A judge is scheduled to hold a hearing on the governor’s executive order last month to suspend two of his hand-picked Broward Health commissioners after Scott’s inspector general alleged that the commissioners, David Di Pietro and Darryl Wright, were interfering with an ongoing state probe into a number of recently approved contracts.

This is just the latest chapter in a mushrooming scandal that has included the January suicide of the Broward Health CEO, questionable contracts and a deepening investigation by authorities that Di Pietro in the court filings said now includes the FBI.

Scott denies he's corrupt

"Scott’s political committee hits back after Starbucks confrontation."

Kansas, Georgia and Alabama get blessing to to make motor voter registration harder

"The federal Election Assistance Commission was formed after the disputed 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore and given an innocuous name and a seemingly inoffensive mission: to help state election officials make it easier to vote."

In this ideologically riven election season, it turns out, that is not easy at all.

The election commission is in federal court this month, essentially accused of trying to suppress voter turnout in this November’s election. The Justice Department, its nominal legal counsel, has declined to defend it. Its case instead is being pleaded by one of the nation’s leading advocates of voting restrictions. The agency’s chairman has disavowed its actions.

The lawsuit’s origin is straightforward. The agency’s executive director, Brian D. Newby, had been in his job less than three months in January when he unilaterally reversed a policy that the body’s commissioners, two Democrats and two Republicans, had endorsed since the agency’s creation in 2002: that people registering to vote need offer no proof, beyond swearing an oath, that they are American citizens.

That decision gave Kansas, Georgia and Alabama officials a blessing to alter the federal voter registration applications handed out in motor vehicle offices and many other state agencies, replacing the oath with something stiffer: a demand for proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate.

Hispanic voter registration drive in Florida

"The nation's largest Hispanic civil rights organization has launched a major voter-registration drive in the battleground state of Florida to identify and sign up hundreds of thousands of potential Hispanic voters." "National Hispanic group launches voter registration drive in Florida."

Private pre-ks get another pass

"For the second year in a row, the state will not be rating the 6,220 preschools collecting cash through Florida’s Voluntary Prekindergarten program. And lawmakers have dictated that scores won’t be calculated for next year either."

Ever since Florida lawmakers saw fit to invest millions to cover the cost of prekindergarten for the state’s 4-year-olds more than a decade ago, they also required those schools, most of them private, to be rated based on how well their students were prepared once they got to kindergarten.

But that rating system was derailed in the fall of 2014 by a new computer-based test.

What was supposed to be a better way to gauge how much a kindergartner knew about letters, their sounds and how they combine to make words, proved to be an epic technological and logistical failure that unraveled on Facebook.

"What's hot, crazy or shady about politics in the Sunshine State"

Marc Caputo: "Politics, posturing in Trump aide’s prosecution – Grayson v. Beruff in border-wall money fight – Audit: FAMU broke state laws, school policies -- Scott signs Everglades law -- Carnival Cruise’s Castro kowtow." "Florida Playbook."

Trump fires "warning shot" at Florida prosecutor

"When Donald Trump suggests he could file battery charges against the reporter who accused his campaign manager of a crime, he isn’t whining or simply threatening retaliation."

Trump is effectively firing a warning shot at the Florida prosecutor in the case against Corey Lewandowski, who was cited for misdemeanor battery last week by police for allegedly forcefully yanking reporter Michelle Fields away from the presidential candidate during a campaign event in Jupiter.

FlaDems convene circular firing squad

"As Murphy attacked Grayson,"

Murphy was forced to defend himself against allegations of impropriety by the Senate Leadership Fund, a political action committee dedicated to maintaining Republican Senate control.

The Senate Leadership Fund said in February that Murphy had pushed legislation to strengthen the federal EB-5 visa program used by developers to gain foreign investment and bring workers from other countries to the United States. It said the measure would benefit a company, Coastal Construction, owned by Murphy’s father in which the congressman holds a large stake.

That company, the Senate Leadership Fund said, is one of two main contractors on a mega-project called SkyRise Miami, whose developer, Jeffrey Berkowitz, is a major employer of EB-5 workers and wants to use them to help build his planned 1,000-foot-high tower overlooking Biscayne Bay.

The bill died in the last session of Congress, but it remains an issue. Murphy denied that his support for the measure had anything to do with the family business.

Well, the “Smart Solar” constitutional amendment assures we can put solar panels on our roofs and… umm, no, that’s not it, either. We can already do that.

Actually, the proposal approved last week by the Florida Supreme Court simply illustrates what’s wrong with the public-petition method of making law. It shows that, if you have enough money, you can put just about anything up for a statewide referendum – and, if you run a good campaign, you can carve your idea into the foundation of our government.

"Florida's continuing attempt to restrict a woman's right to legal abortion"

The Sun Sentinel editorial board: "Florida Gov. Rick Scott loves to say we need less government regulation — and less government intrusion — in our lives. That is his mantra. Yet there he was recently, signing a bill into law that imposes dramatic new regulations over abortion clinics and likely will intrude on women's abilities to find a provider." "Anti-regulation governor regulates abortion."

"Lobbying firms are taking stock of their personnel rosters"

Peter Schorsch: "With the 2016 Legislative Session in the rearview mirror, many top lobbying firms are taking stock of their personnel rosters to determine if it’s time to upgrade their talent level." "Who’s who of power players."

"Closed cases let state staffers get away with murder"

The Miami Herald editors: "Families are left in the dark as to how imprisoned relatives died. Questionable autopsies and closed cases let state staffers get away with murder." "State still clams up on prison deaths."

"You can bank on it"

The Tallahassee Democrat editors write that, "the more politicians insist they’re doing something for us, not themselves, you can bank on it: They’re looking out their own political preservation."

So it was that U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown brought three busloads of constituents late last month to hear arguments before a three-judge federal panel in Tallahassee’s U.S. District Court, in her long-running challenge to keep her meandering congressional district. Since 1992, the Jacksonville Democrat has represented an oddly configured tract that runs through Gainesville to Orlando, with little catchments reaching out here and there to embrace pockets of black voters.

Brown’s attorneys argued against a redrawn congressional map, imposed by the Florida Supreme Court, which moves Congressional District 5 from its north-south axis to a horizontal configuration hugging the Georgia border from Jacksonville to Chattahoochee. It splits Leon and Jefferson Counties — more about that in a minute — and reduces the black voting-age population represented by Brown from about 50.1 percent, in her old turf, to about 46 percent in the east-west district.

It would be easier to believe Brown is gallantly pursuing justice if the outcome she seeks were not so self-serving. Despite what she called “a perfect storm to get rid of Corrine Brown,” the Legislature and the courts are not conspiring to stop having a minority-access district in North Florida.

This paper opposed splitting Leon and Jefferson Counties between Brown’s district and a new tract that bends from about Panama City to near Ocala. But, as they say around the Capitol, that train has left the station (by the way, isn’t it about time somebody thought up a metaphor that doesn’t make us think of Harry Truman?). The state Supreme Court chose the east-west configuration as more compliant with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the state Constitution.

"Congressional races will be hot"

"Congressional races will be hot this year."

"The Ivy League school quickly refused"

Michael Mayo: "Gov. Rick Scott made Yale University an offer the Ivy League school quickly refused last week: Ditch more than 300 years of history and move to Florida."

On its face it seemed silly, a craven political stunt in response to Connecticut's possible taxation of the school's large endowment fund. And it appears a bad match since Yale has produced some of the world's top scientists, intellectuals and innovators and Scott refuses to acknowledge, or say the words, 'global warming' or 'climate change.'