FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Wednesday, November 24, 2004

"Jeb!" Flip Flops

    The Miami Herald's investigative series on the clemency system this month exposed the following about Florida's treatment of felons:
    • The Clemency Board has rejected more than 200,000 civil rights applications since Bush took office in 1999, the highest rejection rate in at least 16 years.

    • Nearly 80 percent of the 50,000 felons released from custody between 2001 and 2003 still can't vote. Many are nonviolent offenders whose crimes warranted little or no prison time.

    • The backlog of people waiting to appeal directly to the Clemency Board for their civil rights has quadrupled since Bush took office. Clearing the cases could take three decades.

    • An estimated 50,000 felons since 1980 have not had their civil rights restored because of an oversight in state law: They did time in county jail, not state prison.

    • The Clemency Board has restored voting rights to murderers, rapists, batterers, drug traffickers and corrupt public officials, at the same time it barred thousands of lower-level criminals from the polls.

    Since Bush took office, the board has adopted some of the harshest rules ever. Among other things, felons are not allowed to get their rights back quickly if they have ever been convicted of one of more than 200 crimes -- even if the convictions are decades old.
    Now, after having declined to be interviewed by The Herald for the series of stories, we read that "Governor supports clemency revisions for felons". Don't hold your breath.

    As an aside, I wonder if the media will call "Jeb!" a flip flopper on this issue?

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