on Thursday morning, Bense said he's enjoyed serving the state, but looks forward to returning to his real job with his construction company 18 months from now.

It certainly didn't sound like a man ready to committ the next 6 years of his life to being a United State Senator.

Still, Bense said he hasn't decided whether he'll run for the Senate. On Tuesday, he told us a decision would come "soon."

Florida officials want to withhold judgment on preliminary data that show the number of African-American freshmen admitted to the state university system for the fall has dropped by 1,400 from three years ago. The silence about the nearly 11 percent projected decrease in black freshmen enrollment is odd, because this usually is when Gov. Bush begins leaping through verbal hoops to justify the contradictions of his One Florida plan to "transcend" affirmative action.

Gov. Bush promised the exact opposite effect on black enrollment, of course, with his 1999 initiative to outlaw race as a consideration in university admissions. ...

African-American numbers haven't kept pace with the rest of the university system's population. When black student enrollment stayed flat, Gov. Bush shifted to declaring success by claiming credit for it not plummeting. Blaming economic factors and increasing academic standards, as Florida Atlantic University President Frank Brogan did last week, is another dodge. The key economic factor, higher tuition costs, has been controlled by Gov. Bush and the Legislature. Their lack of need-based scholarships is consistent with the idea of diverting scholarship money, as FAU did, to fill its athletic program's budget holes.

"Relentless media criticism cannot obscure the fact that One Florida is working better than its critics ever imagined," Gov. Bush insisted in 2002, responding to the numbers, which showed then that minorities were losing ground. Board of Governors Chairwoman Carolyn Roberts is correct that a real discussion of the numbers requires the real numbers, due in September. That also was true in the past when, without them, Gov. Bush was spinning One Florida.

has gained a reputation of being able to strike agreements that both major parties can accept. He's well liked and respected by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who appointed him to the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2003. He's considered influential on issues like prescription drug costs, environmental protection and education funding and fought for a balanced budget.

"He's got tremendous leadership qualities with both forward vision and optimism, but more importantly he works incredibly hard to find the sensible center on policy and to build bipartisan coalitions to get things done," said U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wisc.

Kind and Davis served as co-chairs of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist House members who support growth, fiscal responsibility and efficient government.

"He does not fit any ideological pigeon hole, which I think is what makes him so successful and effective as a leader," Kind said. "He's not afraid to take good ideas from the other side and craft that into good policy. And that, I think, is what's desperately needed these days in public service at all levels, from Washington to state government and even locally."

The U.S. Justice Department sued Osceola last week, saying its at-large system for electing commissioners discriminates against Hispanic voters because it dilutes their strength at the polls and makes it harder for them to elect the candidates of their choice.

Only one Hispanic has won a County Commission seat -- and that was during the brief period when the voters agreed to switch to single-member districts. In 1996, voters overwhelmingly decided to return to at-large elections.

The County Commission is scheduled to meet in executive session with its attorneys Tuesday to discuss the lawsuit and the county's options. Commissioner Atlee Mercer said he suspects "some accommodation will be made" before the case gets to trial, but he wants to know how the Justice Department arrived at its conclusion and what the public has to say about it.

"Did they talk to six people, all of whom wanted to run for office? Or did they talk to 1,000 citizens?" Mercer said. "Everyone I talk to is not interested in single-member districts, but maybe I'm running in a different crowd."

Unfortunately, Tampa Democrat Jim Davis broke his pattern of supporting free trade by voting against CAFTA. Mr. Davis, his party's front-runner in the 2006 governor's race, said he wasn't convinced that the Bush administration would enforce the agreement's labor and environmental standards. But economically isolating the CAFTA countries by rejecting the agreement would have done absolutely nothing to boost such standards.

While Mr. Davis claims to be a moderate, he allied himself with liberal groups in his party that prefer protectionism to global economic integration by voting against CAFTA. He also parted ways with two of Florida's leading Democrats -- Sen. Bill Nelson and former Sen. Bob Graham -- who both supported the agreement.

The last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, championed free trade. He believed, as we do, that Americans can prosper in a global economy. Today's Democrats would be smarter to focus on that goal, rather than engage in self-defeating and condescending attempts to insulate U.S. businesses and workers from competition.

President Bush has chosen a Naples, Fla., businessman and major Republican fundraiser to be ambassador of the Vatican.

The White House announced on Friday that Bush is nominating Laurence Francis Rooney, chairman and chief executive officer of Rooney Holdings Inc., which contributed $250,000 to help underwrite the 2004 inauguration.

"The nomination of Al Hoffman as ambassador to Portugal is a testament to his hard work on behalf of Florida," Florida Sen. Mel Martinez said in a prepared statement Friday. "He is a good friend and a great Floridian, and I know he will represent our country with distinction. We are fortunate that Al and (wife) Dawn are willing to serve the nation in this important way."

Hoffman has been a longtime confidant of the Bush family, especially Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for whom Hoffman was finance chairman for gubernatorial campaigns in 1998 and 2002. He was also a chief fund raiser for the governor and his older brother. In December 2003, a fund-raiser at Hoffman's Fort Myers home raised $1.7 million for George W. Bush's re-election campaign.

Hackett, a Democrat, is running as a blunt critic of President Bush in a district that is overwhelmingly Republican. Even those voters who don't plan to support him appreciate his presence in the race.

Hackett has said if he does not win this race, he intends to return to Iraq for another tour of duty.

Florida House Speaker Allan Bense's company, GAC Contractors, won its biggest project, building a $29.7 million Florida rest area, while the state legislator was on his way to becoming speaker.

As part of a 2001 statewide economic stimulus package, the Florida Legislature set aside money for the rest area. Bense voted for the bill and was a member of a key committee that designated money for the project.

Bense, a major stockholder in the Panama City-based company who was recently listed as its vice president, said he's gone to great lengths to distance himself from his company to avoid any appearance that he's benefiting financially from his public service.

"I never used my influence," said Bense, who has been courted as a candidate for the 2006 U.S. Senate race.

Just in case anyone forgets that U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Jupiter, is still considering a run against Sen. Bill Nelson in 2006, Foley sent out a not-so-subtle reminder.

A day after President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court, Foley released a statement warning Nelson against crossing Republicans who want Roberts' appointment confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

urged storm-ravaged areas of Florida on Thursday to focus on diversifying their economies beyond tourism as he toured this barrier-island community that was devastated by two hurricanes in a 10-month span.

said Wednesday he was caught by surprise when his brother's administration advanced a provision in a federal energy bill that would have expanded oil and gas drilling rights in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

The provision was removed from the bill, although it still allows an unprecedented inventory of oil and gas reserves off Florida's coastline. Environmental groups and other oil-drilling opponents contend that allowing the inventory, which could include seismic testing, could build momentum for drilling off the state's coast.

Bush, the younger brother of President George W. Bush, said he was not briefed by either the White House or the U.S. Department of the Interior before federal officials advanced a plan over the weekend that would have extended the drilling rights of Louisiana and Alabama farther into the eastern Gulf of Mexico, closer to Florida. "I was surprised," Bush said. "I hadn't been informed about it."

The governor, who has been a staunch opponent of offshore drilling near his state, also described it as unusual that he had not been given a warning about the proposal.

Well-informed city [of Tallahassee] employees may find themselves quite reluctant to sign up for an outdated form of employee-employer relations that is, nationwide, struggling to retain its credibility and viability in the work force.

Florida lawmakers won a last-minute pledge from a powerful House committee chairman to seek long-term protections for the state's coast, but it wasn't enough to win most of their votes on the federal energy bill.

With the vote looming Thursday, Florida Reps. Cliff Stearns and Mike Bilirakis struck an agreement with Rep. Richard Pombo, chairman of the House Resources Committee, to work on future legislation that would codify protections against oil and gas drilling.

But the deal lacked specifics, and their Florida colleagues were wary of a provision in the bill that mandates an inventory of gas and oil reserves in all U.S. waters, including Florida's. Many say they fear the inventory will be a precursor to drilling.

The delegation had met several times before Thursday's vote to discuss how to proceed. While the bill passed the House easily, 275-156, all but three of the Florida's 25 House members voted against the bill: Bilirakis, R-Tarpon Springs, Stearns, R-Ocala, and John Mica, R-Winter Park, whose brother heads the Florida Petroleum Council.

Critics said Gov. Jeb Bush's pledge to seek a pact with the White House to create a buffer around Florida is a ruse designed to appear victorious in the face of an oil industry coup.

"That's a complete retrenchment" said Dan McLaughlin, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat who has led the fight against the administration's push for new energy development in the Gulf.

"A 100-mile buffer off the Gulf Coast of Florida would probably be the biggest sellout in modern state history," he said. "It would give up the entire Eastern Planning Area."

leaders throughout the state are worrying what effect the fracture in America's labor movement will have on the money and get-out-the-vote force the unions provide at election time. ...

The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending, reports that direct contributions from unions to the Democratic Party and its candidates nationwide have totaled nearly $500 million since 1989. Only 7 percent of their giving over that period went to Republicans.

In Florida, the AFL-CIO pumps, on average, $250,000 or more into the Democratic Party each election cycle for Florida's statewide races alone. And in 2004, scores of AFL-CIO-affiliated political action committees showered money on Florida for statewide races. Chief among them was the failed Democratic U.S. Senate campaign of Betty Castor, a former state education commissioner.

"The problem that the unions have had is that this group of Republicans in charge in Florida and at the national level really want to just eliminate unions," said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach.

A sharply divided U.S. House early today narrowly passed a hard-fought Central American trade agreement that had become one of the year's biggest political fights.

who is running for governor and usually supports free trade, voted against it.

Davis said he primarily voted no because he had concerns that the administration would not hold CAFTA countries accountable for enforcement of labor and environmental laws.

The fault, once again, lies with the state's philosophy. Our Legislature time and again over the past decade chose to rush public business into private hands, and declined to attach enough strings to the money.

The Legislature's attitude toward even the most basic cash controls has been, in essence: "If it is a Republican idea involving privatization, then we don't need no stinking auditors." But in the private prison game, where a few big vendors ply politicians with campaign cash and lobbyists, the need was all the greater.

Finally, this year, the Legislature voted for belated protections concerning all kinds of privatization - only to have them vetoed by the governor.

"I wasn't part of all the inner workings of the Bush campaign after the election," Bush said Wednesday.

Harris, who lives on Longboat Key, is planning a big campaign roll out in August. Details are still being worked out, but the first event is expected to be in Sarasota.

Florida is so committed to education that the state is shutting down a scholarship program that trains teachers. ...

A spokesman for the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation said the state wants to reevaluate its $3 million investment. More likely, there is unhappiness with the Children's Forum in Tallahassee, which administers the scholarship. The group has been justifiably critical of Florida's weak, minimum-standard efforts to enact pre-K on the cheap.

In the wee hours Tuesday, Florida lawmakers lost their monthslong battle to stop an inventory of oil and gas resources off the state's shores that they fear could lead to drilling.

What should we expect from a president and vice president so closely allied with the oil industry? The energy bill being molded by the administration does too little to conserve energy or promote alternative fuels. It gives tax breaks to fossil fuel producers, as though they need more motivation with oil near $60 a barrel. Lawmakers refuse to make automakers improve fuel efficiency or force power companies to expand use of nonpolluting fuel sources.

A required inventory of offshore gas and oil reserves stayed in the bill, even though it makes no sense to do the costly study off Florida's coast if there is no intention of drilling there. Even Norton sees little sense in it, saying her department "would want to do (an inventory) where states want it."

The administration claim that this energy bill will help curb our dependence on foreign oil is a joke. Only a serious conservation effort can accomplish that. And drilling off the Florida coast isn't going to slow the line of tankers from overseas.

Instead, Florida's white sand beaches could end up looking like the Breton National Wildlife Refuge off Louisiana, where an oil spill last month killed 700 brown pelicans. Florida residents and politicians will have to remain vigilant, because this poker game is far from over.

A harsh new state audit discloses that Florida overpaid nearly $13-million to two private prison vendors in the past eight years.

Among the findings were that the state paid for unfilled jobs and a vendor received money for facility maintenance that was never spent.

Nonetheless, the two companies that run the state's five private prisons remain on the job. ...

The audit paints a mutually beneficial relationship between the defunct Correctional Privatization Commission and the two vendors that have run the private prisons for a decade: Corrections Corp. of American of Nashville and The GEO Group of Boca Raton.

is undecided on CAFTA, a Central American trade agreement pushed by President Bush that has grown into one of this year's biggest political fights on Capitol Hill. The vote could come as early as today.

Davis is known for supporting free trade. On the other hand, the Tampa Democrat is running for governor, and his party and special interest groups are pressuring him to vote against the agreement.

Although the commission found that Sebesta [R-St. Petersburg] , chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, violated state ethics laws, it voted in a closed session last week to take no further action because he filed an amended report after the omissions were called to his attention by the St. Petersburg Times.

For years Sebesta has filed reports without a list of his assets, despite a law requiring public officials to identify all assets and liabilities when they file annual reports.

A scathing parody that likens President George W. Bush to the "idiot" in William Faulkner's novel "The Sound and the Fury" has won this year's Faulkner write-alike contest -- and touched off a literary spat.

Advocates for the blind suffered another legal setback Monday: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit refused to order Volusia County to immediately purchase disability-accessible touch-screen voting machines for the fall elections.

The events of this week may determine just how heated Republican politics will get before the 2006 elections.

By week's end, the Republican Party of Florida might know whether it will have to grapple with two top-of-the-ballot primary fights - in the governor's race and for the U.S. Senate.

Even as U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris quietly builds a campaign team and cash for her attempt to oust incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, other Florida Republicans are getting closer to joining the race.

After weeks of encouragement from the White House and national Republican leaders who worry about Harris at the top of the state party ticket, Florida House Speaker Allan Bense, R-Panama City, is expected to say later this week whether he will run for the U.S. Senate.

Some school officials suspect sabotage. They think state officials who want the amendment repealed see a chance to force the issue by putting severe financial pressure on local school districts. If so, it amounts to making students suffer for the sake of a political objective. If that's what state officials are up to, they should be ashamed of themselves.

[convicted terrorist Orlando] Bosch was allowed to leave Venezuela not long after then-U.S. ambassador Otto Reich voiced concerns about his safety in a series of cables to the State Department. He flew to Miami in December 1987 without a visa and was promptly arrested. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh described Bosch as an "unreformed terrorist," who should be deported. But Bosch had a powerful advocate in Jeb Bush, who at that time was managing the campaign of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban exile to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In an unusual presidential intercession on behalf of a convicted terrorist, President George H.W. Bush overruled the FBI and the Justice Department and in 1990 approved the release of Bosch, who won U.S. residency two years later.

Posada is gambling that he will have Bosch's luck and is banking on the same supporters. ...

[Posada and his confederates] are not the only unsavory characters to be given the red carpet in Miami. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen, with the backing of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, wrote letters on behalf of several exile militants held in U.S. prisons for acts of political violence. Some were released in 2001, including Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel and Virgilio Paz Romero, both convicted for the notorious 1976 car bomb-murder of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronnie Moffitt, in Washington. Once released, instead of being deported like other non-citizen criminals, they have been allowed to settle into the good life in Miami.

Thanks to a last-minute, little-scrutinized change, candidates may raise more than three times as much campaign cash as in years past and still tap into public money. So taxpayers could end up helping even the most deep-pocketed contenders in 2006 pay for everything from more campaign mailers to ads. ...

Critics say lawmakers took a system designed to help poorer candidates compete with richer ones and turned it on its ear.

"It just completely went against the whole intent of what this public-financing system was meant to do," said Ben Wilcox, executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause Florida.

Palm Beach County school officials learned that the district faces penalties — including potential takeover by private operators — if it again flunks under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The district has failed to make "adequate yearly progress" — the NCLB standard — three years in a row.

Horrible, right? But then Gov. Bush and state Education Commissioner John Winn announced that Palm Beach County was one of 15 districts statewide to earn an A during the 2004-05 school year. Fantastic, right?

There are other odd examples.

Senator Grassley said on NPR that because Roberts was a legal adviser to Florida Governor Jeb Bush during the fun-filled aftermath of the 2000 election, the attorney-client privilege would preclude him from having to answer questions about his direct role.

But it's difficult to see how Roberts can wriggle out of sharing his thoughts about the decision itself. That ruling famously stated, "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes presents many complexities." Since the decision in Bush v. Gore was explicitly confined to the peculiar facts in Florida during that episode, the rationale Ruth Bader Ginsburg used for dodging questions about many past cases - that answers might be used as a predictor for future rulings on closely related controversies - wouldn't apply.

So let's find out from Judge Roberts: Would he have joined the concurring opinion of Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas in Bush v. Gore, or, perchance, any of the dissenters?

Crist was on hand to honor the ABOTA jurists of the year, Sixth Circuit Court Judge George W. Greer and U.S. District Court Judge James Whittemore of Tampa, the two judges most responsible for the death of Terri Schiavo.

FLABOTA Awards Banquet ...

Presentation of Awards: ...

Jurists of the Year - The Honorable George W. Greer and The Honorable James D. Whittemore

Invited Keynote Address: Honorable Charlie Crist, Attorney General of Florida

You're the Republican governor of the state that will determine whether your brother goes to the White House, so you speak with a smart Republican lawyer about strategy. Problem is, Gov. Bush said early and often in 2000 that, despite his fraternal instincts, he was stepping back from the legal battle over the state's electoral votes. His staff was helping the Bush campaign, the governor said, but he was just relaying information and letting events unfold.

In an attempt to show that he was not using his office to help his brother, Gov. Bush gave up his spot on the state election canvassing board. In his place went Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford, a Democrat. The governor then could say that the three-person board was bipartisan.

But not really. Mr. Crawford had endorsed Gov. Bush in 1998. In return, the Republican Party did not run a challenger against him. Every ruling Mr. Crawford made on the canvassing board favored George W. Bush. And barely a week after the Supreme Court decided the election, a 12-member board of Jeb Bush appointees picked Mr. Crawford to run the Department of Citrus. He had applied the day before. The job paid $246,000 when Mr. Crawford gave it up last year.

Again, there was nothing original about what Gov. Bush did.

But the governor wants to exploit power and look virtuous, which often are mutually exclusive. He touts the benefits of his "privatization," but state contracts seem to be based on who donates to his party. When his daughter was arrested on a drug charge and had to enter treatment, the governor asked the press to respect family privacy. Yet the governor showed no respect for family privacy during the Terri Schiavo case.

The number crunchers at the GOP, awash with the very cash Democrats sorely lack, have analyzed the data and figure that if 3 percent to 5 percent more minorities vote GOP, then it's lights out for the Democrats, state and nationwide.

Signs of the GOP's fade-to-black strategy started becoming apparent in the 2004 election, when national exit polls suggested President Bush picked up 11 percent of the black vote, a two-point increase over 2000. About 13 percent of blacks voted for the president in Florida. Republicans also say they picked up more Hispanic voters.

the "Fade to Black" strategy is laughable from a party that is likely going to nominate Katherine Harris as their candidate for Senator.

No Florida law prohibits stem-cell research. But because Gov. Bush came out against stem-cell research at the worst possible moment, during an international biotech convention, there is an effort to change the state constitution to allow stem-cell research.

It's no coincidence that the leader of this campaign is a Democrat from Palm Beach County - Commissioner Burt Aaronson. The county will suffer if its investment in The Scripps Research Institute doesn't pay off. For the governor to tell biotech researchers to forget about a promising field of research before the first plot of land can be sold does not help the county.

Is politics a factor? Could be.

Democrats want to put stem-cell research's potential to cure devastating diseases on the same ballot as the 2006 governor's race. That could force the two leading Republican candidates to address the issue in the primary, when they will appeal to religious conservatives who oppose stem-cell research. The amendment push also could drive Democrats to the polls.

"As I have stated repeatedly — the administration is hell-bent on drilling off Florida," Nelson said in a news release.

Nelson and other Florida politicians have opposed lifting the moratorium because they are afraid drilling accidents could damage beaches vital to Florida's environment and $50 billion tourism industry.

Dan McLaughlin said that would violate the moratorium by opening areas east of the Florida-Alabama state line. ...

She said the Florida-Alabama line is an artificial boundary that "exists for planning purposes but it is not a legal boundary."

"The White House is being deceitful," McLaughlin said. "It is a flat-out betrayal."

For nearly a decade, a loophole in Florida's campaign-finance laws has allowed candidates to receive money and aid directly from political parties. This loophole means parties simply don't have to be as scrupulously detailed in their give-and-take as individual candidates do. It's wrong and the law should be changed.

Not that the Democratic Party would get a pass on decadent and indiscriminate party spending. It's just that it doesn't have much money to squander on dirty tricks.

I predict, though, that as the primary nears the Republican dirty tricks in the governor's race will be mostly intraparty - the top guns trying to bring down each other, not Democrats. It will get ugly and the test will be of who can respond to adversity best.

By all accounts, it's going to be the most expensive gubernatorial race in Florida history. I can't imagine why since it's also going to be the most politically lopsided race in decades.

The industry used its lobbying muscle this spring, convincing Florida legislators to impose new regulations that make it harder for local governments to build more networks.

A law signed by Gov. Jeb Bush and backed by telecommunications heavyweights -- including Adelphia, BellSouth, Comcast, Sprint, Verizon and others -- raises barriers against cities trying to launch the high-speed networks themselves.