Of all the office walls in all the world, Gov. Charlie's fifteen chummy photos have to show up on Scott Rothstein's.

Even our notoriously Teflon-coated governor may have a hard time slithering out of this one, although one of my editorial board colleagues insists that there is virtually nothing that will keep him out of the U.S. Senate seat currently being warmed for him.

Still, the double-talking will be fun to watch. While Charlie is probably too dim to be that crooked--and just got burned like everybody else who allegedly fell under Rothstein's spell--photos like these (and this cartoon is based on a real one--Charlie's birthday party) are a potent reinforcement of the kind of simplistic connections that resonate with the average voter.

Let's sit back with our popcorn and watch what Marco Rubio makes of all this.

> Discuss this entry

Even for Florida, where shoddy workmanship is the hallmark of excellence, this is egregious.

You move into your beautiful new tract home and discover that the walls make you and your kids sick, tarnish your jewelry, and probably most important of all, screw up the air conditioner.

You go to the developer who sold you this elephant, and he's oh so sorry, but to gut the house would cost him $100,000 or more, and to fix all the homes he's built would put him out of business.

You hear that Obama will be talking to the Chinese next month about making good on their cheesy product, but you realize that he isn't going to get anywhere with them because for manufacturers to back up their goods, they have to actually care about their reputation for quality. They know as well as you do that you only buy their junk because it's cheap.

The feds say maybe they'll free up some HUD money to compensate, but you have to be poor to qualify. A nice Catch-22, because no poor person could have afforded your house.

The insurance people say it's a manufacturing defect, not an act of God, so not only isn't it covered, they're going to cancel your sorry a-- for even asking about it.

Your only recourse is my nifty little kit, shown here. Get your neighbors to buy one too, and make it a block party. Kids'll love it, and it's great for building neighborhood cohesion.

> Discuss this entry

Ah, yes...if you have friends, you are a wealthy person indeed.

Until the Federal Corruption Task Force comes a-knockin' at your door, and you find out they've all turned into witnesses for the prosecution.

> Discuss this entry

Maybe FPL has already done opposition research on these two new appointees with the ruthless efficiency of a KGB counterintelligence squad.

Any proclivities that can be exploited? Skeletons in their past? Kids of college age that got admitted to pricey Ivy League schools that might make them susceptible to a sweet job offer down the line?

Ah, don't listen to me...I'm just being paranoid--ZZZZZOTTTTT!!!!!
AAUUGH that hurt!!! How did they manage to plant those electrodes in my office chair??

> Discuss this entry

We've had a few pretty good years lately, knock on wood.

It would be understandable were the insurance companies to stick us with higher rates if we'd been battered repeatedly by hurricanes like we were back in 2005, but they've already hiked them several times since then even though the weather has been favorable.

They come at us now with some kind of gobbledygook about how the cost of reinsurance is up, thanks to worldwide catastrophes. They always have a reason.

Didn't they create those independent Florida subsidiaries (e.g. Allstate Floridian) so that they could soak us for big premiums, yet insulate the national company from huge losses in case the worst happened?

Why doesn't that "insulation" work both ways? Why should our premiums be affected by earthquakes in Japan, or a tsunami in Malaysia, if they're trying to treat the entire Florida market like some kind of isolated hothouse rose?

As usual, they always have the last word: If you don't like it, don't live here.

> Discuss this entry

On occasion, my editors have seen fit to send me to Tallahassee to cover the sillier side of our legislature in graphic montage.

There is no end of inspiration up there. I remember a special session that then-Gov. Bob Martinez called twenty years ago to reform Florida's abortion laws.

Impassioned partisans arrived from all over the country to stage demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in the streets of our sleepy capital city. The pro-life crowd, in particular, came equipped with visual aids that I won't even go into.

Anyway, I discovered that one way to get a handle on the crazy-quilt character of our state is to sit in the gallery of the House of Representatives. It's a little like witnessing a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

Over in one corner, the Miami-Dade delegation is deliberating in Spanish. In another, the Broward and Palm Beach reps are still rehashing some football game from long ago between their old high schools back in Brooklyn. One can hear the broad diphthongs of the Midwest from the Orlando/Tampa/Sarasota corridor, and cutting through it all is the twang of good ol' boys from the Panhandle across to Jacksonville, thick and tough as the crust on a chicken-fried steak.

Bearing all this in mind, it's no wonder that a statewide voice-activated highway information system would be stymied trying to understand instructions from an average Floridian. Mainly because there is no such thing as an average Floridian. We're really a loose collection of accents and idioms.

That is, when we're speaking to each other.

> Discuss this entry

Do you feel that your social life isn't quite what it ought to be? Do you work the online dating sites in vain, waiting for someone to click on that glam shot you had made at the mall?

If so, I suggest you apply for a job with Florida's Public Service Commission--the outfit that ostensibly regulates utilities in our name. You'll never be lonely again.

I understand they're hiring--the governmental affairs director and a chief adviser just stepped down. Two other advisers are on administrative leave.

You'll be invited to parties galore. Your BlackBerry will buzz so often with calls from FPL execs that you'll have to start blocking the ones who don't provide caviar at their picnics.

In fact, the sky's the limit. Drop a hint, and your wish is their command. It'll be up to you to draw your own line on ethics.

As they say down at the nuclear plant, "Par-TEE!"

> Discuss this entry

I used to live in the “awl patch,” which is the folksy term used to describe that part of the country where petroleum and natural gas are extracted from deep inside the earth.

When the wind was right, there was a smell--not unlike what you smell when your neighbor’s roof is being tarred. That, along with the aroma coming from the feedlots, was what the locals called “the smell of money.”

The awl patch ain’t purty. I once passed through a town in the Texas Panhandle that was surrounded by oilfields. The unrelenting removal of liquid and gas from beneath the surface had caused the land above to buckle and collapse in unnatural ways. It was devoid of vegetation, and the whole tableau--dotted by pumps and power poles leaning at crazy angles--looked like a moonscape being preyed upon by a swarm of mechanical locusts.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, because that land was probably not too appealing to begin with. But now we hear that a consortium of Texas wildcatters is trying to, um, influence the Florida Legislature to relax our offshore drilling ban with tales of vast riches to replenish the state’s depleted kitty.

Considering that preserving the natural beauty of the coastal environment is not exactly a priority for our out-of-state investors, maybe they shouldn't be trusted with the welfare of Florida’s beaches, which are pretty appealing.

But, shux--if we don't have enough gasoline to drive to 'em, what's the point in having 'em, anyway?

> Discuss this entry

Sure it was a cynical move on Charlie's part, appointing his own political crony to a U.S. Senate seat because he's the only person he can trust not to want to keep it.

George Lemieux is a nice guy, but it would have been easier for us to swallow if he had at least some experience in elective office, particularly when there's somebody with former U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw's institutional knowledge sitting around with nothing better to do.

I drew a cartoon about this when Mel Martinez first abdicated. Little did I know that the governor would actually take my advice. Charlie, you always said the people of Florida came first! Say it ain't so, buddy!

Once Charlie gets elected next year, this could be the first time in history that a sitting U.S. Senator has a former senator as his chief of staff.

I may be wrong, but I understand that Sen. LeMieux will be eligible, after his year in office, for the gold-plated health care and pension plan that U.S. Senators have voted for themselves, so maybe he'd rather just retire on our dime than take a demotion. Besides, it would be confusing whenever somebody came into the office and said, "Senator," and they both answered, "Yes?"

> Discuss this entry

When your state's economy is based on homebuilding at a time when people are defaulting on their mortgages, and tourism when nobody is going anywhere, then it's best to stick with your strengths.

And, as any marketer knows, product placement is everything.

> Discuss this entry

Floridians have such a wealth of issues to be ashamed of that it’s hard to pick one out of the morass, but the state’s ban on gay adoption is surely one of the standouts.

Florida’s draconian law, which presupposes that an orphan is safer at the mercy of the “system” rather than in a loving home (if that home consists of a gay couple), is based on at least two misbegotten premises:

The first is that being gay is a matter of choice, and can be drilled into an innocent youth the same way the Chinese Communists brainwashed our boys in “The Manchurian Candidate.”

The second is that all gays must be pedophiles, or they wouldn’t want kids in the house in the first place. If this were true, then why are gays allowed to be foster parents? If you’re going to be bigoted, at least be consistent about it.

I have a theory that the Republicans in the legislature rammed this nutty law through, but realize that as mores change, it’s starting to make the state look silly. Nobody wants to be the first to bend by suggesting a repeal, because the morality police in his constituency will crucify him.

Best to settle it in the courts, where they can scream about “legislating from the bench,” wash their hands of this tar baby, and move on.

> Discuss this entry

When one is almost at a loss to say something new about FPL, the company obligingly goes and hands us a new issue on an electric chafing dish.

This time, it's trying to keep the salaries of its top execs a secret, claiming that releasing such proprietary info could harm its competitiveness.

How is it that a "regulated" monopoly suddenly needs to worry about being competitive? FPL has such a sweet deal that a pack of chimpanzees could run the place and still turn a tidy profit.

Maybe FPL worries that we peons--upon learning what these guys get paid--might rebel, hook our home exercycles up to little generators, and start conditioning our own !@#$% air.

> Discuss this entry

It's hard to get friends and relatives Up North to understand what it means to wonder, year after year, if you're still going to have a roof left by Thanksgiving.

They just don't feel the immediacy of it. Have you ever called someone after a hurricane hit to tell them you made it through OK, and they go, "What, you had a hurricane? Ohhh, yeahhh...I remember hearing something about it on the news?" To them, it might as well have been a typhoon in Malaysia.

An embittered member of Florida's congressional delegation--it may even have been my own congressman, Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Maryland (see how smart he is to opt out of living in his home district?)--once said that the only way we're ever going to get a national catastrophe fund is if a Category 3 hurricane goes right up the Connecticut River Valley.

I think he was wrong. It would have to hit the Hudson and the Potomac as well.

Anyway, it makes you think twice and three times about remodeling the bathroom when you could be showering with a garden hose by next month. No, our northerly neighbors will never be able to truly appreciate the thrill of going mano a mano with Mother Nature.

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For the People's Governor, it's a vexing problem.

It's a job he wants so badly. His new wife probably wants him to have it badly, too. Think of all the embassy parties, the state dinners, the coveted tickets to special events.

Now Mel Martinez has to go and pack it in, leaving a yawning opening Charlie is required to fill.

Charlie would dearly love to appoint himself, dropping Florida's no-win financial mess on the Flying Dutchman, Lt. Gov. Kottkamp--but everybody knows that governors who appoint themselves to U.S. Senate seats invariably suffer a backlash from the voters for their overweening ambition, and lose in the next election.

Any appointee is a potential risk. Senator Mel has been such a colorless figure that he's an easy act to follow. A replacement could look statesmanlike by comparison, start liking the job, and double-cross the governor by refusing to bow out next year. Since many Florida voters blindly vote for the incumbent in any primary, it could give Charlie and his huge war chest fits.

The choices are bad and worse, so I suggest he appoint our former governor, Bob Martinez. It'll save the taxpayers money by not having to change the brass nameplate on his desk, and he can probably keep using Mel's leftover stationery since nobody'll notice the difference.

When Republican primary time rolls around, Charlie can bamboozle the voters into thinking it's been the same Martinez--the one who said he was going to resign--all along.

By the time everybody sorted it out, the election would be over.

> Discuss this entry

The presence in our local environment of creatures like the Formosan termite, the Bahamian curly-tailed lizard, the Africanized bee and the dreaded Cuban death's head roach is understandable, and probably unavoidable in today's free-trade world.

These uninvited guests arrived by way of shipping containers from far-off lands, or in the case of the bee, by an accidental release.

The problem of the lionfish and the Burmese python, however, can be traced to irresponsible idiots who keep these predators as interesting pets until they get too big or annoying to keep in the house.

What do you do if you're a typical Floridian who's gotten all the use out of something that he wants to, and is ready to move on? Dump it and forget it. That's what that big swamp back there, and that ocean out front, are for. You don't even think twice about letting it become somebody else's problem, because this is Florida. Other people don't worry about trashing the environment, so why should you? After all, it's pretty much trashed already.

When the place becomes so polluted and overrun with exotic, predatory wildlife that human existence becomes untenable, you can always just move to another state, the same way you moved in. Run a few red lights on your way out while you're at it. Weave in and out of traffic. Toss the packaging from your fast-food lunch on the highway.

Somebody else'll clean up the mess.

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Our relationship with the utility we all love to hate is like a dysfunctional marriage, wherein we want to separate from an abusive spouse, yet find ourselves enabling their bad behavior because life without them is unimaginable.

It doesn't matter how many times FPL is exposed in print, or how many cartoons people draw,
because the utility just doesn't care. We need them more than they need us.

In fact, they've stopped even making excuses. It used to be that they'd come up with some kind of gobbledygook about soaring fuel costs (even while fuel prices were dropping) that was so transparent it insulted our intelligence. But they at least took the trouble to put on the charade.

Now they release the news about a whopping seventy-seven per cent increase in profits, and we don't even get the benefit of the soft-shoe anymore.

We deserve some respect as patsies. We've sat in the dark too many times.

> Discuss this entry

We're going about this all wrong.

We all know that Florida is always at the top on the lists of the bad stuff, and at the bottom of the lists of desirable stuff. For once, we should celebrate--rather than bemoan--our strengths.

Tourism is one of the legs of our economic stool, isn't it? (The others are development and agriculture, I think, although you'd never know it from our tomatoes, which often taste like they were shipped from a Siberian sawmill). Here we have the one attraction that people will travel all the way down here for, even in a recession, and Gov. Crist goes and signs a law making it harder to get.

Is this the kind of thinking you want out of your governor, much less your next U.S. Senator? After all, if they can't get their prescriptions filled here, they'll just go and get them someplace else, like Mexico. So, no harm done in the end. Plus, it helps keep our international trade balance in line.

We should be offering packages to our honored visitors. "Stay two nights in a Florida hotel, and we'll throw in a bus tour of the top pill mills in Broward and Palm Beach Counties. Reserve within the next 30 minutes and we'll send you home with a pet Burmese python."

We can even have a slogan: "Florida. You'll love us from your first dose."

> Discuss this entry

I was talking with a tile guy one day (Word of advice: Don't ever hire a Brazilian
tile guy right before the World Cup Finals), and we were lamenting the fact that my typical South Florida tract home, thanks to shoddy construction, had no square corners. Nor were any of the walls plumb or the ceilings level--something I learned when I installed my own crown molding.

In fact, I was in the attic once and happened to look down into the interior of a wall below me. Buried down there was a time capsule of discarded cigarette packs, disposable lighters, sardine cans and other detritus left behind by the construction workers decades before.

Anyway, the tile guy told me he kept running into the same tradespeople at construction sites all the time, whether the house was relatively humble, like mine, or a waterfront McMansion. "The quality's all the same, " he said. "You may pay more for a bigger house on the water, but it'll fall down just as fast as yours."

That was heartwarming. And it helped explain why Parkland, which is adjacent to the land being transferred from Palm Beach to Broward County, and which is a relatively well-to-do community, should find itself one of the more high-profile victims of the Chinese drywall debacle. Let the buyer beware: no one is immune. One gets the impression that Florida developers would buy drywall from Borneo made of compressed bat guano if it came in cheaper than the Chinese stuff.

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This wouldn't be surprising if we had a Democratic-dominated legislature here in Florida. We know how they love to throw public money around, right?

But Republicans? The party of "starve the beast," "root out waste, fraud and abuse," and "government health care is creeping socialism?" They're willing to cut education and social services to balance the state budget, yet they also know how to take care of their own.

Those of us who are lucky enough to be employed by state government get inexpensive or even free health care, access to professional financial planners, and Cadillac retirement benefits, all on the public dime. Karl Marx would be grinning from ear to ear to know that the workers were so well taken care of.

Apologists say we need to give them these benefits in order to attract the best and the brightest talent, considering they have such low salaries. A check of those salaries shows they are comparable to or better than those in the private sector. And the poor dears have to do extra work now, what with all the layoffs.

Sound familiar? If you still have your private sector job, you've probably had to shoulder an extra workload thanks to all those empty desks around you.

Maybe if our coddled public servants had to live the way the rest of us do, there might be a little money left over so that elementary school teachers wouldn't have to buy classroom supplies out of their own pockets.

> Discuss this entry

Recently, the Republican members of our state legislature, in a showy burst of sanctimony, signed a No New Taxes pledge. This is their shtick and they're sticking to it, but in so doing, they effectively tied their own hands when it came to giving themselves options for how to deal with the state's financial crisis.

In the last session, they were faced with a dilemma: raise taxes as well as the ire of the people who voted them in, or make cuts in services that people really need, raising ire in the same benighted voters who think services just appear as a gift from God.

The only answer is to play semantic games, hoping the lumpenproletariat is so dense it won't catch on. The government is raising "fees." A "fee," you see, is a government charge for things people use.

As opposed to a "tax," which is...oops...the same thing.

Oh, well, as long as they didn't raise taxes.

> Discuss this entry

We're all feeling a bit spent after the mass Michael catharsis, and our president is overseas, although nobody seems to care.

The only item of interest to come out of the G-8 meeting (snore) is that the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is a proud, in-your-face skirt-chaser, and he's not holding any teary-eyed press conferences, thank God, to justify his behavior. They're much more civilized about these things in Italy.

It's the dog days. Al Franken joined the other comedians in the U.S. Senate... at least he's honest enough to admit to his calling. Sarah Palin's flash in the pan has sizzled out. I'm drawing cartoons about the fact that theme parks nickel and dime you to death once you've paid the steep fee to get in the gates.

Anybody who goes to a family attraction should expect to get fleeced. What makes it special is the fantasy. The kids get to imagine themselves in the midst of a charmed wonderland. The parent footing the bill gets to imagine that he or she is a small shopkeeper in Bedford-Stuyvesant getting shaken down by the neighborhood gang in exchange for their not smashing his plate-glass windows.

That's why they call it the Magic Kingdom.

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An armed robber goes into a convenience store to steal money out of the cash register. He pulls out a pistol and points it at the store clerk.

He has no intention of using it. He just wants to show the man he means business. The store clerk, upon seeing the weapon, involuntarily recoils. He slips on a puddle of Mountain Dew and his head hits the tile floor. He dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The robber is apprehended, and charged with something called "felony murder," which is to say that even though he never intended to take a life, he embarked on a series of activities that directly resulted in the death of the clerk.

How is Bernard Madoff any different than this guy, when his theft resulted in several suicides by people whose entire life savings had been wiped out?

He's lucky all he got was 150 years, and not the magic mojito I.V. As it is, I heard that he's not going to a country club prison. Thanks to the enormity of his crimes, he's rumored to be headed for medium security, with rapists, armed robbers, and other unsavory types who are also serving life sentences with no possibility of parole.

In other words, the system has no way of disciplining them if they should happen to visualize their own grandmother in the place of some little old lady who is now forced to survive on cat food, and decide to take appropriate action.

That's what it feels like not to know if you're going to make it through the next day, Mr. Madoff.

> Discuss this entry

I speak here as a disgruntled FPL customer ( Is there any other kind?). What ticks me, and probably others, off as much as the rate hike is the way they insult my intelligence with their lame corporate rationalizations.

FPL says that lower fuel charges and increases in efficiency will more than offset the new kilowatt-hour base rate increase, in fact lowering our total bills. If they're doing so well with all these economies, what do they need to raise our base rate for?

They say we pay less per kilowatt-hour than customers of other Florida utilities. Could this be because FPL is the biggest, and benefits from economies of scale? And, just because other utilities rip their customers off more than ours does, is that a valid reason to increase our rates?

It wouldn't be quite as bad if our service weren't so spotty. A storm doesn't have to be a hurricane to douse the power at my house. Probably true for yours, too.

On top of all that, they're picking a lousy time to do this. By further strangling homes and businesses in an already stumbling economy, they make it that much harder for their customers to claw their way back to prosperity someday. Less money for them, in the long run.

To put it kindly (and there's no reason that I should), this business tactic lacks foresight.

> Discuss this entry

You get what you pay for, and we Floridians have always undertaxed ourselves compared to other states.

It's part of our ethos here in God's Waiting Room, and some would argue that low taxes are what have fueled an economy that has, until now, been based on immigration from other states and countries.

A lot of our retired residents escaped from such high-tax states as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. They've put kids through the education system Up North, and they're through with that. I would be, too, if I'd had to pay that much.

They have some pretty fine public schools up there. I just visited an elementary school in New Jersey whose multi-media computer room was filled with the latest Apple computers, and the courtyard contained a $90,000 Zen garden for the children to relax in while they contemplated the meaning of life. One classroom door label said, "Mandarin Chinese."

Admittedly, this was a high-end residential community, but clearly the residents were willing to tax themselves to the hilt to give their kids the very best. Here in Florida, they'd just complain and try to hang on to what was theirs.

We could have a top-notch education system, regardless of whether we were in a boom or bust economy, if we had the will.

> Discuss this entry

There's a saying in my profession, "If you have to put that many words into a cartoon, why not just write an editorial?"

I tend to agree with that philosophy, and do my best to keep my stuff short and sweet. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a better way to make my point this time.

That having been said, it is an unfortunate reality that revenue shortfalls and budget cuts are having an effect on higher education everywhere.

What worries me is that, in an attempt to minimize the damage, the folks in charge will decide what programs to keep or drop based on popularity, rather than intrinsic worth.

Engineering is a popular major, because engineers tend to make money. So do economics majors-turned-stockbrokers. But what about Classics, never a major that has attracted multitudes to its doors? If one of the higher purposes of education is to further universal knowledge in increments measured by the contribution that individuals make to the whole, then Classics is indispensable.

If Classics, or Literature, or Philosophy are not passed on to the next generation, who will pass them on to the next? Will we forget what intellectual forces forged our civilization? I, for one, would hate to put the character of future human understanding in the hands of a bunch of happy-go-lucky twenty-year-olds who voted their favorite courses with their feet.

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You'll notice this entry is cross-filed under "Local South Florida Issues," because that's where it belongs.

The multi-decade dance between Castro's Cuba and successive U.S. administrations has transcended mere foreign policy; long ago, it became an emotionally-charged co-dependency fueled over the years by a volatile exile community capable of tilting national elections.

That we are now making a form of progress in relations with Cuba is due to a couple of developments: the hard-line old guard of the Miami exile community is gradually dying off, leaving more moderate, American-born heirs who think of themselves more as Americans of Cuban descent than Cuban-Americans, and the fact that Obama won Florida in 2008 without the Cuban-American vote, so he owes them nothing.

Both countries have benefited from this warped relationship. Fidel--and now Raul-- Castro needed the U.S. and its embargo to blame for inherent systemic failures in the Marxist Paradise, and U.S. conservatives liked having a Communist enemy just off our shores, not only to keep the base whipped up, but to ensure that mostly Republican Cuban-Americans showed up to vote in high proportion.

Well, it's time to move on, at least for the United States. The Organization of American States has, with qualifications, invited Cuba, finally, to join. The U.S., deciding it doesn't really matter that much anymore, dropped its objections.

Raul, not surprisingly, has spurned the invitation, proving that he needs us as an enemy more than we need him. The intractable problems of his country aren't going away soon, so he might as well keep shifting the blame.

Good luck with that, Amigo.

> Discuss this entry

The fact that many coastal residents are not prepared for a hurricane is no surprise.

Nobody is going to prepare for anything as long as the threat remains an abstraction. It's human nature. They will begin to prepare, however, when the news that a storm is approaching percolates its way through the ordinary stress and distractions of their daily lives.

This usually happens about forty-eight hours before the storm hits. All of a sudden, there are lines at Home Depot for (now scarce) plywood, and at the supermarkets for water, batteries and other staples that should have been bought months in advance. Incredibly, home improvement stores report that much of the plywood is returned after a storm fails to materialize, as if by surviving a near-miss, we have been inoculated against future catastrophes.

That kind of attitude can only be ascribed to blind superstition. This is what a lot of people must be taking solace in when they fail to perform simple preparatory tasks despite incessant government and media reminders.

It's too late now, but realize that I left ground bat wing and eye of newt out of the cartoon. Shoulda been better prepared.

> Discuss this entry

If you have a problem and you can't resolve it, then the next best thing is to make it somebody else's problem.

This wisdom holds as true for Holy Mother Church as for anybody else. The bizarre case of the Roman Catholic priest who was caught on the beach acting, um, human, with a lady was a huge black eye.

To add insult to injury, Father Alberto Cutie began publicly questioning one of the most sacred tenets of the Church, the doctrine of priestly celibacy. While this entertaining little affair doesn't rise to the level of the child abuse scandal, he had to go. But how to disappear him without generating further embarrassment?

Enter the Episcopal Church, which, as a member of the Anglican Communion, traces its very roots to a dispute between King Henry VIII of England and Pope Clement VII. The latter refused to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon when his head was turned by the comely Anne Boleyn, so Henry cut Rome out of the the English salvation business and became Protector of His Own Faith. Where better for Padre Alberto to hang his clerical collar?

In the end, everyone comes out ahead. It's a modern-day miracle.

> Discuss this entry

My editor knows something about economics. At least, he says he does.

He knows more than I do, which to me makes him an authority.

He likes to terrify us during editorial board meetings with little hypotheticals, like: "Suppose a massive hurricane hits, and you lose your roof. Sure, you have a windstorm policy, but because it's now so expensive, you opted for the highest possible deductible...say, $12,000. So you go to the bank for the twelve grand, and they say, 'We're not lending, especially to you, since the value of your home has dropped below the amount of your mortgage.' Now, multiply that by several hundred thousand cases, and you've got a real catastrophe."

Then he says that the only solution will be for the state to step in and start handing out money to people so that they can pay their deductibles. Since the state is required to balance its budget every year, that means all of us taxpayers will have to step in, including those who bought before the bubble and whose mortgages are not upside-down. A political nightmare.

Which is when we turn our eyes to our rich uncle in Washington for Federal relief. You know that old expression, "There are no atheists in foxholes?"

Try this one: "There are no Libertarians in roofless homes."

> Discuss this entry

Whether Charlie Crist serves as governor or U.S. Senator really isn't that important. He hasn't exactly covered himself with glory as a leader in Tallahassee, and he's likely to be pretty lackluster in Washington as well.

There is a sense that he's cutting and running (to use a Republican turn of phrase) just when the going is toughest...maybe anybody else would do the same, under the circumstances.

Senators aren't term-limited, and Floridians tend to reelect their senatorial incumbents for life just because they recognize their name on the ballot.

Then, there's the talk about his possible run for the presidency. To me, he doesn't seem to carry the mass for that kind of job. Maybe the new Mrs. Crist, who is rumored to have aspirations to be First Lady, will provide him with the gravitas and "fire in the belly" to lunge for the brass ring.

In any case, he'll look smooth and debonair in a tux at all those Washington parties. That counts for a lot in the corridors of power.

> Discuss this entry

This blog is often Florida-centric, since as editorial cartoonist for a regional daily, I need to remain mindful of the interests of my print readership.

It is a happy moment when local news morphs into national. This happens not infrequently here in the Sixth Borough of Paradise--the Butterfly Ballot and Anna Nicole Smith are two subjects that immediately come to mind.

If Casey Anthony's lawyer's request for a change of venue is granted, the whole dog and pony show may move from Orlando into our backyard--along with the paparazzi, TV crews, international media, and the usual carnival train of hangers-on and scam artists that accompanies spectacles of this magnitude.

Paging Judge Seidlin.

The Anthony case holds no interest for me. Mrs. Lowe-Down, on the other hand, is addicted to the criminal porn shows, like Issues With Jane Velez Mitchell and the eponymous Nancy Grace, driving The Lowe-Down into his garage workshop for refuge.

At the beginning of each program (I hear this in the background, mind you), Nancy marches through a set-piece litany recapping the major events in the Anthony psychodrama. I remember one line in particular, "little Caylee's body, duct-taped and stuffed into a garbage bag, LIKE TRASH!" She could open a side business selling rosary beads for viewers to finger while they recite the liturgy along with her.

Anyway, who am I to complain? Tourism is tourism, and we'll take it anywhere we can find it. O Judge, in thy boundless wisdom which passeth all understanding, please grant Casey's petition...

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I'm going to refrain from indulging in cheap double-entendres, since this is such a target-rich environment, it isn't even a challenge.

The Florida Legislature, which is sure to go into overtime because it can't hammer out an austerity budget, still manages to waste precious minutes over a front-burner issue that has evidently been on all our minds, specifically, the criminalization of human/animal sex.

My favorite quote out of all of this came a few weeks ago, when the state House was debating amendments to this bill that would exclude veterinary applications and situations involving animal husbandry.

A South Florida legislator (who shall remain nameless) shouted out, "You mean, people are taking animals as husbands??"

And we are entrusting these people with our tax money. Anyway, it's probably a good thing that this glaring oversight in our legal code is being rectified, in light of the fact that the Florida Constitution already forbids people of the same sex from taking each other as husbands.

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We might as well set aside the church vs. state argument, since if the boneheads in the Florida Legislature haven't accepted that one by now, they're never going to.

In their zeal to kowtow to their base, our representatives (mostly from the northern and central parts of the state) have tried repeatedly to get the cross tag (bearing the legend, "I believe") and the tag with Jesus' face on it officially approved.

What makes this year different is that the bill has a good chance of passing, and our craven governor, Charlie ("I want to be the governor of ALL Floridians") Crist is so busy running for the U.S. Senate that he says he will sign it if it reaches his desk. His reasoning must be that by the time the lawsuits reach the Florida Supreme Court, he'll already be safely in Washington, so it's no-risk for him.

But ponder this: Any religion that can't even get its act together enough to agree on who its interlocutor with God ought to be (think "Protestant Reformation," and "Orthodox vs. Latin," just for starters) is going to have one hell of a time determining what the state-sanctioned image of Jesus on the license tag should look like.

For all we know, He resembled Buddy Hackett, or maybe Moshe Dayan. You can be pretty sure He didn't look like the mug they'll probably stick on the plate-- some Northern European Renaissance artist's conception of a blond, blue-eyed Aryan ubermensch.

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It's the Holy Grail for cash-strapped localities: cameras, supplied by a private company, that snag red-light runners. The company takes a cut, the city gets the money, and it's win-win for everybody.

Red-light runners are one resource that South Florida possesses in an abundant, inexhaustible supply. Tapping into them is like harnessing the power of the sun.

Besides, everybody hates them, so it's like taxing child abuse or something. There's no constituency of red-light runners that will organize to push back against being targeted.

Another advantage I see is that, this being Florida, the rear-end collision side-effect of drivers slamming on their brakes at the last moment will be more pronounced than in other states where these cameras are being tried. Take into account all the usual text-messaging, phone-yakking, ingesting of dangerous drugs, and doing make-up while driving that happens in every state, and add to it the slower reaction time of a tailgating senior who is trying to get through the light because, like everybody else in Florida, it's important to get wherever you're going ahead of all the other drivers, and you've provided a stimulus for one of our major industries: personal injury lawsuits.

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

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It looks like Fidel Castro may have won simply by outlasting everybody else.

The Cuban American National Foundation, long the bulwark of the hard line against engagement with the Communist regime--a group so powerful that it hamstrung one administration after another and virtually dictated our Cuba policy for years--has now decided that maybe increasing our ties with the island is the best way to effect change.

It's true that the C.A.N.F.'s influence is on the wane (Obama took the swing state of Florida in spite of its support of McCain), and the younger Cuban-Americans, the next generation, neither share the fire in the belly nor the fear of being tarred as Castro sympathizers for following their own political path. Slowly and tentatively, U.S. official policy toward Cuba is becoming more flexible.

It has been said that Miami-Dade County is the only county in the U.S. to have its own foreign policy. That may still be so, but at least theirs is finally coming into line with the federal one.

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My Creationist friends aren't going to appreciate this, but Florida--South Florida in particular--is a Darwinian environment for people and dwellings.

It is a rare building indeed that does not fall victim to such local perils as windstorms, the Formosan termite, the Cuban Death's Head cockroach, tuberculosis-inducing mold, and a host of other natural nightmares.

As if that weren't enough, we have to face brimstone-laden panels of Chinese-made gypsum board, predatory lending institutions and additional man-made threats to home and hearth, like entire neighborhoods turning into ghost towns. Only the toughest humans and domiciles survive this brutal natural selection process.

Back to Creationism: Anyone who really believes in the doctrine of "Intelligent Design" should take a good look at how this region developed. It'll make a Big Bang theorist out of anybody.

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Congressman for Life... It has a nice, third-world ring to it, doesn't it?

Well, that's my Congressman, Robert Wexler. I say that loosely, because he calls Maryland home, but he nominally represents my interests as a resident of his district.

I've had some fun with Rep. Wexler in the past, which he accepts with good humor. He can afford to be magnanimous, because nothing I or anyone else says is going to dent his chances of getting reelected as often as he wants.

Robert may rarely show his face around here, but his constituent services are second to none, so nothing short of a secret photo showing him cavorting on a yacht with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would ever cause his adoring public to have second thoughts about him.

This Chinese drywall thing, though, is one of those simmering little stories that can blow up in a legislator's face if he allows himself to get caught napping. It's unlikely there's much of a Chinese drywall problem among Mr. Wexler's neighbors up in Maryland, but there is one down here where people vote. Hence, the inspection tour.

So nice to have you back in the area, Congressman. Stay a spell and enjoy the holidays with us!

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It's time, once again, to get our minds off depressing issues like politics and the economy to discuss an unrelated local topic, to wit: the Boca Raton teacher who has been accused of allowing her cats to starve to death in her apartment while she was off working and spending time with her boyfriend and family.

We knew the subject would stir passions, which is why we made it the Daily Buzz on the Sun Sentinel's website. So far, it has been a smashing success.

I am owned by two cats, myself. I use this locution advisedly, because in a relationship with a cat, he or she is the master, and you are the dog. A cat displays allegiance to the last person who fed it, and that's about the extent of the bonding. I think it's precisely because cat loyalty is so transitory that we prize the critters so. Dogs love you even if you're a dirtbag. With them, love is cheap (I also have a dog).

This is why pet food manufacturers can extort cat lovers, pound for pound, for the most carefully prepared feline treats, while dog food can be bought in bulk at a price that more accurately reflects what it's worth. No kitty toy or gimmick designed to make their lives more comfortable is too expensive.

For the record, I think that what this woman is accused of doing is worthy of a felony charge. The least she could have done was leave the sliding door ajar so that they could get out and fend for themselves. She didn't.

On a personal note, this cartoon marks my 25th anniversary here on the Opinion Page of the Sun-Sentinel. Where did the time go? I think I'll celebrate the auspicious occasion with another Lowe-Down Cartoon Caption Contest, probably next week. Cool prizes and the thanks of a grateful nation lie in store for those with the guts to enter.

Stay tuned.

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When Walt Disney first built his amusement park in Anaheim, CA, his genius was in creating a mystique around it. It wasn't a place, it was a fantasy experience. You paid once to get in, and that was it--you and your kids turned yourselves over to the confectionery world he conceived.

Now Disney World, Florida's biggest tourist attraction--the destination point of the great American hajj--is suffering the same fate as any other business that relies on disposable income. The suffering is real. Actual people are being thrown out of work.

And while we feel sympathy for their plight, as we do for everyone who has lost his or her job, it's impossible to resist muddying the line between the Disney concept and reality.

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Sometimes the role of the editorial cartoonist involves more than finding fault or poking fun. Sometimes his role is to channel what the community feels.

Political views aside, it would be hard not to have anything but respect for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who not only battled and beat breast cancer, but did so without missing a day of work. As befits her character, she is now using her experience to aid in passing legislation that will increase breast cancer awareness among young women.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz is an unabashed progressive. I remember decades ago, when she first made her mark in the legislature by pushing for dry cleaning parity for women's blouses, which for some reason incurred a higher charge because they buttoned left-to-right. It sounded silly at the time, and was ridiculed both by her colleagues and the media, but she stuck to it and gained a lot of credibility in the process as a crusader. She knew that small things mattered to her constituents.

Well, this is a big thing, and it looks like she has attacked it with the same determination that has become her hallmark, and that has helped catapult her to a leadership position in the U.S. House.

We all wish her good fortune in her life and endeavors.

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It's easy to be the "People's Governor" and promise open, transparent government when you're just coming into office and have nothing to hide yet.

Charlie's probably doing us a favor by using planes belonging to fat cats when he flies around the state. Money's tight, and if he wants to cop a ride from somebody who holds the contract for state worker health care --well, the guy's already got the business, so who's harmed?

The secrecy and the dodging, though... they all indicate that Charlie knows he's being a naughty boy. Why doesn't he just 'fess up and let it pass? All he has to do is say, "At least I'm not burning up taxpayer money on personal trips like my Lieutenant Governor, Mr. Kottkamp, here."

Remember what they said after Watergate: It isn't the crime, it's the coverup.

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It's too bad they can't figure out a way to generate electricity from chutzpah, because if they could, we FPL customers would be paying the lowest rates in the nation.

After a rainstorm--that's right, a rainstorm---causes tens of thousands to lose their power, FPL wants to squeeze an additional $1 billion out of us, claiming that they haven't raised base rates in kilowatt decades. If that's so, what's been causing our bills to go up over the years? Could it be those fuel charges they wanted to raise, even though prices have dropped precipitously since last summer?

Maybe they just took a cue from AIG. Since massive incompetence appears to be richly rewarded these days, why not belly up to the trough with the rest of the hogs? After all, FPL can stack its ineptitude up with the best of them.

Strike while the socket is hot, as they say at FPL headquarters.

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Maybe it takes a childless person like Yours Truly to speak the truth in a Nixon-Goes-To-China sort of way.

From my dispassionate perspective, the FCAT is superlative at teaching kids how to take a test. They may, if they’re lucky, pick up a few other skills by accident, like reading and writing--nothing that probably couldn’t happen more efficiently and effectively were their educators not so distracted by teaching to the FCAT.

I watch my parent colleagues rend their garments over the stress the FCAT creates in their children, and by extension their families, and I wonder if it’s worth it. One was lamenting the fact that her daughter went to school and took the test with a fever. She wasn’t quite sick enough—or was she?—to suffer the consequences of missing it now and having to make it up later. My colleague asked herself if she was being a bad mother.

My guess is that Jeb Bush dreamed up the whole idea of a standardized assessment exam when he saw his older brother come home one Christmas break from Yale, flop down on the sofa with a beer and flip open a copy of The Incredible Hulk.

“Now there’s an example of schools failing in their mission,” he thought to himself…and the rest is history.

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It must be pretty grim up there in Tallahassee. I never thought I’d see the day when Republicans would abandon their creed and agree to look at “revenue enhancement.”

It was one thing when just poor people were hurting…they’re Democrats. But now our legislators are hearing screams from all levels.

Remember the exquisitely named Laffer Curve? As I recall, it held that lowering taxes would stimulate commerce, which in turn would create more revenue even at the lower tax rate. It didn’t say anything about what to do when you’re spiraling into the tank and there’s no commerce to tax no matter what the rate, even though there are still necessities to pay for, like schools, cops, and firefighters. Who’s laffin’ now?

So, the desperate pols are thinking about taxing previously exempt items like bottled water. Bottled water is an absurd idea, anyway, and un-green besides. Everybody should get a filtration system and reusable bottles. It’s much cheaper.

Also, they can raise the “sin tax” on stuff like booze, butts and exotic dancing. Why tax sin? Because sin is fun, and a whole wing of the Republican Party, the social conservatives, believe that "fun" is something that nobody should ever have. Raising sin taxes, therefore, has a double-edged appeal: a politician can both generate revenue and shore up his base at the same time.

See? It really isn’t so hard, after all.

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Editor's Note: There has been some misinterpreation of Chan's cartoon. The governor's complexion is a play on his tan, and is not meant as a racial slur.

Antonio Fins
Editorial Page Editor

Governor Charlie looked good the other day on Meet The Press.
Compared to Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana wunderkind who is clearly positioning himself for a presidential run in 2012 (and spent most of a minute playing a coy game of tag about it with David Gregory), Crist seemed the soul of common-sense.

Charlie said he cared more about the people of Florida than political labels, and he was going to grab the money and be grateful. "We're all Americans," he said of his support of the president (he must have been reading the Lowe-Down).

And how about that magnificent tan? I like to call Charlie the George Hamilton of Politics. With the possible exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger, never has a governor so embodied one of the bedrock industries of his state, unless you want to count that bizarre Sarah Palin interview where a turkey was being slaughtered in the background.

When Charlie casually drops the term "Sunshine State" into his conversation as a synonym for Florida, you can just imagine the shivering bluenoses Up North logging on to Travelocity for the cheapest fares.

The sad thing is, his bipartisan attitude gives him a lot of appeal as a presidential candidate, but he'll never win the Republican nomination by acting so sensible.

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It's easy to posture and spout the Newt Gingrich mantra about cutting taxes when you're up in the Washington fairyland and "deficit spending" is just a couple of words that cause some eye-rolling at Georgetown cocktail parties.

It's quite another when you're where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. State legislatures have annoying little realities, like constitutional requirements to balance the budget, to deal with.

If some federal program comes along that is going to shower billions on your state, you're going to grab the money and run, whether the Democrats passed it all by themselves or not. If it keeps you from having to make those painful cuts that bring screams from your constituents, then it doesn't matter if Karl Marx himself wrote that stimulus plan.

All together now: YES WE CAN!!!

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This cartoon should be pretty self-explanatory whether or not you read the Sun Sentinel story over the weekend. When asked to explain why customer rates continue to rise in spite of dramatically lower fuel costs, some FPL flack said that they could not release fuel price information for competitive reasons.

They're a monopoly, for crying out loud. Where are we going to go if we don't like their brand of electricity? Florida Flower and Blight? They have a non-answer for everything.

Anyway, I thought it would be instructive, and give you a behind-the-curtains view of the editing process, to show you how this cartoon evolved from the moment it sprang to life inside my twisted brain.

The color cartoon you see above is the final version, which will appear in black and white on the February 17 Sun Sentinel Opinion Page. Below is a sketch of the original idea, which I discarded out of hand without even drawing (I drew it afterward for the purposes of this discussion).

I tossed it because, while the Abu Ghraib image is powerful, it introduces an element that is not germane to the central idea.

"What's Abu Ghraib got to do with my FPL bill?" I can hear somebody saying. Also, by using such a shocking image, which could be thought of as overkill, I run the risk of actually turning my target, FPL, into a sympathetic figure. This is no mean feat, I assure you, but I didn't want to run the risk of my cartoon backfiring.

Which brings us to the sketch below. I showed this one, which I felt captured the atmosphere I wanted to create without all the extra baggage, to my editor, the estimable
Antonio Fins. Tony looked at it and said, "Ooh! That's harsh!"

This cartoon, ironically, reminded Tony of Abu Ghraib. He once toured our "facility" at Guantanamo Bay, and is particularly sensitive to the whole issue in a way one cannot be unless one has actually seen one of our prison camps firsthand. In his opinion, the sketch trivialized the suffering of the Abu Ghraib prisoners.

Tony asked if I could put clothes on the victim, and make the interrogator look less like an executioner and more like a mad scientist. I acquiesced, because in my mind, the essential idea had not been sacrificed, although I ultimately decided to use the image of an interrogation cop rather than a mad scientist in the final version.

Now that we've been through all that, I would be interested in knowing from readers which version they would have preferred to see as the final, finished product: the color one that ran, the Abu Ghraib image, or the regular, garden variety "harsh interrogation" scene? We'll call them "A," "B," and "C."

Feel free to tell us why you think so.

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Imagine being a statewide politician so obscure that the first time most of your residents even realize you exist is when you're caught sponging on the public dime.

Our clueless Lieutenant Governor, Jeff Kottkamp, who flew his family around in the state plane while "forgetting" to reimburse taxpayers for the expense (as required by state law), has suddenly gotten religion and said he will pay us back, now that he's been exposed.

As for "legal" use of state aircraft, apparently no newly-completed outhouse or equipment shed in Kottkamp's home district of Ft. Myers is safe from his flying all the way down from Tallahassee at our expense to cut the ribbon for it.

In his oversight, Mr. Kottkamp has raised another issue, which is why do we need a Lieutenant Governor in the first place? He has no constitutional role except to take over if, God forbid, something were to happen to Charlie Crist. And, it's not like Charlie carries the nuclear codes around with him or anything. Surely a constitutional chain of succession could be put in place without fear for our collective safety.

It's a time of severe fiscal austerity for Florida, and worthy programs are being cut to balance the budget. Since it looks like we're stuck with the guy, the least he can do is have the grace to remain in one place or the other until his term is up.

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Whenever there's any kind of bad news, from a high incidence of HIV/AIDS to soaring school dropout rates, Florida is well represented. Our state regularly rates the poorest in the desirable statistics and the highest in the negative ones.

It is no different with the Madoff scandal. Floridians constitute a huge proportion of the con artist's victims. I suppose we can be happy we're not in the majority, but it's bad enough.

Moving beyond the Florida connection, it's fascinating that a number of really famous people--like Kevin Bacon and Steven Spielberg, to name just two--were stung. We peons have this feeling that famous people must be "in the know," and that there's some secret code among them that prevents them from falling victim to the usual scams the rest of us face. Also, they must be smarter than we are or they wouldn't be famous.

The fact that these people were not insulated tells us something important about the nature of fame: in some cases, it's a byproduct of hard work and excellence in a particular field--like Madoff victim Sandy Koufax.

In other cases, people get famous for things that have nothing to do with intelligence, like non-victims Paris Hilton and the Octuplet Lady.

Fame, in other words, says more about us than it does about them. It's about whom we're willing to confer it upon, and for what reasons. They're just folks, with the same problems and susceptibilities we have, only they can't go out to the driveway and grab the paper without some jerk sticking a camera in their faces.

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Hurricanes are one of those facts of life we simply have to deal with. We can't "hate," or "despise" hurricanes, or "hold them in contempt." They have no free will. They're just products of the laws of thermodynamics.

Homeowners' insurance companies, however, are another matter. All that public relations pablum about being in good hands, about being good neighbors--it's just selling a feeling, because their product doesn't exist as a tangible item you can get your hands around.

We forget that they're not really here to be a public service. They're profit-driven, and they take our money, betting that we'll never have to make a claim. So for years, they took it gladly. Then, we had a few bad seasons. Now State Farm is pulling out, because the house is no longer guaranteed its traditional winnings at blackjack.

The company is more than happy, however, to stay behind to insure our automobiles, which continues to be a lucrative enterprise.

There's a word for that: boycott.

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I remember watching a young adult, barely of voting age, being interviewed on TV early in the primaries. The reporter asked him if the fact that Barack Obama was black would affect his decision, and he answered, "That's something only you older people think about." Talk about generational change.

It's the same with gay issues. Prejudice isn't an entity that can exist on its own. It's a parasite, and it dies slowly...one host organism at a time.

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It looks like the Federales are going to be with us for a long time, because the local watchdogs either dropped the ball or never picked it up in the first place.

I have a theory about why government corruption is so rampant and enduring down here. A lot of people, the ones with enough time on their hands to vote, move down and leave the grown kids up north. This means they have no stake in the future of the area.

All they want is to be left alone to enjoy their twilight years and be allowed to die in peace. As for government, as long as it maintains a relatively low tax rate and keeps the hooligans from kicking in the condo door or snatching one's purse in the parking lot, then it's done its job. If somebody wants to use his office to make a side living, that's his business. When election time comes, you vote for whom you've heard of.

Which is where campaign fund contributions come in.

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Rep. Robert Wexler, few would disagree, occupies one of the safest Congressional seats in America.

How safe? Back when it was not cool to do so, he was one of the few to defend former President Clinton during the impeachment hearings. No, he didn’t just defend him, he got out there, plastered his face all over the networks and VOCIFEROUSLY, UNAPOLOGETICALLY and INDEFATIGABLY defended him.

How safe? He called for the impeachment of President Bush just a few months before the Clown Prince was heading out the door anyway.

How safe? He was one of the very first major Florida pols to support Barack Obama in the primaries, a position that required a lot of fast-talking in the temples and synagogues of District 19. Yet his career did not suffer for it, because to his constituents, he’s a mensch.

Except for that quirky little thing about his being a full-time resident of Maryland (to which I have alluded in this cartoon and earlier ones), he’s far from being the worst of that batch of jokers in Washington.

Wexler could have walked in and written his own ticket with the Obama administration, but for some reason he has decided to hold onto his seat. I guess he cares about us—not enough that he would actually want to live among us, but enough not to deprive us of his representation.

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Jeb Bush carries so much weight (I mean that figuratively) in this state that all political aspirations ground to a halt while he mulled a run to fill the vacancy, come 2010, of Mel Martinez' U.S. Senate seat.

A few weeks ago, when Martinez announced his retirement, I drew a cartoon questioning whether this, or even two years from now, was the best time for someone to be running for office while saddled with the surname Bush.

Jeb must have seen it, because he clearly took its message to heart. Anyway, now that he's gone, all of the little gremlins are coming out of the woodwork to stake a claim, creating a domino effect that can be felt all the way down to dog-catcher level.

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Look out.

I don't just mean for state budget trimming, which is going to be brutish and nasty, but I'm talking about tax increases to balance the budget.

Now, when Republicans--like those who dominate our legislature--get together to increase revenue, they go through a little linguistic minuet. They never, ever raise taxes. What they do is, they put a "fee" on the most basic of life's necessities. A "breathing fee." A "walking fee." A "birth certificate fee."

Because a "fee" is user-based, it isn't a "tax," which is considered regressive for business.

Existing fees, of course, are ripe for raising (we've already discussed the exotic dancer licensing fee).

So, let's rewrite Ben Franklin's old adage for modern times: "The only certainties in life are death and fees."

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The staff here at The Lowe-Down want to wish you a Merry Christmas, and as a sign of our sincerity we are offering you a politics-free cartoon today.

Yes, this time of year is payback for having to endure nine months of summer, so why not share it with the less fortunate--specifically, our snowbound friends and relatives Up North?

Rub it in, real good. Heck, even if you don't celebrate Christmas, go ahead and make that call. Nobody can blame you for connecting with family.

Let's face it, they do the same thing to us during fall foliage.

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The last refuge of a state politician who is facing the ugly choice between balancing the budget (required by the Florida constitution) and making cuts that are sure to anger his constituents is to raise the tax on vice.

Also known as the "sin tax," this is just about the only tax God-fearing Republicans can ever be persuaded to go along with. Cigarettes and booze fall into this category. If they could figure out a way to do it, so would illicit drugs.

Palm Beach County, to get even more local, is raising the fee on licenses for exotic dancers to help balance its books. Licenses? Does one really need to pass an exam for this? Who are the examiners? Do they get paid for their many hours of work? What are their qualifications for holding a position so critical to public safety?

Is one required to carry the license on his or her person while performing the licensed act? If so, where?

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It would be easy for us working stiffs to indulge in a little schadenfreude over this Madoff investment Ponzi scheme uproar. The rich, trying to get even richer, ended up hoist on their own petard of greed.

Unfortunately, there were quite a few charities that placed their money and trust in the hands of this criminal as well, so a lot of innocent "little" people are being hurt.

Since Madoff's fifty-billion-dollar crime was white collar, he'll probably end up doing a few years at the Allenwood Federal Country Club, if he does any time at all. Meanwhile, a small-time crook who rolls a Seven-Eleven with a pistol will probably do twenty years or more, even though his crime affects far fewer people far less drastically. But that's the way the system works.

Meanwhile, where were the Feds while all this was happening? According to recent stories, they were probably sitting around with their thumbs up their derivatives, giving each other inside stock tips instead of doing due diligence.

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As I've said before, it's fun, once in a while, to be able to combine two unrelated topics in a cartoon.

In this case, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's summertime European romp to the tune of $400,000-plus has blown up in the same week as his planned nuptials, so why not conflate the two?

They really aren't all that unrelated after all, because we hear that the People's Governor included his comely fiancee among his trade mission camp followers, not unlike Caesar sweeping through Gaul on a military campaign.

For Charlie's reputation, this isn't exactly the equivalent of crossing the Rubicon,er, the Suwanee--but at least we can enjoy the ruckus for a few days until it all blows over.

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You can hardly blame Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of Miami's three anti-Castro amigos (along with the rabid Diaz-Balart brothers), for imagining herself to be yet another victim of a telephone prank.

After all, local Miami stations are past masters of the art form, having famously fooled Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez into thinking his pal Fidel Castro was on the horn, and then reversing the prank on Fidel, himself.

We all know about the French Canadian "President Sarkozy" who called Sarah Palin a couple of months ago.

It is no wonder, therefore, that Ileana hung up on President-elect Barack Obama when he called to congratulate her on her election victory and tell her how much he was looking forward to working together on common goals. Just to make sure she had dug her hole deep enough, she then slammed the receiver down on his future chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who had called to tell her that the Barack outreach was una llamada verdadera.

When the whole mess was finally ironed out, everybody had a good laugh, sort of. But Ileana is no fool, and in her embarrassment, she knows full well that Obama managed to carry Florida without the help of what is left of the anti-Castro Miami Cuban exile community. Which means that he's free to pursue any policy on Cuba that he chooses to, without fear of backlash from her or her constituents.

Not exactly the best way to play your hand with the new administration, particularly when you come to the table without so much as a pair of deuces.

As for the Miami radio pranksters, this must be the sweetest victory of all. They didn't even have to pick up the phone.

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I don't think "Bush Fatigue" even begins to describe it. Maybe "Bush Capitulation."

It was George W. Bush vs. the republic, and we lost. But that's another story. My guess is that this Bush is counting on the fact that by the time he runs for Mel Martinez' seat in 2010, the American public, with its notoriously pigeon-sized memory, will have forgotten that most of its ills occurred during his brother's watch.

By then, we'll be blaming Barack Obama, either for causing our problems or for not fixing them quickly enough. There will be enough voters looking back with nostalgia at the Bush years to put old Jeb over the top.

Until then, it's just "Jeb."

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Remember the fat years, when we could afford to sit back and get voluntarily offended that our own religious symbol was omitted from some public gathering place, or that one representing a creed we didn't like was included along with ours?

That's a luxury for people who aren't worried about their livelihoods, or whether they'll ever get to retire, or whether their kids will ever get to go to college. It all seems so trivial now.

It's a shame, because the annual mall protests were one of the things that gave South Florida its pizzazz. Is it possible that this recession will forge us into one big, disgusting cesspool of brotherly love?

Naah. We're stronger than that.

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What happens when Floridians' notorious independent streak (just check out our gun laws) bumps up against localities' bright idea to raise revenue in tough times by paying commercial outfits to install traffic cameras and collect fines automatically?

Toss in a dollop of our legendary road rage, and Big Brother comes down with a case of lead poisoning.

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Those of us who live in BrowardDadePalm, otherwise known as New York’s Sixth Borough, sometimes forget that Florida is still, in many ways, a backward Southern state.

Take, for example, its quaint, retrograde attitude that the mere existence of homosexuals threatens the very—on second thought, don’t take it. I’ve dealt with this many times in other cartoons.

Instead, take education—the polish on human consciousness that supposedly separates us from the beasts that slither and crawl along the face of the earth. It turns out that our state university system has just about the lowest tuition in the country, roughly half the average. It also has one of the highest student-to-teacher ratios. We read of the best professors leaving the state because they can’t get a decent cost-of-living raise.

You get what you pay for. Some would say that as long as you still have partying and sports, which the Florida system has in abundance, then you’ve pretty much covered the important stuff, anyhow.

When I played rugby in school Up North, we tackled the issue with typical New England efficiency. During halftime, they trotted large amounts of a vile regional brew called Genesee Cream Ale onto the field. Its rancid bouquet was mitigated only by its price, which was roughly five bucks for a case of twenty-four. Yes, even thirty-five years ago, that was pretty cheap.

See how my mind wanders? Must be the Genny Cream.

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A conventional wisdom seems to be developing that the same huge minority voter turnout that helped tip Florida into the Obama column also helped to put the "Gay Marriage Amendment" over the top, thereby enshrining discrimination in our state constitution.

If that is true, I find it puzzling that a segment of our society that so recently suffered under anti-miscegenation laws, and knows what it means to have the state step in and dictate whom one should and should not be allowed to marry, could be complicit in restricting the rights of another minority.

But, maybe it isn't true. Also, maybe I'm just dumb and am missing some key piece of logic here.

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If you're like most Floridians, your opinion of Gov. Charlie runs somewhere between vanilla and French vanilla. He's a reasonably inoffensive, likable gent. Not exactly a barn-burner, but as a person, he's quite charming.

Compared to Sarah Palin, however, he looks positively Lincolnesque. Just try to put yourself in his shoes after he used his considerable prestige in our contentious state to pull John McCain's chestnuts out of the fire during the primary, when everyone had given his candidacy up for dead. This is the thanks he gets? Princess Needless Markup who played hooky during junior high civics class?

You can bet that if Charlie had been the VP pick, he'd have been able to tell Katie Couric what the Vice-President's statutory role is, and he wouldn't be dragging down the public discourse by calling his opponent a socialist, terrorist, Marxist teacher of sex ed to kindergartners.

That's probably why McCain didn't give him the job. Buck up, Governor. You're too good for it.

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One of my colleagues voted early yesterday, and she spoke afterward of how moved she was that so many people were willing to stand in line out in the sun for so long to make sure that their vote was counted.

This election, especially the circumstances surrounding it, may have finally gotten people to understand how much government--and who is leading it-- can affect their everyday lives. The economic crisis hits home in a way nothing else can. It isn't abstract, it isn't something that only the chattering classes yak about on Sunday morning talk shows. Never have the choices been so stark, or the outcome of greater consequence.

Hence, the connection I made in the cartoon between voting and the economy. Go stand in line to vote. It's a lot better for your health than standing in line for fast food.

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The nation has been pretty evenly divided between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates for several election cycles, and the winner has been determined by the unaffiliated sliver in the middle. This is the group that is now being fought over with all the ads and robocalls.

The leader of the free world may be determined by people who are still so up in the air about their decision that they are actually susceptible to this stuff. It's almost as scary as someone who believes we are entering the biblical end of times being a heartbeat away from having her finger on the nuclear button.

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It's true that I drew a cartoon about Representative Tim Mahoney of the scandal-plagued Florida 16th Congressional District just last week, but this gift of a local/national story keeps on giving. Since the story first broke, Mahoney has admitted to multiple affairs, and blubbered his way through a press conference wherein the morality candidate of two years ago begged for forgiveness from his constituents.

The amazing thing is, he hasn't quit his campaign for reelection, thereby assuring that a lot of angry voters, who may not be in a such a forgiving mood after their second representative in a row showed himself to be morally challenged, will turn out to vote against him. This is certain to hurt his own party's (Democratic) presidential ticket in a very important swing state next month.

Considering his reckless behavior to date, why should we be surprised?

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In the midst of a national presidential campaign, let us pause briefly to turn to more parochial issues. This being Florida, they tend to morph into national ones, anyway.

There must be something in the water up there in Florida's Sixteenth Congressional District. The man who replaced serial online congressional page groomer Mark Foley, and who managed to turn a Republican district Democratic, now appears to be caught in his own web of deceit.

Tim Mahoney gave a news conference today in which he hewed to the strict guidelines of what has now become an American political ritual, the fallen public figure accompanied by his stricken spouse (Why is it that they always have to humiliate their wives a second time by forcing them to endure the probing lenses of the media while they deliver their mea culpas? It seems so barbaric).

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Europeans don't care about this stuff. Why bother to go to all the trouble to become a politician, they reason, if you don't partake of the goodies? If you don't like a cheating spouse, then don't marry a pol.

Politics aren't nearly as interesting over there.

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It reminds one of the life cycle of the cicada. Every four years, the gay marriage issue rears up and threatens the very existence of our republic. A furious burst of political activity ensues, characterized by a flurry of would-be laws being placed on state ballots nationwide for consideration by a vote of the people.

Some succeed, others don't. The real purpose is to turn out "The Base," which will, while they are angrily wearing a hole with their pencil into the optical scan ballot at the place that would ratify the anti-gay question, vote for the Republican candidate before they go back to sleep, politically speaking.

We should take one moment to think about not just how cynical, but how patronizing of "The Base" this strategy is. It assumes that there is a large portion of the electorate that will not even bother to turn out to vote in a presidential election unless there is a sweetener involved.

For the rest of us, the question would seem almost quaint and irrelevant, under current circumstances, if it didn't have such a potentially disastrous effect on people.

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Chances are the Founding Fathers, back in olden days, had no idea to what absurd lengths their Bill of Rights would be stretched. On the other hand, if you don’t go to those lengths, somebody might arbitrarily draw the line at a place that is unacceptable to the rest of us.

In other words, if you have to invoke the First Amendment to protect some youth’s right to wear his clothes in such a way that will make him feel like an idiot when somebody shows him a picture of himself twenty years later, so be it.

In the two-cents department, just because you have a right to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Take heavy-metal music, for example, of which I am not a fan. I do not try to stop it from being played, even when an aficionado of the genre is generous enough to share it with me at high volume while stopped at an intersection.

When treated to this largesse, I refrain from manually expressing my own Constitutionally-guaranteed First Amendment right, especially if I think said aficionado is likely to exercise his Second Amendment right to discharge his musket in my general direction.

Eventually, the light changes, and we all move on with our lives, our civil rights intact.

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It would be nice if the words, "Palm Beach County," evoked images of swaying palms, pristine beaches, and the good life when uttered abroad.

If only. Last week, I opened a lecture in Austria with an explanation of how George W. Bush got elected back in 2000. "I happen to be from Palm Beach County," I said, and immediately heads in the crowd started nodding up and down. "Ach, ja, ja," they said knowingly. "Der Falterfischwahlzettel! (the butterfly ballot!)" It sounds so much worse in German, doesn't it?

Here it is, eight years later, and we're still appealing to anybody who will listen to help us out of our electoral morass. Maybe the Jimmy Carter Center will come to our rescue.

Say what you will about Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Maryland) and his weaselly residency irregularities; that's small potatoes compared to his greatest sin, foisting Elections Supervisor Without Peer Dr. Arthur Anderson upon us. Safely ensconced in Civil Service Pension Valhalla, Theresa LePore is having a good laugh.

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When I began sketching this cartoon, I realized that I had never drawn Nancy Pelosi before, which seems surprising considering how much she has been in the news. Or, maybe I was just having a senior moment.

Cartoonists are always hypersensitive to facial quirks and details--after all, it's our job. I think anyone would admit, though, that our fair Speaker wasn't born with eyebrows that far up on her forehead (I'm not talking about the cartoon).

Getting to more serious stuff, my editor and I agree that the way out of our dependency on oil is not to drill for more, but to add a consumption tax on the petroleum products we use (while providing means to offset the tax's effect on the needy). It would force us to conserve and to find alternatives in our personal lives, while funding research into other forms of energy.

Makes a lot of sense, even though it'll never happen...especially with people around like Nancy Pelosi who can't think past the next election.

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Rising taxes, insurance premiums and the higher cost of just about everything down here are causing more and more of us to question that big move from Up North.

Every once in a while, when we hunker down in our cracker boxes and try to push that storm tracking line on the TV away from us through sheer force of will, those Jersey winters don't seem so tough in retrospect. A little shoveling, big deal. The house was all paid for, for crying out loud. Why DID we move, Herbert?

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It's such a rare event when the good guys (meaning we consumers, as represented by state regulators) win a round, that it's worth a cartoon. In this case, Allstate has been caught using the hurricane threat to gouge customers, and had to pay a hefty fine (along with rebates), the cost of which cannot be passed along to the consumer. I'm sure they'll figure out a way to offload the penalty, regardless. After all, their marketing tells us they're good with their hands.

Speaking of the Good Hands, it's always fun to draw cartoons about insurance companies, because they employ feel-good images like hands, umbrellas, and good neighbors in an attempt to inject a little humanity into what is, at its heart, a rapacious industry selling us an abstract, intangible product. These images create perfect avenues for satire; I've used the hands before in many configurations. Annoyingly, there have been plenty of opportunities to do so.

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It wasn't much of a surprise when the news came out that Rielle Hunter, the Ken Doll's paramour, was born in Ft. Lauderdale. If it's sleazy, there's got to be a South Florida connection. All we had to do was wait long enough, and we knew it would bubble to the surface like swamp gas.

As I'm suggesting in this cartoon, our area's tendency to be the festering sore whence spreadeth all infections should be celebrated rather than hidden. Our very seaminess should be thought of as an asset. The kind of people who are attracted to it spend money when they're not stealing it.

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It doesn't really surprise me that 60 percent of Americans believe that allowing offshore drilling is going to have some kind of immediate downward effect on gas prices, rather than a decade-and-a-half from now. Desperate people grasp at straws, because they WANT to believe so badly.

It's also no surprise that the politicians pushing offshore drilling the hardest are the ones from states farthest from any coastline. I can just imagine the folks jawbonin' about it down at the tire and supply store now: "Shux...who cares about Florida? I been to Disney World. They ain't even got a coastline there, so what are them folks bellyachin' about? And that there ANWR. Just a buncha caribou. Not like they're cattle or nuthin'. I got me a mighty thirsty VEE-hickle outside to fill, and if this lops a coupla cents off a gallon, I say bring on the slick! Leastways, we won't be buyin' it from the A-rabs."

It's almost too easy for the oil companies.

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So a fat-cat company preys on the good will of customers, pleading with them to voluntarily pony up so that it can develop clean, renewable sources of energy. Instead of building windmills or whatever, it spends most of the cash on public relations.

One hopes there is a special kind of hell waiting for these con artists...preferably one that involves electrodes.

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Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, spearhead of the Clinton anti-impeachment defense and the Bush impeachment drive, has been too clever by half. It turns out that Maryland has an extra Congressman in its delegation, Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Potomac.

We'll see how this all shakes out. He'd practically have to become a card-carrying member of Hezbollah to get thrown out of office, his constituents love him so. Anybody with the chutzpah to be an early, ardent, and unflinching backer of Barack Obama's candidacy in a South Florida Congressional district must be feeling pretty smug about his chances for re-election.

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It could be that we actually hate insurance companies more than utilities. At least FPL delivers a useful product. The problem with insurance is that it isn't tangible. They're supposed to be peddling "peace of mind," but the trauma hits with a double whammy: first, the hurricane itself, second, trying to force these people to part with the loot they've been taking from us for years.

Like a good neighbor, they're there to present their annual statement, or your cancellation notice. I wonder what an insurance executive's concept of hell might be? This gives me an idea for a new Design Your Own Cartoon contest.

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From the Bahamian curly-tailed lizard to the Formosan termite to the Cuban death's head cockroach to the Burmese python to the Central American iguana, we're all immigrants here in Florida--just trying to get along.

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I have developed this recurring character of the imperious monarch that, in my opinion, captures how we unwashed ratepayers feel about the utility.

It's interesting that while we all have to tighten our belts because of rising prices--cutting here, cutting there to make ends meet--FPL never has to do any belt-tightening. It just goes back to the trough when the raw materials get more expensive, its lawyers do a little boo-hooing in Tallahassee, and the dance is over until the music starts again the next time.

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Somebody wrote in when I did a cartoon last week about Gov. Charlie Crist's flip-flop on offshore drilling. Normally, I dismiss the comments of people who use the combination "you liberals" as just name-calling in order to avoid presenting a reasoned argument for their premise.

This gave me pause, though, because I have never thought of the environment or climate change as a liberal/conservative issue. I did watch "The Exterminator" (former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, so named because of his previous profession as a bug man) on TV one night espousing the official stance of the Republican Party, which is that there is no scientific proof that climate change is caused by human activity. I guess it's just one of the holy mysteries.

Anyway, last I heard, even conservatives have children and grandchildren whose future well-being they worry about, which is why we should reconsider this not as a political issue, but a moral one. Then we could work on it together.

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I, for one, was disappointed that Irv Slosberg decided not to run for the legislature in a reprise of his earlier service. Rarely does a politician as colorful as he come along, and rarely does one wage a campaign as devoid of subtlety, yet as effective. Irv always knew his constituents, he knew their specific needs, and he never forgot to shower them with goodies during his marches to Tallahassee.

I hope he changes his mind two years from now. The local political scene is pale without him.

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Who would have thought Governor Charlie would want to be Vice-President so badly that he'd pull this kind of craven flip-flop on coastal oil drilling? Personally, I never gave him credit for having that much ambition.

If McCain chooses him in hopes he'll deliver Florida for the Republicans in November, he might find the Governor to be damaged goods in his home state after this news gets around.

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Remember the good old days, when your mother told you, "Be careful on your way to school?"
Now that you're a parent yourself, it turns out that strangers may be the least of your worries.

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As any consultant will tell you, it's perceptions, not facts, that matter in politics. Too much snow on the rooftop to win an election, telegenic as Gov. Charlie might be. To make matters worse, as one of my colleagues remarked, "Crist's healthy tan makes McCain look sallow and frail by comparison."

Case closed.

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We're all frustrated ratepayers, but at least I get a chance to vent about it. We serfs suck up the rate increases while our government "regulators" in Tallahassee lash the utility with a seemingly endless supply of wet noodles.

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There is a school of thought (to which I do not subscribe) which holds that we are already loaded up with supplies from last year, and that is why nobody is doing anything to get ready.

I prefer to think of it as good old-fashioned Florida memory loss. The lines at the home centers right before the next hurricane will make waiting for the Early Bird Special look like a picnic by comparison.

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There's no question that the almost-presumptive Democratic nominee has a lot of work to do in in the three South Florida counties to achieve a comfort level with the voters here. Without Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade, there's no chance he can win the state in November.

I intentionally left this drawing in black and white, the way it appears in the paper, because I thought it more effective than color. Sometimes, as Mies van der Rohe liked to say, "Less is more."

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Thanks to budget cuts and higher food costs, the schools are having to choose between cutting back on the quality of the lunches they serve and raising prices, which will make them harder for low-income folks to afford. Is it just an economic issue, or is it a failure to assign the correct priorities? Somehow the legislature managed to keep funds in the budget for consolation payments to companies that lost out in bidding for state contracts.

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At a time when we're about to pay four dollars per gallon at the pump, you would think our legislature would do all it could to dedicate a funding source for the region's mass transit system, which is experiencing more ridership than ever before.

You would be wrong, of course. Thanks to petty politics in Tallahassee, something to do with revenge on the part of one Orlando-area pol for not getting something for his own commuter rail system, Tri-Rail was denied the two-dollar surcharge on rental cars that would have kept the trains rolling without cutbacks. Bottom line? Enjoy your drive.

Oh, they did manage to designate an Official State Anthem for us. The Official State Pie was already taken (a good thing, too--during the year of the State Pie, they spent days debating the merits of key lime versus pecan. It was one of those North/South things. I don't remember which won).

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It seems like every day we pick up the paper, there are so many insoluble problems and other horrors that we can't even begin to fix them. So I thought, "Why not combine a few?"

It's a little like getting one of those consolidation loans so that you can handle all your debts with one easy payment. One-stop cartoon shopping.

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As we said in an editorial (a lot more intelligently), the legislature should cease and desist with its plan to lease out our highways to private companies in order to save money. Nothing good can come of this.

Don't worry--I agree that the talking animal shtick is a conceit that ought to be employed only rarely. It works, for example, when you use it to highlight the folly of humankind. It should not be abused or you start dipping into comic strip territory, and that leads to rotting of the brain.

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If you are willing to consider the legacy of the Bush brothers as a single consolidated entity, then there is a bright side: Nobody ever died taking the FCAT, at least that we know of. All the same, it is a tragedy of hubristic intentions spun out of control, leaving behind a landscape of recrimination, failure, and the dashing of aspirations. Jeb, being only the governor of a state, couldn't start a war, so his reach was limited.

It does make you ponder that wonderful "What if" parlor game anew: "What if Jeb had not lost his first race for Governor to Lawton Chiles, thereby becoming the Bush spawn first in line to be anointed President, instead of the dumb one?"

My answer? It probably wouldn't have made that much of a difference.

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I admit this is a rather flip treatment of a serious problem. I ran it past a few colleagues when it was in rough form, asking if it was too silly. They all (women, by the way) gave me a variation on, "Silly works sometimes. It's funny enough to make it worthwhile, even if it's a little light on substance." Plus, I'd hit a wall on other ideas.

We can't be preachy ALL the time.

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The Florida Legislature, in its wisdom, passed the Guns in the Workplace bill and Gov. Crist says he will sign it. I, for one, feel safer in my workplace because of it.

Yes, I have complete faith that a concealed weapons permit also confers the judgment, clarity of thought, and ability to make the correct decisions in high-pressure situations that we expect of all our artillerymen and -women. Fortunately, since those records are sealed, I have no way of knowing whom among my colleagues has the right to tote. That's probably a good thing, because if I did I'd be terrified.

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With all the serious problems this state has, the Republican-dominated legislature always manages to find the time to address this subject in an election year. Gay marriage, in recent years, has become another reliable vote-getter. It's one of those amazing natural phenomena that the fate of the unborn and the sanctity of heterosexual marriage never seem to be under threat in years that end with odd numbers.

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Everything we do in Florida--waiting in a movie line, driving on the Interstate, even performing our jobs now that we're about to have a guns in the workplace law, follows a kind of social Darwinism. It makes just as much sense to predicate the seating of our delegation upon this principle as upon any of the other solutions they're discussing. It would make for great TV, too.

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Sure, you have a right to be proud of your roots. Sure, you have a right to display your pride. But, just because it's your right, is it the moral thing to do to engage in an activity that drives a dagger through the hearts of so many brother Americans? Is one's self-esteem that in need of propping up?

That's a matter of taste and choice. But it is definitely wrong to make the state complicit by placing its official imprimatur on a symbol that so many of its citizens find offensive.

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I've covered the legislature several times during my decades with this paper. The most exciting was the special session on abortion called some time in the late '80s by then-Governor Bob Martinez . There were demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in the streets, along with some rather appalling visual aids being waved around. But that's another story, and if I can ever dig up my combat-cartooning journalism from that time, I'll post it on this blog.

In the meantime, I recalled from my visits to our capital a phenomenon known locally as Tallahassee Tummy, a condition born of lobbyist-provided food and drink that is not quite as prevalent now in the era of restrictions on gift acceptance. There is still plenty of girth up there to go around, however, and it seemed ironic that those who cannot even control themselves are attempting to control the dress habits of school kids.

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There really isn't much I can say that the cartoon hasn't already said, except that some people simply beg to be caricatured. The South Florida Congressional Delegation is a cartoonist's dream.

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One can only sit back and marvel at the high-caliber firepower wielded by the gun lobby in Tallahassee. Republicans are supposed to be against government butting into how businesses conduct themselves, except, apparently, when it comes to determining whether or not those businesses can be forced to allow firearms onto their own premises.

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If you thought it was chaos with the hanging chads, just wait for this little fiasco-in-the-making. Am I wrong?

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The Holy Grail on any given day, at least for me, is to combine two or more seemingly unrelated topics that happen to be at the forefront of readers' minds. This was one of those days. FPL and insurance companies are two institutions we all love to hate.

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