State wants to take sin out of film incentive

Once they were gay.

Or homosexual. Occasionally they turned up as same-sex couples.

This week in Tallahassee, that particular category of humanity received a new, slightly clunkier designation. Call them practitioners of ``non-traditional family values.''

Kim Rothstein continues living the high life

So many shoes. So little shame.

Of course, Kim's $21,180.01 investment in footwear hardly compares to the millions frittered away on the big-ticket items hauled away by the feds last November -- luxury cars, yachts, mansions.

Oxycodone pill mills work a lot like 'printing money'

One year. Five doctors. A single pain clinic. Two million hits of oxy.

To be precise, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says that five doctors working out of American Pain Clinic in Lake Worth prescribed -- peddled might be a more accurate term -- 2,167,710 Oxycodone tablets in 2009.

Small-town scandals belie Broward's size

Population estimates suggest Broward County has 1.7 million residents. That can't be right.

Broward plainly exhibits characteristics belonging to some puny Podunk. Surely this low-down tangle of incestuous political scandals and civic soap operas couldn't be the stuff of a big, diverse metropolis.

Senate sacrifices much to stand behind guns

The Florida Senate asserted its priorities Wednesday afternoon. The vote was 31-9.

It was a matter of state trust funds. One considered worth protecting. Others? Not so much.

Marco Rubio's luxuries are just sheer necessities

It can't be cheap, being married to the woman Marco Rubio described as ``the First Lady of the Florida House of Representatives.''

Thanks to Joe for igniting the path to reform

Friends of Josephus Eggelletion will troop into federal court for his sentencing hearing next month, offering the judge an inventory of supposed civic contributions.

Like Rothstein, the unRothstein betrayed trust

Think of him as the unRothstein.

Lewis Freeman commanded the kind of community respect Scott Rothstein craved. Rothstein thought he could buy himself Freeman-like status and tried mightily, with a manic barrage of spending and giving.

Empty booths symbolize Miami's financial woes

A little sign taped to the window of the Coconut Grove info kiosk explained why no one was around to actually dispense info.

Teachers union's smear campaign misses target

Just an ordinary news story: Young hackers penetrated Broward school district computers and altered grades. You've read so many variations of the Feb. 12 piece that such stories hardly register.

Taxpayers don't stand a ghost of a chance

Ghosts don't work cheap in Miami-Dade County.

Wackenhut, according to the county auditor in 2008, had billed the county millions for phantom security guards along the Metrorail line -- ``ghosts posts'' they were called, back when naïve taxpayers mistook this practice for scandalous duplicity.

Renewal plan for declining Pahokee slowly fading

The sign atop the dike invites visitors to behold the $12 million civic project on the lake shore supposed to resurrect a morbid farm town: ``Rebuilding the future of Pahokee.''

Tale of S. Fla. teenage sex trade jolting

Only one story, amid an orgy of overwrought media coverage during South Florida's Super Bowl week, stopped me cold.

Auto-text ban unlikely, despite obvious danger

Here's a stupid column, stooping to proffer an argument so obvious that not even the most contentious fools bother conjuring up a serious rebuttal.

Turn down $34 million? Are they crazy?

A year or so back, a cash-strapped school board saying no to $34 million in federal funds would have been only perplexing.

IN MY OPINION

A heartbreaking request: Take my child

Death estimates flog the imagination. The streetscape remains a tapestry of rubble and disorder. Bodies, in a tangle of grotesque poses, are dumped in burial pits. Food lines stretch into the horizon. Most of the city still sleeps under tattered tarps and bed sheets suspended from sticks and strings. The smell of rotting flesh mingles with human waste.

Freed inmate must go back to Tuttle hell

Vindication gets Eduardo Galego out of prison and back into the netherworld where Miami-Dade sequesters sex offenders.

Lawyer's high life ends in disgrace

South Florida's most audacious fraudster shuffled into the federal courtroom without a hint of his old gangster bravado.

A look at Dominican Republic-Haiti relations

DUVERGE, Dominican Republic -- The sunny, happy Dominican Republic of international tourist promotions seemed a bit less cordial on the road out of Haiti. Along the way, soldiers brandishing black assault weapons manned 11 military checkpoints.