Is Tom Lee truly different from most other Florida politicians? ...

As Lee rattled the status quo cage with one hand, he was taking big checks with the other - from the very lobbying interests he criticized on the Senate floor.

Dozens of fat checks, all immune from the $500 contribution limit, flowed to an issue advocacy group called Floridians Uniting for a Stronger Tomorrow. To his credit, Lee was the first lawmaker with a Web site (www.flust.com) disclosing every donation before it was required.

There was $50,000 from a health care group, Alliance for Florida's Future, and $25,000 from WellCare, a Tampa health insurance giant. Another $25,000 came from the trial lawyers and from the National Association of Fundraising Ticket Manufacturers. Humana, hospitals and home builders' lobbies sent $20,000 each.

Sprint and the cable TV lobby sent $10,000 each. CVS sent $5,000. And on and on.

Gov. Bush's misuse of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test makes it hard to give his administration the benefit of the doubt as it tries to develop a meaningful system of merit pay for teachers that includes FCAT scores.

Six years ago, the governor insisted on making the FCAT the biggest factor in school grades, even though the test wasn't given to most students and didn't cover most subjects. The test is more comprehensive, but still doesn't cover history, geography, art, foreign languages and other electives. Further, students in kindergarten through second grade and in 11th and 12th grades don't take the FCAT.

That hasn't stopped Gov. Bush and his appointees at the Education Department and on the Board of Education from pushing the FCAT as a pillar of teacher evaluation. ...

The biggest problem with merit pay in Florida is that teacher salaries are below the national average to begin with. If Gov. Bush and his appointees set up a system that requires teachers to jump through stupid hoops just to fight over a few crumbs of bonuses, the state will find it hard to recruit sufficient talented teachers.

A federal judge Thursday refused to stop enforcement of a new Florida law that orders doctors to notify parents if their daughters 17 and under seek an abortion.

U.S. District Judge William Stafford said opponents of the law failed to demonstrate that they had a good chance of winning a constitutional challenge against it. That's the key threshold that had to be met to win the temporary injunction they sought.

The underlying lawsuit, filed last month by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is intact and will be argued later.

"We'll live to fight another day," said Janet Crepps, an attorney for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights.

Speculation among some Crist supporters was that he would show about $2 million raised during the quarter.

Shattering a record set by his rival just Friday, Attorney General Charlie Crist said Wednesday he has raised more than $3.8 million for his campaign to be the Republican nominee for governor.

It was somber news for the campaign of Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, which confidently announced last week that it had raised slightly more than $3.02 million.

Crist offered only a head fake last week. In a news release after Gallagher's announcement [of his record breaking numbers], Crist said, "It is well known that the Treasurer knows how to raise money. I look forward to a campaign not just purchased on television, but a real discussion of issues before the people of Florida. For our part, we are still counting the contributions to our campaign. We want to have an accurate count before we release the final number to the public."

Gallagher's team was elated, believing Crist was signaling that he had raised less money than Gallagher.

Crist beat Gallagher by twice the amount Davis had raised.

Using the House speakership or the Senate presidency to take money from lobbyists for any purpose is wrong.

It is morally wrong. It is ethically wrong. It is everything except legally wrong, and that's only because the Legislature decides what's legal.

While abortion protesters across the country have generally turned away from the violence of earlier days, tensions in Florida still exist.

"Florida is a hot spot" said Stephanie Grutman, executive director of Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates.

"We've had doctors killed, clinics bombed. We've had considerable more violence than other states. But we're also a very big state."

An old political feud was reignited Tuesday with the state's largest law enforcement union asking the Florida Elections Commission to investigate Democratic governor candidate Scott Maddox.

The Florida Police Benevolence Association is a political power backed by dues from 30,000 correctional officers and other law enforcement workers. Maddox's father headed the group for decades before he was forced out in 1994.

The complaint questions Maddox's role as chairman of the Leon County Democratic Executive Committee until May. Maddox was also chairman of the Florida Democratic Party until May, when he quit to run for governor. Party rules require that the state party chairman also head a county committee.

In November, the Leon County elections office fined the Leon County DEC $10,500 for filing a campaign-finance report late.

"I think it's fair to put a disclaimer on anything we say, we do have this history," [PBA head Dave] Murrell said. "But we're concerned like everyone else with who is going to be the next governor. And these issues should be brought out whether it's us or anyone else."

Murrell said the complaint had nothing to do with a longtime feud between the PBA and the Maddox family. Charlie Maddox, the candidate's father, headed the PBA for three decades before being ousted in 1994.

"Last week it was (Gov.) Jeb Bush issuing personal attacks on Scott Maddox and this week it's allies of Charlie Crist. There is nothing new here."

Some of Rush Limbaugh's medical records may be in the hands of prosecutors this week, jump-starting anew the criminal investigation of the conservative talk-show king and ending his 19-month battle to reclaim them.

A judge indicated during a hearing Tuesday that he's nearly done reviewing the seized records. Circuit Judge Thomas Barkdull III asked for evidence bags for the records' transport. "Three of them," he said.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa announced Tuesday he has raised $800,000 in his campaign for Florida governor, $390,000 of it in the past three months.

Davis is the first of the three Democratic candidates to reveal second-quarter fundraising results, which must be filed with the state elections office by Monday. Fundraising by Democrats, who include state Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua and former Tallahassee Mayor Scott Maddox, is expected to lag significantly behind two Republican candidates.

Scott Maddox be the comeback kid, or the man who let the Democratic Party fall further behind on his watch?

Campaign experts say that question will take 90 days to answer.

If the Maddox campaign for governor has a good fund-raising quarter, political pros think he still has a chance in the 2006 Democratic primary. But he'll need a message that resonates among the party faithful loud enough to drown out a drumbeat of bad news about the state party's failure to pay income and Social Security taxes during his six months as its chairman.

[F]or more than six months, the state, at the behest of then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris, [Florida] did pursue one alternative method -- a very alternative method. ...

Mystically blessed water is a vital part of the faith and is sold for $3.80 a bottle at Kabbalah centers throughout the country.

Believers maintain the blessings performed over the water change its molecular structure and imbue it with supernatural healing powers. The traits attributed to so-called Kabbalah water -- "elegant crystalline structures" and "high energy and low entropy" -- are virtually identical to those of Celestial Drops. ...

Harris seemed surprised Friday that the product she once hoped might cure canker may be nothing more than blessed water. In fact, after being contacted by the Orlando Sentinel, she called Hardoon. She said he blamed Celestial Drops' poor test performance on state scientists.

Gov. Bush is interested in accountability only when it does not to apply to him or to private companies being paid by state taxpayers.

Jeb Bush has already blazed the [spoils system ] trail. Florida's governor has been an aggressive privatizer, and as The Miami Herald put it after a careful study of state records, "his bold experiment has been a success" at least for him and the Republican Party, records show. The policy has spawned a network of contractors who have given him, other Republican politicians and the Florida G.O.P. millions of dollars in campaign donations."

Last summer, the Florida Department of Children and Families secretary quit after an inspector general found that he and some of his executives had accepted favors and steered contracts to lobbyists and friends. In October, the State Technology Office canceled a $173 million contract with Bearing Point Inc. and Accenture, large donors to the Republican Party of Florida, amid a criminal investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and a critical review by the Legislature's auditor general.

Another private company, Convergys Corp., is being paid $350 million in a nine-year contract (that mysteriously grew from $262 million over seven years) to handle the state's personnel services. But the company has missed or delayed paychecks to workers, caused employees to be dropped from health insurance plans because Convergys did not pay increased premiums, erroneously deducted too much from paychecks for benefits and otherwise provided unacceptable service.

Speculation among some Crist supporters was that he would show about $2 million raised during the quarter.

On the house floor, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, said Castro would see Davis' effort as another sign that America is softening its stance on the embargo on Cuba that has been in effect for more than four decades.

Davis rejected the idea, repeatedly telling Diaz-Balart that he doesn't want to touch the embargo. Davis insisted his effort was about family values.

those on the religious right, anyone on the list would be preferable to Gonzales, whom they regard as a chilling reincarnation of David Souter, Bush One's moderate pick in 1990. Choosing the attorney general might well doom GOP Senate incumbents, they say, by infuriating the party's fervent, evangelical grass roots. "If the president is foolish enough to nominate Al Gonzales, what he will find is a divided base that will take it out on candidates in 2006," said Manuel Miranda, who heads a coalition of conservative groups called Third Branch Conference.

A former legal counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Miranda went on to threaten retribution against First Brother, should he decide to run for president. "We're not Republican patsies," he said. "Jeb Bush can go sell insurance."

MoveOn.org, the political committee that played a big role backing Democratic presidential contender John Kerry, is the latest organization to begin seeking cash for Florida Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. ...

Now MoveOn is labeling the Harris-Nelson matchup among the "hottest and most expensive races" in the nation.

The group has made protecting Nelson, whom it praises for having a "solid progressive record," a chief priority, along with building support for Democratic challengers to Republicans Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas.

Florida Republican Party chairman Carole Jean Jordan wasted no time in attacking Nelson for seeking support from an "extremist organization" and declaring MoveOn "one of the most radical liberal organizations in America."

2002 election is memorable not only for the continued electoral landslides accumulated by Republicans in Florida, but also by the Democratic Party's absence from two statewide races.

While they fielded candidates for the governor's and attorney general's race - both lopsided losses - Democrats failed to even challenge Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, allowing him an uncontested win. And the party provided little assistance to the unexpected candidacy of Miami-Dade library director David Nelson in his long-shot loss to Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Bronson.

This year, Republicans have already filled the three Cabinet races with well-known candidates, including incumbent Bronson and big money-raisers like Senate President Tom Lee, R-Brandon, in the CFO race and House appropriations chairman Joe Negron in the attorney general's race.

How many well-known Democrats have filed to run for any of the three seats? Zero.

Since she was elected in 2002, the Sarasota Republican has lost two chiefs of staff. In recent weeks, she also lost her press secretary, scheduler and the staffer who ran her Sarasota office.

She said several employees went to work for higher-paying private companies. Her Sarasota office manager went to work for Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida.

Harris attributed the problem to her hiring "great people" who impress potential employers, and the high turnover rate on Capitol Hill.

Paul Neaville, Southern regional director of Wesley Clark's presidential campaign, will manage the gubernatorial campaign of Democratic state Sen. Rod Smith. Neaville also worked on the campaigns of former Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and Gore-Lieberman. ... Meanwhile, Democratic strategist Sally Stohler - a veteran of the Clinton White House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and many other campaigns - had a thankless debut as Scott Maddox's campaign manager last week amid a storm of bad press over Maddox's management of the state and Leon County parties. Stohler, by the way, said she expects the Maddox gig to be a lasting one.

The Legislature tried to tighten its control over privatization after a series of problems, especially in outsourcing big-ticket technology projects. Work has been given to private companies without knowing whether it would save money, contracts were canceled because of criminal investigations and questionable bidding, and state workers and citizens have been frustrated by poor performance.