For a governor who usually stays neutral in Republican primaries, his open courting of the little-known House speaker is a stunning snub to the only other Florida Republican with his level of star power.

Many party insiders are betting Bense does run for Senate, but he said last week he won't make up his mind until after a few weeks of "due diligence." One question is whether the White House and governor would aggressively help him in the primary.

"They have not said that to me," said Bense, 53, a conservative businessman from Panama City with an up-by-the-bootstraps biography and little of Harris' baggage.

"For the industry to stand and say the Legislature didn't act is disingenuous. . . . The Legislature had a chance, and that's true, but the industry blocked the passage of the House bill. It wasn't to their liking."

said an ethics bill he vetoed recently could have a "draconian" impact, but the rejection was a surprise to all involved, especially Senate President Tom Lee of Hillsborough, who has made ethics reform a priority of his leadership.
Lee had no idea Bush had problems with the bill.

The measure would have prohibited state employees from working on a contract with a private company and then taking a job with the vendor. The conflict is obvious. ...

The governor can be picky about legislative language, but it's odd that he made no attempt to revise the bill. It's also curious that the veto comes when many members of the term-limited governor's staff will be pursuing private- sector jobs.

You can almost hear George and Jeb talking about politically executing Katherine Harris as if they were characters in the Godfather movies putting out a contract on someone who stood in their way.

The Bush brothers are giving her the political kiss of death, just as the mobsters in the film trilogy often discussed the need to kill former allies because of changing alliances.

It's just business.

Harris must surely realize that, in the high-stakes game she has been playing, the president of the United States just called her bluff.

Gov. Bush has touted his plan to keep drilling at least 100 miles from any part of Florida's coastline. Sen. Nelson asked the governor to write President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., expressing his opposition to the gas and oil inventory, but the governor did not. A spokesman for Sen. Nelson earlier complained that the governor's plan actually would reduce the protection area from 285 to 100 miles in some areas. One serious oil spill could damage the state's $50 billion tourism industry beyond what anyone could imagine.

And though Sen. Martinez fought to stop the oil inventory, his vote earlier this year to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling contributed to a shift in the Senate that helped kill his effort to block the inventory.

State legislative leaders, faced with the prospect of suing Broward County to stop a judge's ruling that allows county commissioners to regulate slot machines, are asking the question: Where was Charlie?

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, whose office has handled nearly every case involving the state on gambling issues for more than 25 years, was asked to handle the case last month by Broward State Attorney Michael Satz, after the parimutuel industry sued to get slot regulations in place by July 1. Crist declined.

Challenge bizarre order

When Florida voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment last fall that foolishly set the stage for an expansion of gambling at Broward County pari-mutuel facilities, the fine print was perfectly clear: State lawmakers were to settle the details, such as what type machines to allow, hours of operation and so forth.

The amendment voters approved said nothing about local government officials usurping the Legislature's mandate. Nor did it give a state judge any such authority. In fact, state Attorney General Charlie Crist unequivocally said in a March 31 advisory opinion that the amendment "requires implementing legislation."

When the people have spoken through their organic law concerning their basic rights, it is primarily the duty of the legislative body to provide the ways and means of enforcing such rights; however, in the absence of appropriate legislative action, it is the responsibility of the courts to do so. ...

Where people in a constitution or charter vote themselves a governmental benefit or privilege, they the people in whom the power of government is finally reposed, have the right to have their constitutional rights enforced. ...

The doctrine of judicial authority and responsibility was early established in the historic case of Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 5 U.S. 137, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803); and in the many years since then-particularly in the last quarter of a century-the courts have not hesitated to accomplish by judicial fiat what other divisions of government have failed or refused to do in protecting, implementing, or enforcing constitutional rights.

With all the talk this year about the overhaul of the state's Medicaid program that will slowly be rolled out in years to come, Medicaid recipients are just realizing that one giant change is coming next week, and they fear it will be harmful.

A group of physicians will meet Tuesday in Tallahassee to recommend what prescription drugs the state Medicaid program will pay for. Because the new list is expected to save the state $292 million, critics fear the doctors will reduce the number of available drugs, but state officials say that won't necessarily happen.

But in some ways, the transparent emptiness, the self-evident pettiness, the very personal nature of this latest assault, especially coming when it does and from such a lofty office, makes it the lowest blow of all. It's a punch in the groin after the bell has rung.

Is Florida really such a paradise that the governor has time to indulge a vendetta against a single citizen? Did they clean up the Everglades without telling me? Fix the schools without issuing a memo?

Jeb Bush, if he has a shred of decency, should be ashamed of himself. He should apologize to Michael Schiavo. And he should leave the poor man alone.

It is difficult to know whether Gov. Jeb Bush is a zealot or simply a panderer.

Either way, Bush's obsessive pursuit of Michael Schiavo reveals a dangerous arrogance and a nasty vindictive streak in Florida's chief executive.

Peeved that last week's autopsy report completed the debunking of all his claims about Terri Schiavo, Gov. Bush badgered the Pinellas County State Attorney's Office into conducting a pointless investigation of whether Mr. Schiavo delayed calling 911 the night his wife collapsed 15 years ago. What the governor tries to pass off as legitimate inquiry in fact amounts to political harassment. ...

Bush said he wants an investigation because there is "new information." There isn't. He said he wants the investigation so there can be "closure." If he wanted "closure," he wouldn't have butted into this case two years ago, and he at least would have the decency to back off now. And if he cared about protecting all "vulnerable" people in Florida, he would have called out the cops — not to kidnap Ms. Schiavo from her hospice bed — but when his Department of Children and Families lost track of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson in 2002. Instead, he called out some political allies and formed a task force to stall the story past his reelection campaign. It was politics then, and it's politics now.

An employee mistake led to the Florida Democratic Party not paying some Social Security and payroll taxes, and an audit of the records will show that "not a dime" is missing, former party chairman Scott Maddox said late Wednesday.

"She [the bookeeper]didn't tell her superiors. She didn't tell me," Maddox said outside a campaign fundraiser in Palm Beach County. "It was a total surprise but I take responsibility. I believe that's part of leadership."

Told of Maddox's remarks, party Chairwoman Karen Thurman said: "I have in my possession documents that say that management was informed about this, but I am not ready to release anything."

It's disappointing that Florida Senate President Tom Lee has decided not to run for the U.S. Senate and discouraging that the Republican Party has not drafted this man whose record on ethics reform, financial discipline and growth management offers wide appeal to Floridians.

The good news is that Lee, who has brought refreshing honesty and restraint to the state budget process, plans to run next year for state chief financial officer, a position for which he is superbly qualified.

Still, he would have made a compelling candidate in the GOP Senate primary and a viable opponent against Sen. Bill Nelson, a formidable candidate. It's widely acknowledged that the party wants an alternative to U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, a polarizing candidate who will mobilize Democrats still furious over her involvement in the 2000 presidential election.

But the state Republican Party apparatus seems to be doing little to develop and promote up-and-coming leaders.

Florida is creating jobs at a very rapid pace, and it is this fact that is being celebrated by state government officials and the press. Unfortunately, it remains as true as ever that the quality of those jobs leaves a lot to be desired. We're filling up the state with low-wage jobs. This is a continuation of a trend that has been going on for quite some time. Workers are being left out of most of the wealth being created. From the perspective of middle- or low-income workers, Florida is still one of the worst states to work in.

In a satellite address to members of the Southern Baptist Convention about his faith-based efforts, President Bush on Tuesday praised an Orlando Baptist church. There was just one problem. The church is no longer affiliated with the denomination. ...

However, the College Park congregation no longer sends money or delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention. For about 15 years, it has been aligned with the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which represents a breakaway faction that lost a bitter power struggle with conservatives in the late 1980s.

The congregation took the action "not because we were upset or angry, but because we wanted to follow a different set of values," said the church's pastor, the Rev. Ron Crawford.

The minister chuckled when asked what he thought about the president's apparent slip.

It took a Broward judge 22 minutes Tuesday to do what frustrated Floridians have threatened, but have been unable to do, for years: Order the Legislature to follow the mandate of state voters.

In one fell swoop, Circuit Judge Leroy Moe ruled that slot machines may start spinning within weeks in Broward County and slammed the Legislature, saying it ''deliberately violated the Constitution'' when it failed to pass legislation regulating slots at parimutuels by the July 1 deadline.

In his brief hearing, Moe said the Legislature's inaction prompted the court to step in. He ordered the Broward County Commission to write the rules -- with his oversight. An appeal is expected.

The ruling marked the first time a court has delegated legislative control over gambling to a county government, but the events that led to it were the latest example of state lawmakers thumbing their noses at a requirement in the Florida Constitution.

Four Volusia County Council members are under heavy-duty pressure to change their votes against paying nearly $800,000 for 210 voting machines equipped to help some voters with disabilities. These council members should stand their ground. The valid point is: Voters with disabilities deserve the same guarantees as ordinary voters -- the right to verify the accuracy of their votes before their votes are cast.

The machines in question, made by Diebold Election Systems Inc., do not currently have the capacity to provide that verification -- as required under the 2002 federal elections-reform law.

are courageous for taking the lead and they should be joined by other council members in standing firmly for fair, verifiable secure balloting for all voters.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson would easily defeat Republican challenger U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris if the 2006 Senate election were today, according to a new poll that underscores the queasiness some Republicans feel about a Harris candidacy.

The Mason-Dixon Polling Research survey shows the freshman Democratic senator cruising to a second term with 53 percent of the vote in 2006, compared to just 36 percent for Harris, who has a favorable rating just two points higher than her unfavorable rating, the poll shows.

The poll of 625 registered voters was conducted June 14-16, just days before reports surfaced that Gov. Jeb Bush and the White House were prodding state House Speaker Allan Bense into challenging Harris in the GOP primary.

The results provide a window into GOP fears that Harris -- whom some Democrats believe tilted the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush when she served as Florida secretary of state -- remains controversial and would motivate Democrats to turn out to vote against her, potentially affecting the other races on the ballot, including the governor's race.

Election bills that would triple the spending cap for gubernatorial candidates to $20 million and limit early voting to eight hours on weekdays and weekends over a 15-day period were signed Monday by Gov. Jeb Bush.

However, Bush had not made up his mind on another bill that would eliminate the runoff primary election, which historically has catapulted some of the state's most renowned politicians into office. He has until June 29 to decide on the runoff bill.

A no-runoff regime would strongly tempt candidates from the extreme wings of both parties, not to mention spoilers who would run (or be put into) certain races not to elect themselves but to split someone else's constituency.

Early voting proved to be so popular in its first test in Florida last year that election supervisors wanted to expand the hours and add more locations.

But the Republican-controlled Legislature rejected both requests, and on Monday Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law limiting the hours of early voting and confining it to election offices, city halls and libraries.

of Florida's 11 public universities got enough money in next year's state budget to keep up with enrollment. Until those universities get the support their students need, it is wrong for the state to increase the public money that goes to students at private institutions.

Yet legislators and Gov. Bush have approved the diversion of more public money than ever to students at private colleges. The $93 million-plus in Florida Resident Access Grants, which go to students who attend private campuses in the state, will be a 14 percent increase over last year, and nearly five times what the private-school students received in 1995.

on May 26, Gov. Jeb Bush vetoed the appropriation. That means not only will the program not go statewide, but there is no funding for the seven circuit pilot programs which have been running for nearly three years and have helped thousands of people.

The governor's veto message did not explain why the appropriation was vetoed, although it was the largest line item to receive the gubernatorial ax. However, Russell Schweiss, a Bush spokesperson, told the Bar News, "The governor thought it was too large an expansion in the funding for the program."

Aside from Commissioner Kathy Castor, an overwhelming board majority embraced her public display of prejudice.

is expected to sign three elections bills today that would raise a spending cap for gubernatorial candidates to $20 million and limit early voting to eight hours on weekdays and weekends over a 15-day period before Election Day. However, Bush is pondering another measure (HB 1673) that would eliminate the runoff primary election, which catapulted some of the state's most renowned politicians into office.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida wants Bush to veto two of the bills (HB 1567 and HB 1589) that they say would restrict the ability of third parties to register voters. The ACLU also questions a provision under which the state Division of Elections would create an initial list of felons it believes should not be allowed to vote. Individual supervisors make the final decision to purge names from the voter rolls. ACLU noted the state's track record of "compiling accurate lists of voters to be removed has been poor." ...

The expanded spending cap for candidates taking public financing in gubernatorial and Cabinet races would benefit the Republican Party of Florida, which outdistances Democrats in fundraising by several million dollars in each election cycle.

Democrats, already outnumbered 2-to-1 in the Legislature, objected strenuously to raising the cap in governor's races from the 2002 limit of $6.34 million. Democrats preferred the lower cap because state law allows a candidate to get a dollar from the state for every dollar that an opponent raises over the limit.

It's only Jeb who hasn't been cowed by the facts. While everyone else was running for cover, he tossed aside the unambiguous science in the autopsy and figured out a way to go on the offensive.

Bush's answer to the autopsy is to call for an investigation of an alleged gap between when Michael Schiavo found his wife collapsed on the floor and when he called 911. This tactic is called shifting the argument.

It's not a new idea. Jeb's brother had to do it in Iraq.

The governor's call for an investigation will give comfort to all those people who had widely misrepresented Schiavo's medical condition. Instead of allowing them to dwell on reality, they can now indulge themselves in a murder fantasy orchestrated by the state's chief executive, a kind of Tallahassee CSI.

The beating and slaying last month in a Holly Hill copse of Michael Eugene Roberts, a homeless, skeletal and virtually defenseless man, was a heinous act. Every murder is. The method does not make it more so. Roberts' killing would have been no less heinous had he been killed in his sleep by a lethal injection (the kind state governments that favor the method in their executions call, absurdly, "humane"). Nor would Roberts' killing have been any less heinous had he been an ordinary, healthy man on his way to work.

By far, however, the worst offender of all is Florida:

Ryan King, a research associate at the Sentencing Project, said that about one million ex-felons, including 600,000 in Florida alone, would be eligible to vote if the four states with laws similar to Iowa's granted voting rights to ex-felons.

Changing this law in Florida would probably cause a shift in the political balance of power in the state. Of course the Bush junta there has better things to do, such as supporting Katherine Harris for Senate and prosecuting Terry Schiavo's husband.

There is no evidence that Michael was responsible for Terri's tragedy, only reckless rumors perpetuated by those who disagree with his decision to let Terri die. Now Bush has followed in that shameful tradition. He should butt out and let Terri rest in peace.

bolstered the conventional wisdom many Republicans have about the Senate race. In a hypothetical race, Crist and Gallagher were tied or narrowly ahead of Bill Nelson, while Katherine Harris trailed the incumbent Democrat, 42 percent to 48 percent.

While Republicans from the White House to the Governor's Mansion are still casting about for a Republican alternative to Harris, Sen. Mel Martinez said he'll stay out of that thicket.

"I think Katherine Harris is a fine member of Congress, and I know Allan Bense has been talking about a run, but I had a tough race last year, and I'm going to leave that discussion to others at this point."

Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining $15,000 in payments to two Republican lobbyists last year that were not disclosed to the corporation's board, people involved in the inquiry said on Wednesday.

Brian Darling, was paid $10,000 .... This year, he briefly served as a top aide to Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, but resigned after the disclosure that he had written a memorandum describing how to exploit politically the life-support case of Terri Schiavo.

A pitched battle has broken out between Gov. Jeb Bush and The New York Times--on the newspaper's editorial page.

Two days ago, the Times criticized the governor in an editorial called "Autopsy on the Schiavo Tragedy." While not naming Bush, it denounced "opportunistic politicians" who exploited the case. Today, the Times published a hard-hitting, critical letter from Jeb Bush--and another editorial attacking him.

While not directly responding to the letter, the Times published another editorial, which opened with:

"After Terri Schiavo was finally allowed to rest in peace on March 31, we hoped she would also have been granted in death what she surely would have wanted - an end to the bitterness that divided her family and made her private suffering a public spectacle....

"And so it was heartbreaking yesterday to see Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida thrust himself back into this tragedy just two days after the results of Ms. Schiavo's autopsy showed that her condition had been beyond hope and beyond therapy, that she most likely had been in a persistent vegetative state and that her relatives' allegations that she had been abused by her husband were false.