four OPEC producer, and what it was doing to reduce demand for fossil fuels internally. In a Manhattan Project-like strategy that puts a premium on applying the sun, [...]
This just in. Iran is insulted by the American movie “300″ and is officially complaining about disparaging depictions of Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. And this from a country that still owes us an apology for holding American embassy employees hostage and threatening them with mock executions in 1979-80. Maybe Hollywood [...]
In her annual State of the City address, Mayor Pam Iorio reported that the state of the city remained good. Crime, which has increased alarmingly in cities such as Orlando, continues downward here. More buildings are up, and a bunch more are on the way. The words downtown and revitalization no longer seem incongruous. And [...]
Every year, it seems, the basketball tradition known as “March Madness” includes tales of woe and crushing, disillusioned disappointment: teams that barely missed the cut for the 65-team “Big Dance.” This year that includes the Florida State University men and the University of South Florida women. Without getting caught up in the esoterica of weighted [...]
