By Ashley Lopez, The Colorado Independent According to new polling, the majority of Americans do not have definite positions on a health care reform provision requiring everyone to have health insurance. The individual mandate, which is the main subject of Florida’s legal challenge to the law, is one of the measure’s more controversial sections. However, as Kaiser Health News reports, a new survey finds that the public is just as swayed by arguments supporting the health care mandate as they are by arguments criticizing it. Read more: http://coloradoindependent.com/108860/americans-unsure-what-health-care-reform-means … [Read more...]
Many expected to register relationships in Orlando
December 27, 2011
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Gay advocates expect a rush of same-sex couples at City Hall when this central Florida city's new domestic-partnership registry opens next month.The City Clerk's Office tells the Orlando Sentinel (http://thesent.nl/sMmWDe) that it already has begun accepting appointments for couples to sign the registry once it officially opens.All 16 appointments available Jan. 12, the registry's opening day, are full. "I think there's going to be incredible interest. We're going to see a big surge in the beginning," said Equality Florida field director Joe Saunders. Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/26/2562088/many-expected-to-register-relationships.html#storylink=cpy … [Read more...]
Felon Caught With Guns Sentenced To Fifteen Years
December 26, 2011
Tampa, FL - U.S. Attorney Robert E. O'Neill announces that U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew today sentenced Larry Louis Porter (42, Tampa) to 15 years in federal prison for being a felon in possession of firearms. This term of imprisonment is to be followed by three years of supervised release. According to court documents, on February 12, 2011, during a domestic dispute, Porter barricaded himself in his girlfriend's bedroom after she had left her apartment. In the bedroom, Porter armed himself with two World War One-era handguns. When law enforcement arrived, Porter, through a partially opened door, admitted that he had the firearms in the room with him. Eventually, Porter was talked into peacefully surrendering. At the time of the incident, he was a prior convicted felon, having been previously convicted in Florida Circuit Courts of second degree murder, armed robbery, robbery, … [Read more...]
Evangeline Moore thinks of her martyred parents and demands justice
December 26, 2011
By Avis Thomas-Lester, Washington Post Evangeline Moore closes her eyes as she recalls what happened on Christmas, 60 years ago. She’s able to tell the story because she wasn’t home in Florida when the bomb went off. Her father, Harry Tyson Moore, was an early, fearless civil rights leader in Florida who spent the late 1930s and 1940s investigating every lynching of blacks in the state. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/at-christmas-evangeline-moore-thinks-of-her-martyred-parents-and-demands-justice/2011/12/22/gIQAtdcxHP_story.html?tid=pm_local_pop … [Read more...]
Fla. Legislature to consider Caylee’s Law, other crime, drug bills when session opens in Jan.
December 26, 2011
ORLANDO, Fla. — When the Florida Legislature begins its 2012 session next month it will do so just six months after a jury acquitted Casey Anthony of killing her 2-year-old daughter in one of the state's most high-profile murder trials. That verdict has some legislators pushing a law that would make it a felony if a parent or guardian doesn't tell authorities a child is missing or dead within a certain period. Some legal experts and law enforcement officials say the law as written reaches too far. Florida House Bill 49 and Senate bills 84, 86 and 146 are among similar "Caylee's Law" legislation that have sprung up in more than a dozen states since the controversial July verdict and are among several new crime laws legislators will consider beginning Jan. 10. http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/40f4b82b380e4125ae6e7af6020758e7/FL--XGR-Crime--Punishment/ … [Read more...]
