Nationally prominent Republicans are talking to each other about the possibility of getting Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to accept the vice-presidential nomination in 2008 since he has ruled out running for president that year.

Bush probably would be the front-runner for the party's next presidential nomination if he only had a different last name. GOP politicians agree that five Bush presidential nominations out of the last six campaigns would be one too many for the country to take. But second place on the ticket might be acceptable to voters.

A footnote: Florida Republican leaders still hope that Bush might change his mind about not running against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson's bid for a second term in 2006. Nelson is considered vulnerable, but no strong Florida Republican has indicated an interest in running against him.

Dyer denied that he or anybody with his campaign did anything wrong and called the charge "politically motivated."

"I intend to fight these charges with every ounce of strength that I have," said Dyer, a Democrat in the nonpartisan office.

During his first term, Gov. Jeb Bush regularly inserted himself into ongoing investigations of political or particularly sensitive natures while I worked with FDLE by requesting continuous updates and tacitly pressuring the agency at every level.

During his first term, Gov. Jeb Bush regularly inserted himself into ongoing investigations of political or particularly sensitive natures while I worked with FDLE by requesting continuous updates and tacitly pressuring the agency at every level.

Not sufficiently content with political intrigue in the state Capitol, House Education Chairman Dennis Baxley now wants to spread some to university campuses. His "student academic freedom" bill is a cookie-cutter version of one that conservative California activist David Horowitz is pushing around the country, and it is designed to put professors on notice.

"Students have a right," the bill intones, "to expect that their academic freedom and the quality of their education will not be infringed upon by instructors who persistently introduce controversial matter into the classroom . . . that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose."

Presumably, Baxley would summon Horowitz to campuses to decide which matters are "controversial" and serve "no legitimate pedagogical purpose." Or maybe Baxley, an Ocala funeral director, plans to leave all that to the lawyers, as aggrieved students end up suing their professors for impolitic remarks. Think neurosurgeons have a hard time getting malpractice insurance? Wait until professors can be sued by students who are offended by the notion that George Washington was a great president.

Florida businesses won a political victory Thursday when the state House voted unanimously to repeal a tax on communications equipment.

The Democratic senator from Fort Lauderdale [Walter "Skip" Campbell] signed up a half-dozen House members, including several Republicans, to cosponsor a bill to lower drug prices for Medicaid patients and other poor people.

They abandoned the bill this week, Campbell said, after drug lobbyists met with them.

The lobbyists "called me a communist," Campbell said Thursday. "They killed my bill before it was even filed in the House."

Bankruptcy legislation the U.S. Senate passed Thursday would sharply limit the ability of residents of other states to shelter assets through Florida's unlimited homestead exemption by purchasing a home in the state just before filing for bankruptcy.

After only three days in session, Florida Republican legislative leaders are already at odds, with the House and Senate taking opposite views on how much of the state budget should be locked into trust funds.

House Speaker Allan Bense, R-Panama City, and House Budget Chairman Joe Negron, a Republican from Stuart whose district includes parts of Palm Beach County, want the state to cut taxes and make ends meet by smashing into long-protected piggy banks dedicated to such things as environmental-land purchases, affordable housing and health care.

While Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday that he agrees with collapsing many of the once-sacrosanct trust accounts within the state budget, Senate President Tom Lee and several Democrats and Republicans in the Senate said they have no plans to go along with such a dramatic reshaping of Florida's budget

already has said he doesn't want to include the elderly in Medicaid reform this year. However, considering the aging of the population, it's inappropriate for the Legislature to simply ignore the threat. It can authorize a study of options to discuss next year.

A Republican-led House committee approves measures making it vastly more difficult to amend the state constitution.

People who want to change the Florida Constitution would need more votes and could tackle fewer issues under a package of changes that started moving Thursday in the Legislature.

The House Judiciary Committee approved four measures that would substantially rein in the citizen initiative process, which state lawmakers attempted last year without success.

Many lawmakers and Gov. Jeb Bush have chafed under recent voter-approved constitutional amendments, like class-size reduction and a high-speed train project, which voters approved in 2000 and repealed last year.

One of the freshest irritations in the Capitol is the South Florida slots provision, which was added to the state constitution in November and was the subject of local elections this week, with Broward County voters approving slots at race tracks and jai-alai frontons and Miami-Dade County voters rejecting them.

[I]f Florida lawmakers currently pushing through changes to the state's constitutional-amendment process had their way a few years earlier, it is unlikely that the minimum-wage initiative -- approved by 7 in 10 voters -- would have made it on the ballot.

This is the apparent motto of the Florida House Judiciary Committee: We know best, and voters are idiots. The Republican-led committee on Thursday approved so many proposed restrictions on amending the state Constitution, it would be virtually impossible for the electorate to address issues the Legislature won't. In the stampede to stop cluttering the Constitution with pregnant pig amendments, lawmakers stomped all over the fundamental right of voters to hold government accountable.

When Florida lawmakers passed a controversial telecommunications law in 2003, they pitched a tradeoff: While local phone rates would go up, many consumers would benefit from growing competition in the industry.

The first part of the equation happened quickly, with state regulators approving record rate increases for local phone giants BellSouth, Sprint and Verizon. But today, as the Florida Supreme Court prepares to hear a challenge to the rate hikes, the competition picture is more jumbled.

Police say Michelle Fernandez, 35, was chased for miles Tuesday by an irate 31-year-old Tampa man who cursed at her as he held up an anti-Bush sign and tried to run her off the road.

Winkler told police officers he got upset with Fernandez because she "gave him the finger."

"But she did all the right things. She showed remarkable poise, she didn't engage him. She called us."

Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin [who] said it was department policy not to comment on pending litigation.

The suit charges the city and the department with unlawful prior restraint and deprivation of First Amendment rights, unlawful arrests and unlawful police misconduct.

It also challenges the constitutionality of free speech zones in which dissenters are required to stay away from the main rally.

[T]he group nicknamed "the Tampa Three" filed a lawsuit with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, alleging the Police Department violated their civil rights, including their right to peacefully protest.

"My hope is that this lawsuit helps send a message that the government cannot silence people just because they choose to exercise their right to dissent or to question the government," said Rosas, 38. "Locally, the Police Department officials at all levels need to read and understand the Constitution."

Martinez, a lawyer, chose to make the issue his very first legislation as a freshman senator.

Tom Feeney of Oviedo took two trips abroad that violated congressional ethics rules because a lobbyist and a foreign organization paid his tab, records show.

Government watchdog groups said Wednesday that the House ethics panel should investigate Feeney and others who went on the trips to Scotland and South Korea.

"Obviously it raises serious questions . . . about his judgment," said Gary Ruskin, head of the watchdog Congressional Accountability Project. "We have laws prohibiting [foreign agents and lobbyists] from paying for these trips in order to protect against the paying for influence."

The Florida Legislature took up 'Terri's Law II,' a measure that would make it hard for anyone to remove a feeding tube from an incapacitated person.

Perhaps unbeknownst to most Floridians, Tuesday's balloting produced a watershed event in state history.

A "no" vote on slots in Miami-Dade County could mean more regulations on the machines in Broward County, state lawmakers said Wednesday as they assessed the political landscape after the split South Florida vote.

Democrats in the Legislature aren't so quick to embrace Bush's message, however.

They point to alarming statistics recently released in the annual Morgan Quitno state rankings book: Florida has the worst high-school graduation rate in the country and is last in per capita education spending. Nearly one in five Floridians has no health insurance.

The state has the highest divorce rate of any state that reported to the researchers. It has the fewest public libraries for its population in the country. And only South Carolina has a higher violent-crime rate.

It should be a challenge and something of an honor to be a public employee, not an avenue of last resort.

join [with who, AFSCME?] in championing better terms and conditions for state employees, as well as retirees whose pensions aren't keeping up with health premiums.

While the bill states that professors have the right to academic freedom, it also says students should not "be infringed upon by instructors who persistently introduce controversial matter into the classroom that has no relation to the subject of study and serves no [teaching] purpose." The bill would not affect private colleges and universities.

Baxley, an Ocala Republican, argues that House Bill 837 is not about stopping free speech, but protecting conservative viewpoints in universities, which he believes have become liberal strongholds that sometimes bully right-leaning students.

"There is no question that our university culture has fostered liberalism and people of moderate and conservative views are intimidated," said Baxley, who as a student at Florida State University said he sometimes felt persecuted for his conservative views. "I'm for academic free speech for everyone, not just for the leftists."

Last November, voters in Florida passed a constitutional amendment raising the minimum wage by $1, to $6.15 per hour, and indexing it to inflation. Though only 3.1 percent of Florida's work force makes less than $6.15 per hour and would be directly impacted by raising the floor, Amendment 5 passed with more than 70 percent support. That suggests voters see raising a wage that hadn't been adjusted since 1997 as a matter of basic fairness.

Why then is the Legislature entertaining proposals that might weaken the new amendment and make it difficult to enforce? Could it be that some of the state's leading lawmakers are more interested in protecting business interests than in looking out for low-wage workers?

The House Judiciary Committee recently passed a bill offered by committee Chairman David Simmons, R-Longwood, that would implement the amendment in a way that is tilted toward industry. While there have been some fixes from Simmons' original proposal, including the addition of employee protection against retaliation and the provision of attorney fees (both of which are required by the constitutional amendment), the general intent of the bill is still to shield employers from being sued for noncompliance and, if they are sued, to limit employee recovery.

may have run her last race, but this gutsy reformer is not done trying to change the state's political landscape.
Castor, who narrowly lost to Mel Martinez in last year's U.S. Senate race, has revealed she will not run for governor next year, though she was the front- runner for the Democratic nomination.

In all likelihood, the decision draws to an end her career in elected office, though Castor should never be counted out.

"'The governor, without specifying a number, has made it very clear there will be a limit. When you cap expenses, clearly people with high health care needs are very likely to run into that cap,' said Joan Alker, a Medicaid expert at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute in Washington."

Jeb Bush is mentioned often as a potential successor to his brother, but the governor has said repeatedly he won't run for president. Bush maintains he wants to return to his Miami home after his second term and work in the private sector.

His Medicaid proposal isn't exactly "his." Bush unveiled his plan with fanfare as a concept that re-imagines how the state should deliver medical care, but many components come directly out of the Republican playbook.

Bush's remarks echo those of Georgia's Newt Gingrich, who as U.S. House speaker in the late 1990s pushed efforts to privatize portions of the Medicare program for seniors. Gingrich today leads a Washington think tank that continues to promote such ideas.

Bush appears to welcome the attention, and controversy, surrounding his proposal.

Fifty percent of poll respondents said they approve of the job that ["Jeb!"'s] doing, a rating that varied considerably depending on the respondents' political party affiliation. Eighty-five percent of Republicans approved of the governor's performance, compared to 22 percent of those who identified themselves as Democrats.

Asked whether Jeb Bush should run for president in 2008, 41 percent said "Yes," 49 percent said "No," and 10 percent said they are not sure.

Florida voters don't agree with the priorities of the Florida Legislature. They want legislators to focus mostly on education. And they don't like the idea of repealing a constitutional amendment to reduce class sizes.

"I've been in this game long enough to know that someone who gives me a fund-raising check isn't going to get anything special from me ... What they're donating for is good government, and I'm going to make the best decision I can, regardless."

[t]here's no reason for Gov. Jeb Bush to pursue his plan when a state Supreme Court ruling on vouchers' constitutionality is imminent.

Tom Lee tackles politics as he does his golf game: with planned shots and calculated risks. And if he seems cold? That he learned from Mr. Spock.

Jeb Bush's characteristically ambitious agenda will help him avoid lame-duck status during his seventh legislative session as governor, but the spotlight is about to move to his would-be successors.

The Florida Legislature convenes its 2005 regular session Tuesday, with lawmakers once again partying with lobbyists, forming alliances and cutting deals -- all the while speaking the parliamentary language of an insider world that few others can understand.

But residents of the real world outside Tallahassee will be watching the two-month session, some of them apprehensively, because the insiders will be making decisions that affect children, businesses, health care and pocketbooks.

The latest presidential speculation involving Jeb Bush comes courtesy of Larry Sabato, the oft-quoted pundit and political scientist from the University of Virginia. The governor has repeatedly insisted he's not running for president in 2008 and Sabato says that's "probably wise."

In his latest Crystal Ball newsletter, Sabato writes: "After all, voters in a nation born of anti-monarchial revolution will naturally recoil from the establishment of a political royal line. After a few years past 2008, Jeb may be a possibility, and who would bet against another Bush serving in the Oval Office at some point in the future? (Don't forget about Jeb's dashing Latino son, George P. Bush, who possesses the perfect profile for the century of ethnic diversity to come.)"

showed up at 4 AM at the Miami home of a former girlfriend. He proceeded to break into the house via the woman's bedroom window, and then began arguing with his ex's father. Bush, then a Rice University student, soon fled the scene. But he returned 20 minutes later to drive his Ford Explorer across the home's front lawn, leaving wide swaths of burned grass in his wake. Young Bush avoided arrest when the victims declined to press charges.

"He told the rally his mother had instilled him the values of Cesar Chavez, the Chicano activist who fought for the rights of migrant farmworkers in the United States. 'She told me we have to fight for our race, we have to find the leaders who represent us,’ he said in fluent Spanish.'"

Despite six years of major changes, Florida's schools lag behind other states' in many areas - including spending.

On teacher pay, we trail Georgia.

On graduation rates, Alabama is better.

On eighth-grade reading scores, South Carolina just moved ahead.

Despite six years of major changes by Gov. Jeb Bush and a Republican-dominated Legislature, Florida still ranks with its Southern neighbors near the bottom of the education rankings.

Florida politicians are fooling only themselves if they think that the current post-conviction DNA testing law does away with wrongful imprisonment in the Sunshine State.

The only circumstance more outrageous than the resistance to compensating Dedge is the Legislature's pervasive indifference to the moral certainty that there are hundreds of equally innocent people still rotting behind Florida bars.

Rod Smith, is lining up his own experienced finance team. It includes: Sen. Bill Nelson's former finance director Richard Reeves; Buddy MacKay's former finance director Michael Spellman; Ben Eley, who led Florida fundraising for Bill Bradley, Wes Clark and Joe Lieberman; Joe Perry, fundraiser for Democratic state senate campaigns; former state party executive director Screven Watson; and James Harris, a former adviser to Bob Graham, Bill Nelson and Janet Reno.

Some 53 percent said they favor allowing taxpayers to invest some of their Social Security contributions in the market.

But when those 53 percent were asked what they thought if this meant benefits would potentially drop along with the market, 56 percent of them became opposed.

A majority [of Floridians polled are] opposed Bush on the issue of drug importation from Canada and other nations. Almost two thirds, 64 percent, said the government should allow Americans to import drugs, while only 30 percent were opposed. Bush and Republican leaders in Congress say they will block attempts to allow importation to guard against unsafe drugs.

person who administers overall election policy for the state should be independent, nonpartisan and demonstrably unbiased. The last two secretaries of state, Ms. Hood and Katherine Harris, have run the office as if it were an extension of the governor's office. Whatever changes in election law legislators ultimately adopt -- and, yes, some are needed -- their top priority should be to make the Secretary of State's position independent and nonpartisan. That one change, more than all of the changes recommended in the massive proposals, would do more to instill confidence and promote accuracy in state elections.

Environmentalists hope to convince Martinez that the potential for drilling in the Arctic and drilling off the Florida coast are linked.

Since 1980, when his father, George H.W. Bush, was Ronald Reagan's running mate, there has been a Bush on the Florida ballot in almost every general election. (The exception was 1996, when President Bill Clinton sought a second term, and Gov. Lawton Chiles was in the final two years of his.) ...

[W]aiting in the wings: Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings is expected to seek the Republican nomination to succeed Bush in 2006. The governor has said he is impartial, but his former top campaign aides have started working for Jennings.

Bush is very aware of including Jennings in his major decisions and has already begun helping her appeal to the powerful conservative base he has carefully cultivated.

They even found a vague $4 million line-item in his proposed budget and earmarked it last week for an abortion prevention program. The item became a platform for Jennings to travel to Jacksonville and Miami promoting abortion alternatives.

The governor may be theoretically free from the heaviest political burdens, but it's clear he will always be calculating the political realities.

New Senate President Tom Lee is ready for two years of policy debates but still itches for a fight every now and then.

House Speaker Allan Bense, who rose from poor beginnings, has earned praise for his deferential ways.