Crist off his game

C harlie Crist is off his game. Way off his game, which was spectacular when it was good. He had the easy rhythm of public life down perfectly. Deferential to the Legislature (even when it didn't deserve it), easily accessible to the media (on a first-name basis with most) and wildly popular with most Floridians, Democrats as well as Republicans. Nowadays, Democrats have pretty much abandoned him, and hard-core GOP conservatives are flocking to Marco Rubio. Charlie's not only lost his mo, he's lost his mojo.

That was sadly obvious at the annual luncheon of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which brought together nearly 400 of the biggest movers and shakers in the Cuban-American community last week to hear all the Senate candidates. It's a tribute to PAC's clout that all four agreed to appear in the same room at the same time. They wouldn't debate or take questions, but it was still the most important moment yet in this young Senate campaign. A very good moment for one of the candidates (Marco Rubio), pretty

The door to change is open

D uring the weeks before Juanes' concert in Havana, controversy was simmering in Miami. Many Cuban Americans, including myself, were skeptical, believing that somehow the presence of such a prominent artist would provide the Cuban dictatorship with useful propaganda.

Two Sundays ago, we beheld the spectacle of more than one million Cubans willfully filling the Plaza of the Revolution to the brim and saw images that were transmitted all over the world. For Cubans, especially those with family on the island, it was hard not to shed more than a few tears.

For 50 years, Cubans have lived under brutal and humiliating conditions. That Sunday, our Cuban brethren had a rare opportunity to have a good time and to hear a message of peace and reconciliation in the very plaza where hatred and division have long been dispensed. For a while they danced and partied and enjoyed a moment of bliss, temporarily forgetting the daily struggles they would face when they returned home.

Parts of Cuban blogger's essay read aloud in House

A high-octane effort to let U.S. tourists visit Cuba got a major endorsement Thursday from one of the island's leading dissidents, who suggested that ``along with suitcases, Bermuda shorts, and sunblock, support, solidarity, and freedom could come too.'' Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, who this week drew the attention of President Barack Obama, wrote in an essay to House Foreign Affairs chairman Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., that lifting the ban on U.S. travel to Cuba ``could bring more results in the democratization of Cuba than the indecisive performance of Raúl Castro.''

``Both peoples,'' she wrote of Cubans and Americans, ``would come out winners.''

Berman read portions of Sánchez's essay at an impassioned hearing in the House Foreign Affairs Committee on whether to lift the travel ban, after critics and supporters of the decades-old ban cited Sánchez's recent beating and detention at the hands of Cuban security forces to criticize the Castro regime.

U.S.-Cuba dialogue team envisioned

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has an old idea that's been tried before, which even its supporters say won't work: Create a team of exiles to dialogue with the Cuban government.

Richardson pitched the idea to top Cuban officials while on a recent trip to the island, and he's already approached Cuban-American leaders who have agreed to participate, he told The Miami Herald in an interview.

He won't say whom.

After 50 years, Cuba has little to show

F ifty years after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, the big question about the Cuban revolution is not whether it was justified, but whether it was worth it. From all available evidence, it wasn't.

A dispassionate look into Cuba today shows that, while the country has reduced the pockets of extreme misery that existed during the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship, a majority of Cubans are poorer and have fewer opportunities to improve their lives than they did five decades ago.

Cubans today have a pretty low per capita income compared with other Latin American nations. They have fewer television sets, telephones, computers and cars relative to their population than most Latin American countries, and the lowest percentage of people with access to the Internet in the region, even below Haiti.