Muhammad Ali turned 70 this month, and the three-time heavyweight champion who doubled as the most famous draft resister in U.S. history remains larger than life in the American mind, despite being ravaged by Parkinson’s disease. Two years ago, on a visit to Louisville, Ky., I was reminded why.
From the beginning of time journalists and elected officials in democratic societies have had painful and interdependent relationships. It is the nature of democracies to try to provide maximum freedom for responsible journalists and publishers while preventing dangerous misbehavior, libel and abuses of power.
If a doomsday clock chimes in an obscure science journal does it make a sound?
Looking back at the manner in which major projects have been debated and approved in South Florida, we have found that opinions are seldom based on thorough research or even the views of the general public, which is the one ultimately affected. We lack a clear vision for South Florida’s economic future that uses scientifically based and objective analysis on the potential for growth.
I can still remember him saying, “I am tired of filling out all of the employment applications day in and day out. I mean, why should I keep this up because all the good jobs are taken?”
As we head into the 2012 election cycle, it is important to clarify some specific election procedures that seem to have been of concern to some Miami-Dade County citizens. In the fury of a number of divisive elections, a few voices called for a variety of actions limiting the ability of some individuals to vote. Of course, such calls touch a raw nerve, as is indicated in a recent headline of the National Weekly, a South Florida Caribbean newspaper, which proclaimed, “Voter suppression looms in Florida.”
Revenue is not a four-letter word, though it has been turned into one by the forces that pretend to lead this state. So, with that in mind, here’s your civics test for the day:
People take their children to the circus because it seems to offer clean, wholesome entertainment and, often, because it reminds them of good times they shared with their own parents.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, a number of government transitions from totalitarian systems to more democratic forms of government have taken place. Last year, dictators tumbled one by one during the “Arab Spring.”
America is sending nearly $1 million a minute out of the country to pay for foreign oil.
Abortion provider Merle Hoffman called a news conference at the National Press Club this week to announce the results of an alarming new study she commissioned:
The Christian right has been peculiarly inept this campaign. There’s little for them to like about the Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney.
Shawn Nee, 35, works in television but hopes to publish a book of photographs. Shane Quentin, 31, repairs bicycles but enjoys photographing industrial scenes at night. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department probably wishes both would find other hobbies. Herewith a story of today’s inevitable friction between people exercising, and others protecting, freedom.
Latin America’s exports to China have jumped 1,500 percent from 2000 to 2010, China’s investment in Latin America jumped over 180 percent between 2008 and 2010, and the Middle Kingdom has displaced the U.S. as Brazil and Chile’s number one trade partner. Should the United States care?
Our community is in the throes of a homelessness epidemic.
Sheldon Adelson is supposedly a bad man. The gambling mogul gave $5 million to a Newt Gingrich-loving super PAC and this enabled Gingrich to maul Mitt Romney — a touch of opinion here — who had it coming anyway. Adelson is a good friend of Gingrich’s and is a major player in Israeli politics as well. He owns a newspaper there and supports politicians so far to the right I have to wonder if they are even Jewish. This is Sheldon Adelson, supposedly a bad man. But what about Howard Stein?
George Wallace, when he made a third-party run for the presidency in 1968, acidly observed that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. And as everyone can tell you, a dime ain’t what it used to be. The way Mitt Romney’s Republican rivals savaged him last week proves that the difference is something under two cents.
I can’t speak for Michelle Obama, but call me an angry white woman. If the first lady isn’t angry, she certainly has every right to be.
The end of the year is often a time of reflection. Looking back on 2011, Florida, thankfully, avoided a hurricane landfall for an unprecedented sixth consecutive year. While this string of good luck won’t last indefinitely, the new year brings about an opportunity to reform Citizens Property Insurance Corporation and the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund before the next storm causes a collapse of these government-run entities.
The most squalid and anti-democratic element of the U.S. electoral system is its insatiable appetite for money, vast rivers of money. It transforms our leaders into supplicants, required to contort themselves and their policies to please rich patrons.
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