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The future of Florida's environment and economy depend on the health of our waterways. That's why one of the top priorities of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection is getting Florida's water right in terms of quality and quantity.
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In three decades, Florida has blossomed from a significant state of about 10 million residents to a bustling mega-state of almost 19 million. In part, this transformation has been guided by Leadership Florida, a nonprofit organization that develops leaders with a statewide, rather than parochial, view of Florida's needs — all for the purpose of making Florida a better place in which to live and prosper.
The mission of the ministry I lead, Community Issues Council (CommunityIssuesCouncil.org), is: "To educate and unite the Church to be able to engage our community in the issues of the day."
Editor's note: Wounded three times in the Civil War while serving with the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. went on to become a justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and a U.S. Supreme Court justice. On May 30, 1884, Holmes, while serving on the Massachusetts court, gave what is considered one of the most memorable Memorial Day speeches ever. He was addressing the John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic, in Keene, N.H. The following are excerpts from that speech.
This is Memorial Day, when many of us will spend time with our families hanging out at the beach, having a picnic in the park or grilling in the backyard. Sometimes in all the fun, it's easy to forget why we have this weekend in the first place — because so many of the ones we love are not here to enjoy it.
It's comfortable living in a cocoon — associating only with those who share your views, reading journalism and watching news that only reinforces them, avoiding those on the other side of the cultural divide.
Charles "Charlie" Banks has lived in Tampa since 1959, when Nick Nuccio was mayor and Hillsborough County had just under 400,000 residents. Charlie turned 94 this year but looks younger than he is. His mind is still sharp, and he's still interested in exploring new ideas in business, pondering politics and discussing ways to make the world better.
From an early age, Catholics are taught to see God in their neighbor. The Catholic faith finds its fullest expression in a loving act of sacrifice by one stranger for another. Imagine the church's surprise, then, to be told by the federal government that when a Catholic organization serves its neighbors, it isn't really practicing its religion.
I, too, sing America.
After social conservatives rallied to Pat Robertson in Iowa in 1988, and soon took over the formal structure of the Republican Party in many states, it rapidly became difficult to win a GOP nomination for anything higher than dog catcher without a perfect pro-life position. And yet the electoral implications beyond nomination politics haven't been particularly severe.
After the U.S. housing crash began in 2007, the media often made comparisons with the Dutch tulip mania of 1637, one of the first and most dramatic speculative bubbles in the Western world.
Amid the many messages you may be hearing about screening for prostate cancer, I hope these stand out most prominently: Science finds that there is at best a small potential benefit from prostate cancer screening, and there are substantial known harms. We need a better test, and we need better treatment options. We can do better.
As if we don't have enough "Big Brother" intrusion into our lives today, the Obama regime is now set to "regulate" all commercial and municipal swimming pools by forcing the installment of elevators and robotic arms at all of these pools nationwide, which may also be forced to remove "accessibility barriers" by 2013.
Novelist John Grisham could hardly spin a more provocative fiction: The president and his surrogates mount an aggressive campaign to intimidate the chief justice of the United States, implying ruin and ridicule should he fail to vote in a pivotal case according to the ruling political party's wishes.
As many parents know, April can be the cruelest month, breeding college rejection letters from across the land. My daughter Sadie, who has completed the IB program at Flagler Palm Coast High School, had high hopes. But she was wait-listed at her four top choices, all four out of state. She finally enrolled, to her great disappointment and ours, at the University of Florida. Then last week Grinnell College in Iowa called. Sadie was in. She was granted a full ride and then some. Just as important: She got her visa out of Florida.
Three months ago, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, shot and killed Trayvon Martin.
In a blowout presidential election, a few large issues dominate. In a tight election, a range of smaller concerns — important to strategic constituencies in battleground states — can end up being crucial.
Even the 30-day prison sentence given to a former Rutgers University student who used a webcam to secretly record his roommate having a romantic encounter with another man may have been too much.
Here's a line you won't read often: Republicans are upset with the oil and gas lobby.
Last weekend, when NATO leaders met in Chicago, they unveiled a series of new projects, among them, apparently, a program to develop and expand the use of unmanned aerial vehicles — or "drones" — to confront the security threats of the future and make better use of tighter budgets. Used first for surveillance, and increasingly for strikes, drones have considerable operational attraction. But killing with these stealth weapons stretches legal boundaries to the breaking point and alienates people in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, countries in which neither NATO nor the United States, its most powerful member, are actually fighting wars — unless we count the "war on terror" has having opened the entire world as a battlefield.
Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person.
Among the more controversial chapters in "Suicide of a Superpower," my book published last fall, was the one titled, "The End of White America."
In 2009, Tampa surgeon Dr. Sharona Ross launched the Women in Surgery initiative at the University of South Florida. Ross was troubled that so few bright, motivated female medical school students chose surgery as their specialty area. She is committed to turning that around.
Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is a critical task that merits thoughtful attention. It's distressing — even sickening — that debate about this landmark law has devolved into one more election-year grudge match between Democrats and Republicans shamelessly using gender to try to score political points.
For the past several years, elected officials around the nation have been seeking ways to stimulate job growth as our economy continues to recover. While economic development incentives, a lower tax burden and a business-friendly regulatory system are helpful, there is perhaps no more effective tool in a state's economic toolbox than a quality education.
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