PSC `chitchat' offers miserable sense of déja vu

We've been here before. And before that. Until the very mention of the Public Service Commission ignites a miserable sense of déja` vu.

Press was one of the culprits in bogus conviction

The list of culprits behind the conviction of Anthony Caravella starts with the police, the prosecutor, the judge. Then it becomes embarrassing.

DOC crackdown on sex offenders ruining mission

You'd think that the supervision and discipline and therapy and strict curfews and drug testing and spiritual guidance and actual beds offered by the St. Francis Mission might be preferable to having jobless, homeless sex offenders prowl the streets and sleep under bridges.

Case is among string of bogus convictions

The kid they tried to execute was just 15. An IQ of 67.

The Broward prosecutor demanded the death penalty. But the jury, queasy about killing a mentally deficient teenager with no more evidence than a questionable confession, voted to spare Anthony Caravella's life.

Trailer park is a dumping ground of convenience

Mobile homes, I guess.

Though the term seems woefully inadequate for the decades-old cramped metal structures along the narrow lanes of the River Park trailer community, so decrepit and so beset with jerry-rigged repairs, sagging awnings and plywood additions, that they hardly resemble their original incarnations. A row of tiny, sad, stucco cottages that lined the southern perimeter seems no more substantial.

Do traffic cameras violate right to privacy?

The light changed. Red for cross traffic. Green for me. A clever ruse, designed to lure me into the path of four speeding cars and a runaway chrome-laden Escalade with ghetto chic hubcaps.

Numbers tell a sad tale for exiled offenders

Begin with a baseline of 927,647 -- the total number of housing units in Miami-Dade County -- and the rationale for stashing several dozen sex offenders under the Julia Tuttle Causeway suffers from an apparent crush of alternatives.

A fishy taste may be enough to fool diners

Fish: That was the extent of my certitude.

The thing on my plate was purportedly Texas striped bass but in the dimly lit restaurant, no stripes were visible. The state of origin was even more obscure, though I'm enough of a connoisseur to rule out West Virginia striped bass.

Proposed bite from Miami-Dade's venom unit could prove deadly

Down the 2300 block of Taylor Street, folks traversed yards and berms as wary as soldiers walking a mine field. ``Oh yeah,'' said Debra Williams, nodding across the street at the site of a disconcerting encounter with slithering exotica. ``We're all scared.''

Creators of Tuttle sex offender problem can fix it -- now

Plenty of talk out there lately. Speeches. Promises. Threats. Sound bites on the evening news. Lots of stuff about solving the Julia Tuttle Causeway conundrum.

Hit-run driver's backers forget the dead victim

Mary Montgomery has been reduced to an afterthought in the Sean Casey imbroglio.

Casey ran her down and sped away, leaving her dead on Harding Avenue. Eight years later, Sean Casey's champions regard her as inconvenient detritus in a narrative that casts poor Sean as the victim of the cops, judges, his therapist, even his own lawyer.

OPINION

While tuition soars, dirt gets a break

College students may think of themselves as dirt poor, but in Florida they're regarded as less than dirt.

Blessed are the poor, but do we care?

I look at the House of Lies scandals, I see sleazy deals and political patronage and well-connected insiders who regard affordable housing as just another way to game the system.