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Florida

Jun 2006

Fee for which a Florida middle-school gym teacher allowed students to skip class, before he was fired in January: $1

Years that his predecessor had operated under the same policy: 1

Source:

Escambia County Sheriff's Office (Pensacola, Fla.)

Jul 2005Price, from a Florida company, for an RV that protects riders from biological and chemical attack: $1,200,000
Source:

Parliament Coach Corp. (Clearwater, Fla.)

Feb 2005Estimated number of Florida homeowners who signed contracts last year forbidding them to complain about their homes: 4,000
Source:

Frese, Nash & Hansen (Melbourne, Fla.)

Feb 2005Minimum damages sought by a builder last fall against a Florida homeowner who had broken the ruleagainst complaining about ones home: $15,000
Source:

Mommers & Colombo (Melbourne, Fla.)

Feb 2005Bail set in December for a Gainesville, Florida, man accused of biting a dog: $25,000
Source:

Alachua County Jail (Gainesville, Fla.)

Jun 2004Number of accidents on Florida highways in 2002 caused by cars parked on the side of the road : 4,220
Source:

Florida Highway Patrol (Jacksonville)

May 2004Number of blank votes recorded by touchscreen machines in a January election for Florida's House of Representatives : 137
Source:

Florida Department of State (Tallahassee)

May 2004Number of times that Everglades saw grass switches gender during a week of flowering : 2
Source:

Jennifer Richards, Florida International University (Miami)

Apr 2004Factor by which Florida's white defendants are more likely than blacks to get a plea bargain blocking felony conviction : 1.5
Source:

The Miami Herald (Miami)

Nov 2003Number of Florida high school students who take physical-education courses online: 1,204
Source:

Florida Virtual School (Orlando)

Aug 2002Amount the Bush Administration paid this year to buy back oil and gas drilling leases off Florida's coast: $115,000,000
Source:

U.S. Department of the Interior

Aug 2002Months before the Florida gubernatorial election this year that President Bush announced the buybackoil and gas drilling leases off Florida's coast: 5
Source:

Harper's research

Jul 2002Number of Florida State University students arrested in March for protesting while not in a designated "free-speech area": 12
Source:

Florida State University Police (Tallahassee)

Dec 2001Years after Ernest Hemingway killed himself that his transsexual son died last fall in a Miami women's jail: 40
Source:

Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitations Department (Miami, Fla.)/ Harper's research

Sep 2001Ratio of juveniles to police-officer "instructors" at a Florida sheriff's 22-hour weekend boot camp: 5:1
Source:

Orange County Sheriff's Office (Orlando, Fla.)

May 2001Days after a rare turtle died in Miami last spring that a local aquarium staff member made it into a soup: 1
Source:

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (Palm Beach)

Mar 2001Year in which a political candidate first sued Palm Beach County over problems with hanging chads: 1984
Source:

National Institute of Standards and Technology (Gaithersburg, Md.)

Feb 2001Number of Floridian ex-cons denied the right to vote last November because of felony convictions: 525,000
Source:

Brennan Center for Justice (N.Y.C.)

Feb 2001Number of times a Floridian can be convicted of DUI before the infraction becomes a felony: 3
Source:

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (Irving, Tex.)

Jan 2001Amount Florida state employees donated to the Bush campaign last year for every dollar they donated to Gore: $4.92
Source:

Center for Responsive Politics (Washington)

Nov 2000Chances that a Florida smoker lives in a household where smoking is prohibited: 2 in 5
Source:

Florida Department of Health (Tallahassee)

Oct 2000Damages that 5 tobacco companies were ordered to pay plaintiffs last July in a Florida class-action suit: $144,800,000,000
Source:

Stanley M. Rosenblatt, P.A. (Miami)

Oct 2000Months before 5 tobacco companies were ordered to pay plaintiffs $144,800,000,000 last July in a Florida class-action suit that Florida reduced its appeal bond fee from 100 percent of damages to a maximum of $100 million: 2
Source:

Senate President's Office (Tallahassee, Fla.)

Jul 2000Chance that a Florida maximum-security state prison guard has been arrested: 1 in 6
Source:

St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, Fla.)

Sep 1999Percentage change since 1995 in the number of heroin overdoses in greater Orlando, Florida: +107
Source:

Orange County District Nine Medical Examiner's Office (Orlando, Fla.)

Sep 1999Maximum amount of time that a suspect in Florida can be held in jail without being assigned a lawyer, in hours: 24
Source:

State Attorney's Office (Tallahassee, Fla.)

Sep 1999Amount that Florida governor Jeb Bush's wife spent on a 5-day shopping trip to Paris last June: $19,000
Source:

Office of the Governor (Tallahassee, Fla.)

Jul 1999Maximum portion of buttocks that one may legally bare next year in Manatee County, Florida: 2/3
Source:

Manatee County Attorney's Office (Bradenton, Fla.)

Apr 1999Number of times a Florida Fox-TV station asked 2 reporters to rewrite a news story on Monsanto in 1997: 83
Source:

Jane Akre (Clearwater, Fla.)

Dec 1998Number of years it took before Disney's planned community of Celebration, Florida, experienced its first violent crime: 2
Source:

Osceola County Sheriff's Office (Osceola, Fla.)

Apr 1998Maximum fine for begging without a permit in Orlando, Florida: $500
Source:

City Attorney's Office (Orlando, Fla.)

Apr 1998Minimum distance, in feet, that Orlando beggars must maintain from those they ask for money: 3
Source:

City Attorney's Office (Orlando, Fla.)

Apr 1998Number of Florida matzo dealers currently under investigation for price-fixing: 9
Source:

U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler

December 16, 2012The Florida Department of Law Enforcement began investigating allegations that children sent to the Florida School for Boys 50 years ago were abused and possibly killed after a group of men, now in their 60s, told investigators they believe the bodies of classmates are buried on the school's premises. One of the men, Dick Colon, remembered wanting to save a black teenager whom he found inside a running clothes dryer. “I said, 'Do it! Do it! Do it!' And then I thought to myself, 'If you do it, they're gonna put you in there. You're gonna be next.' And I walked away,” he said. “A chicken shit, I was.”
Source:

CNN

November 8, 2009Jason Rodriguez, an unemployed man in Florida, entered the engineering firm where he used to work and shot six people, killing one, then drove to his mother's house, where he was arrested. “I'm just going through a tough time right now,” he told a police officer. “I'm sorry.”
Source:

Washington Post

October 11, 2009 Florida hospital officials advised more than 1,800 people to get screened for HIV and hepatitis after a nurse was found to have re-used IV bags on multiple patients.
Source 1:

NBC Miami

Source 2:

NY Times

September 10, 2009A group of men in Florida were holding up pawn shops in various costumes, including hospital scrubs, child safety-seats, and sinks.
Source:

St. Petersburg Times

August 28, 2009Two Florida men were convicted of gang raping a woman and forcing her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son.
Source:

AP

August 9, 2009With Congress in recess, opponents of and advocates for health-care reform stepped up their media campaigns. Angry citizens, led by industry front groups, former “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” organizers, and Rush Limbaugh, shouted down Democratic lawmakers at “town hall” meetings across the country. “Tyranny! Tyranny! Tyranny!” shouted protesters in Tampa, Florida. “Forty million illegals!” (Even though the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are specifically excluded from the health-care plan.) Protesters waving “Don't Tread on Me” flags gathered at the closed offices of the Service Employees International Union in St. Louis, claiming that union members had attacked conservative activist Kenneth Gladney at a recent health-care forum. Gladney, who does not have health insurance, took up a collection for the treatment of his injuries.
Source 1:

WaPo

Source 2:

TPM

Source 3:

WaPo

Source 4:

Huffington Post

Source 5:

USA Today

Source 6:

TNR

Source 7:

St. Petersburg Times

Source 8:

CNN

Source 9:

WaPo

Source 10:

Bloomberg

Source 11:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Source 12:

Washington Examiner

Source 13:

Businessweek

Source 14:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

June 15, 2009Four people were arrested in Florida for making a 12-year-old Boy Scout drink urine.
Source:

Click Orlando

May 27, 2009Someone was skinning Miami's cats.
Source:

The Guardian

April 13, 2009A man in Florida safely landed a plane after the pilot died mid-flight,
Source:



February 5, 2009A woman sued a Florida doctor and his clinic for botching her abortion, alleging that, after she unexpectedly delivered a live baby girl at the clinic, the baby was put in a plastic biohazard bag with her placenta and afterbirth and thrown away.
Source:

Buffalo News

January 2, 2009A rare red-browed Amazon parrot at a wildlife conservatory in Loxahatchee Groves, Florida, terrorized by New Year's fireworks, beat itself to death against the cage it shared with its mate/
Source:

Miami Herald

January 1, 2009A statue stolen from the Palm Beach residence of disgraced fund manager Bernard Madoff was discovered, undamaged, a few blocks from his estate. Comprising two bare-chested lifeguards seated on a bench and valued at more than $10,000, the statue was found with a note, addressed to “Bernie the Swindler” and signed by “The Educators,” that read, “Lesson: Return stolen property to rightful owners.”
Source:

CNN

November 14, 2008A man in a motorized wheelchair robbed a Space Coast Credit Union branch in Merritt Island, Florida, telling employees that he was rigged with explosives; police caught him ten minutes later and recovered the stolen money from his prosthetic leg.
Source:

Local6

November 5, 2008 California, Florida, and Arizona passed propositions banning same-sex marriage.
Source:

New York Times

October 22, 2008A 27-year-old woman was arrested for shoplifting from a Walgreens in Florida and for brandishing, according to the arrest affidavit, “a well-used and bloody female sanitary napkin.” “I delivered a firm, lawful command to the suspect to drop the object,” stated one of the officers, “and told her it was gross.”
Source:

TCPalm

September 17, 2008A truck carrying 20 tons of money from the Philadelphia Mint to the U.S. Treasury in Miami crashed, killing one passenger and spilling 3.7 million nickels onto I-95. “It's shiny,” said Florida Highway Patrol trooper Kim Miller.
Source 1:

Philadelphia Inquirer

Source 2:

WFTV

Source 3:

Miami Herald

September 3, 2008Police in Florida checked for fingerprints on a water-filled condom that had been used as a fake breast by a cross-dressing thief who snatched the purse of a 74-year-old woman.
Source:

New York Times

August 27, 2008A pregnant woman sued Jacksonville Jaguars receiver Dennis Northcutt, claiming he arranged for his cousin to beat her up in an attempt to harm her unborn child.
Source:

Sports Illustrated

July 29, 2008A Department of Justice report found that senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke federal law by screening candidates for career positions using political and religious criteria, sexual rumors, and database searches for terms like “abortion,” “guns,” “homosexuality,” and “Florida recount.”
Source 1:

TPM

Source 2:

NYT

June 18, 2008Giant iguanas continued their conquest of South Florida, surrounding Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioner Bob Kanjian at a golf course in Lake Worth. “I had 25 to 30 iguanas,” he said, “staring at me while I was playing.”
Source:

Miami Herald

May 3, 2008The Democratic National Committee determined that delegates from Michigan and Florida will be allowed half-votes at the party's convention. “At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen,” read a sign at a protest by supporters of Hillary Clinton outside the Washington hotel where the decision was made. Demonstrator Larry Sinclair, a Minnesotan who has posted videos on YouTube alleging that he took drugs and had oral sex with Barack Obama in 1999 but failed a polygraph test about his allegations, handed out a pamphlet titled “Obama's DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS: Murder, Drugs, Gay Sex.”
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

The New Republic

March 4, 2008Alburn Edward Blake, a 60-year-old Jamaican-born landscaper, strolled out of the bathroom of a Wendy's in West Palm Beach, Florida, and opened fire on the lunchtime crowd, killing a local firefighter and wounding five others before taking his own life. “Looks like this was just another random shooting like we've seen around the United States,” said Paul Miller, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County sheriff's office.
Source:

AP

February 13, 2008 Representative Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), a Holocaust survivor and superdelegate who was expected to back Clinton, died. At a memorial service, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni compared Lantos to “a shining blue Star of David emblazoned on an American Air Force jet.” Bono led mourners in an a cappella version of John Lennon's “All You Need Is Love,” and Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R., Florida) interrupted the closing speech by Elie Wiesel with a call for a vote to adjourn.
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

Jerusalem Post

Source 3:

Politico

Source 4:

Washington Post

Source 5:

Washington Post

Source 6:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

November 9, 2007Companies in Florida were forbidding their employees to smoke, even in private. “If you are an alcoholic and we have the right to fire you, we will do so,” said the president of Westgate Resorts. “And if you are obese and there is a way for us not to hire you or to fire you, we will do that, too.”
Source:

Local6.com

October 23, 2007In Florida one 18-year-old stabbed another after a squabble at the mullet festival.
Source:

Northwest Florida Daily News

October 5, 2007The mother of a bullied Jacksonville, Florida, boy brandished a gun at his bus stop, asking his fellow pupils, “Does anyone have something to say?”
Source:

Local6

October 4, 2007An autopsy could not reveal the identity of a baby found in a Big John's Pickled Sausage jar and left in a Florida cane field.
Source:

Miami Herald

October 3, 2007A white family in Florida found three burning crosses in its back yard.
Source:

Local6

September 22, 2007A University of Florida student was Tasered after his question for Senator John Kerry went on too long. An Ocala, Florida, man accused police of Tasering him after he refused to drop his Koran; police in Tustin, California, Tasered a 15-year-old autistic boy; and a Taser dart fired at a Vancouver, Washington, man ignited the cigarette lighter in his pocket, setting his pants on fire. Sales at Taser International were expected to reach $90 million this year.
Source 1:

The Boston Globe

Source 2:

WRAL.com

Source 3:

OC Register

Source 4:

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Source 5:

Times Online

August 16, 2007Bob Allen, the Florida state representative who was arrested in July after offering to fellate an undercover police officer, was stripped of his legislative-committee appointments but remained unfazed. “I'm waiting,” he said, “for the politics to say it's okay to hug Bob Allen again—and they will.”
Source:

Orlando Sentinel

August 3, 2007Bob Allen, a Florida State Representative who sponsored a bill to curtail sex in public parks, said that he recently offered oral sex to a man in a park because he was afraid of black people.
Source:

AP via myfoxtampabay.com

August 1, 2007Several boys playing in a forest in Florida discovered a dead man sitting in a chair,
Source:

local6.com

July 25, 2007A prisoner in Ft. Lauderdale was convicted of indecent exposure for masturbating in his cell.
Source:

The Smoking Gun

July 24, 2007Law-enforcement agents issued decks of playing cards featuring missing-persons cases to Florida convicts.
Source:

AP via Yahoo! News

July 11, 2007 Florida State Representative Bob Allen (R., Merritt Island) was arrested for offering to perform an unspecified sex act on an undercover police officer for $20.
Source:

Orlando Sentinel

July 4, 2007Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in an attempt to prevent gay sex, planned to install a quarter-million-dollar robot toilet.
Source:

South Florida Sun Sentinel

June 12, 2007A 15-year-old Florida girl who has suffered for months from chronic hiccups ran away from home.
Source:

Washington Post

May 21, 2007A group of deep-sea explorers in Tampa, Florida, announced that they had recovered $500 million in sunken treasure from a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean.
Source:

China View

May 18, 2007In Orange County, Florida, a woman was helping her father move out of his home when she discovered photographs of both her father and her deceased mother molesting her daughter.
Source:

Local6.com

May 10, 2007 Jeb Bush joined the board of Tenet Healthcare Systems, which in 2006 agreed to pay $725 million to resolve claims that it cheated Medicare.
Source:

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

April 5, 2007In Miami, the Department of Corrections was housing registered sex offenders under a bridge.
Source:

CNN.com

March 24, 2007A Florida man who pleaded guilty to homicide was ordered to exhibit a two-foot-wide picture of his victim in his home. The judge specified that the image should be displayed prominently and include the phrase “I'm sorry I killed you.”
Source:

AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer

February 10, 2007 Anna Nicole Smith dropped dead on the floor of a casino hotel in Hollywood, Florida.
Source:

The online wire

February 9, 2007A Florida production of “The Vagina Monologues” changed its name to “The Hoohaa Monologues” after a woman claimed the title was offensive.
Source:

iol.co.za

January 29, 2007A ring-neck duck named Perky, who was found alive in a hunter's refrigerator two days after being shot, died, then came back to life in Tallahassee.
Source:

BBC

January 25, 2007In Leisureville, a retirement community in Florida, a registered sex offender died of heart disease while looking at pornography on his computer while naked.
Source:

Forida Sun-Sentinel

January 18, 2007After a teacher at a nearby school complained, a Florida Hooters removed a sign from the front of the restaurant that read “plagiarism saves time.”
Source:

Local6.com

January 5, 2007A woman watching New Year's fireworks in Florida avoided serious injury when a shot fired into the air glanced off the golden strap of her “very cheap” brassiere.
Source:

AP via Yahoo! News

December 4, 2006A man in Tampa was selling his soul on the Internet.
Source:

Chicago Sun Times

November 30, 2006Sheriff's deputies in Polk County, Florida, rescued a naked, drug-addled man from the jaws of an attacking alligator.
Source:

CNN

November 12, 2006Fourteen ducklings were stomped to death in Florida.
Source:

TBO.com

October 28, 2006Machines used for early voting began to malfunction in Florida,.
Source:

Miami Herald

October 26, 2006A physicist at the University of Central Florida proved that vampires are mathematically impossible.
Source:

Livescience.com

October 5, 2006Further allegations emerged regarding the behavior of recently-resigned Congressman Mark Foley (R., Fla.) with underage pages. “He didn't want to talk about politics,” said one former page. “He wanted to talk about sex or my penis.” Congressman Jim Kolbe (R., Ariz.) said that he had confronted Foley over inappropriate contact with pages as early as 2000, and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert vowed not to resign over the scandal.
Source:

ABC News

August 26, 2006Katherine Harris, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Florida, told a Baptist newspaper that “if you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin.”
Source:

Washington Post

August 22, 2006In Sorrento, Florida, a sixty-year-old man was accused of biting a six-year-old boy's genitals after the child refused to stop touching himself.
Source:

Local6.com

August 15, 2006A secretly pregnant 21-year-old in Florida went into labor, sneaked out of her parents' house, crashed her car into a canal, then delivered standing up in the wreckage. She named the baby Myracle.
Source:

Palm Beach Post

August 10, 2006In Florida a man was missing after a large turtle pulled him into the sea.
Source:

Local6.com

July 21, 2006A 950-foot luxury sea liner unexpectedly listed off Port Canaveral, Florida,.
Source:

EITB24.com via Google News

July 18, 2006A taxidermist from Lake County, Florida, was arrested after urinating on $500 worth of frozen food.
Source:

Local 6.com

July 11, 2006Bees killed four dogs in Florida.
Source:

Local 6

June 30, 2006In Florida thieves stole the 31-year-old remains of a 6-year-old boy.
Source:

wftv.com

June 24, 2006Seven men were arrested in Florida for talking about blowing up the Sears Tower.
Source:

The New York Times

June 18, 2006The Lakeland, Florida, English swan population, which is descended from swans given to the city by the Queen of England in 1957, was being eaten by alligators at three times the normal rate.
Source:

NewsNet5.com

June 9, 2006 Florida's wildlife officials decided to remove the manatee, which has a mild taste that readily adapts itself to recipes for beef, from the state's endangered-species list.
Source:

New York Times

June 7, 2006A group of high school students in Florida found a real corpse at a fake crime scene.
Source:

Reuters

June 2, 2006A snake bit a woman at a Wal-Mart in Florida. “Thank goodness for sweat pants with elastic,” said the woman, “because he tried to climb up my britches' leg.”
Source:

WFTV.com

May 14, 2006In Florida an alligator that recently killed a jogger was caught with the jogger's arms in its stomach.
Source:

BBC News

April 29, 2006A Liverpool, England, man was sentenced to 100 hours of community service for getting drunk and singing "YMCA" on a flight from Florida to Manchester while his wife wept and comforted their three children. "He makes no excuses," said the man's lawyer, "for his loutish, idiotic behavior."
Source:

Mirror.co.uk

April 25, 2006 Scientists in Florida were working to improve a "brain port" device that will allow soldiers to perceive things through their tongues.
Source:

CNN.com

April 25, 2006A wheelchair-bound woman in Florida, who refused to put down a knife and a hammer, died after being tasered by policemen.
Source:

Local6.com

April 21, 2006In Florida, a beehive with 15,000 bees was removed from a tree.
Source:

Local6.com

April 20, 2006An elderly Miami man was in trouble for going door-to-door offering free breast exams.
Source:

MSNBC

February 7, 2006A Florida man named Frank Feldmann broke into a lighthouse and tied himself to its lightning rod in order to raise awareness for children. Police had difficulty communicating with Feldmann due to heavy winds and his tiger costume.
Source:

Local6.com

February 1, 2006During the State of the Union address activist Cindy Sheehan was handcuffed and thrown out of the House chamber for wearing a T-shirt that read "2245 Dead: How Many More?" and Beverly Young, the wife of Representative Bill Young (R., Fla.), was told to leave because she was wearing a T-shirt that read "Support the Troops: Defending Our Freedom." Young later held up his wife's shirt on the House floor and said, "shame, shame."
Source:

ABC News

January 26, 2006A grandfather in Florida died of a heart attack after all seven of his grandchildren were killed in an automobile accident.
Source:

News Channel 5

January 5, 2006A policeman in Florida tasered a bear.
Source:

SFGate.com

December 29, 2005In Florida a 16-year-old named Farris Hassan decided to complete a school project on the Iraq war by going to Iraq; he made it to Baghdad, and was sent back to Florida by United States authorities. “This place,” explained an official, “is incredibly dangerous to individual private American citizens.”
Source:

CNN.com

December 15, 2005A Florida owl was found to be high on marijuana.
Source:

9News.com

December 8, 2005In Miami an air marshal shot and killed an American Airlines passenger, Rigoberto Alpizar, who, according to the air marshal, claimed to have a bomb in his backpack. Before the shooting, Alpizar's wife attempted to explain that her husband was bipolar and off his medication. No bomb was found.
Source:

Detroit News

November 24, 2005A 1,600-inmate faith-based prison opened in Crawfordville, Florida.
Source:

Gainesville.com

November 23, 2005Violent shopping incidents occurred in Hamilton Township, New Jersey; Elkton, Maryland; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Orlando, Florida; and Sunrise, Florida, where a 72-year-old woman was trampled.
Source 1:

WTOPNews.com

Source 2:

NBC10.com

Source 3:

The Miami Herald

Source 4:

Reuters

Source 5:

KYW.com

November 19, 2005A Florida woman was run over by ten different cars while attempting to walk across a highway. Police marked parts of her body with traffic cones. “It is crazy out here,” said a trooper, “to try to cross the median.”
Source:

Florida Today

November 17, 2005 Fidel Castro said that Florida Governor Jeb Bush was fat; Bush, who at 225 pounds is between 18 and 44 pounds above the ideal weight for his height and frame, said he was flattered by the criticism. “It is not a criticism,“ clarified Castro, “rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don't you think? I'm doing this for the gentleman's health.”
Source:

AP

November 11, 2005A Florida man was arrested for putting his girlfriend's five-year-old son in a freezer, breaking a state law against caging a child.
Source:

7NewsOnline

October 25, 2005 Hurricane Wilma struck Florida and left millions without power.
Source:

Reuters

October 20, 2005A 93-year-old Florida man driving a Chevy Malibu struck and killed a pedestrian, then drove three miles with the body on his windshield. "Obviously," said a traffic investigator, "he was confused."
Source:

St. Petersburg Times

October 14, 2005In Florida one Walgreens employee stabbed another during an argument over who would be first to microwave her soup.
Source:

AP

October 4, 2005A Florida teacher was fired after he mistook a ninth-grade student's beeping insulin pump for a ringing cell phone and ripped it from the boy's body.
Source:

Local6.com

September 24, 2005 Hurricane Rita, the third-most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, struck Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, killing 36 people and causing flooding, tornadoes, and storm surges, and re-flooding parts of New Orleans. Hurricane evacuations caused miles of traffic jams in Texas, and a bus filled with elderly people exploded when an oxygen tank caught fire, incinerating at least 24 passengers.
Source 1:

Wikipedia

Source 2:

Houston Chronicle

September 5, 2005In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the United States declared disasters in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Taken together, the 90,000-square-mile disaster area would be the twelfth largest state. Emergencies were declared in Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.
Source:

U.S. Department of Defense

August 26, 2005 Hurricane Katrina killed 11 people in Florida, and more than a million homes and businesses lost power. Katrina then crossed over the Gulf of Mexico and went ashore east of New Orleans, becoming a Category 5 storm along the way. "PERSONS . . . PETS . . . AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS," said the National Weather Service, "WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK . . . WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS." The hurricane eventually weakened to a tropical storm; winds tore off parts of the roof of the Superdome, where thousands of poor people sought shelter, and at least 55 people were killed in Mississippi.
Source 1:

AP

Source 2:

The Roanoke Times

August 25, 2005A man was arrested in Tallahassee, Florida, after threatening to blow up Governor Jeb Bush.
Source:

The Tampa Tribune

August 22, 2005South Florida's iguana problem was growing more severe. "It was like Jurassic Park in my toilet," said a Pompano Beach woman.
Source:

UPI

August 19, 2005Hundreds of people in Florida attended a museum exhibit of preserved corpses encased in silicone.
Source:

The Los Angeles Times

August 12, 2005A Florida man was cited for painting “die you miserable bitch” on the side of his house; the words were directed at his seventy-three-year-old neighbor, who has cancer.
Source:

The St. Petersburg Times

August 5, 2005A Florida man pleaded guilty to beating his wife to death because she wanted to cuddle after sex.
Source:

Local6.com

July 26, 2005 Florida was infested with iguanas.
Source:

St. Petersburg Times

July 21, 2005 Florida police were looking for a naked man who steals into the homes of elderly women late at night and tickles their feet.
Source:

Local6.com

July 15, 2005A blind man in Florida got lucky with his guide dog, a yellow lab named Lucky.
Source:

Talahassee Democrat

July 13, 2005A Florida man, worried that his three-year-old son might become a gay sissy, was accused of beating the boy to death.
Source:

TBO.com

June 29, 2005A woman in Florida won the right to bare her breasts in public.
Source:

Newsday

June 26, 2005A shark killed a fourteen-year-old girl in Florida.
Source:

CNN.com

June 26, 2005A Florida man on an oxygen machine died when the electric company turned off the electricity to his son's home.
Source:

HeraldTribune.com

June 16, 2005A county commissioner in Marion County, Florida, was promoting his plan to send sex offenders to Mexico.
Source:

Local6.com

June 15, 2005 Florida police found six endangered gopher tortoises in the back of a car. The owner of the car said that he was planning a soup.
Source:

Chicago Sun-Times

June 11, 2005 Janet Reno had a fender-bender in Florida.
Source:

Florida Today

May 12, 2005A man was suing a hospital in Orlando, Florida, for injecting him with green and red sparkling glitter instead of Demerol.
Source:

Sydney Morning Herald

April 30, 2005The state court of Florida blocked a thirteen-year-old girl from having an abortion. “Why can't I make my own decision?” the girl asked a judge. “I don't know,” the judge answered.
Source 1:

BBC News

Source 2:

Sun-Sentinel.com

April 8, 2005In Florida, investigators traced an outbreak of E. coli to a petting zoo.
Source:

KansasCity.com

March 29, 2005Noting their mutual hatred of Jews, a neo-Nazi in Florida called on Al Qaeda to join forces with the Aryan Nations.
Source:

CNN.com

March 27, 2005Terri Schiavo, a brain-dead woman in Florida, was still alive.
Source:

ABCNews.com

March 25, 2005A man who wanted to “rescue” Terri Schiavo was arrested for attempting to steal a gun from a Florida gun shop.
Source:

AP

March 23, 2005 Florida lawmakers were considering an Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, intended to stamp out “leftist totalitarianism,” that would allow students to sue teachers who insist that evolution is factual.
Source:

Alligator.org

March 20, 2005The U.S. Senate subpoenaed Terri Schiavo, a woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1991, to testify before the Health, Education, and Labor Committee. The subpoena was intended to make it impossible for Schiavo to be taken off the feeding tube that allows her to survive; the order, however, was defied by a Florida judge, and the feeding tube was removed. Schiavo then began to die of dehydration. The House and Senate held emergency sessions in order to pass a bill that would transfer the case from state court to federal court. The bill was then signed by President George W. Bush, who had flown in from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the occasion.
Source:

Wikipedia

March 18, 2005Police in Florida arrested a five-year-old girl at her kindergarten, binding her hands with plastic ties and placing handcuffs around her ankles. The girl, who weighs forty pounds, was upset about some jelly beans. “They set my baby up,” said her mother.
Source:

AP

January 11, 2005A Florida minister died at the pulpit. His last words were, “And when I go to heaven. . .”
Source:

AP

January 10, 2005A Florida man, upset over hurricanes, beat a puppy with a hammer.
Source:

St. Petersburg Times

December 5, 2004Four people who received Botox injections in south Florida were hospitalized for botulism poisoning.
Source:

New York Times

November 7, 2004Voters in Montana approved the use of medical marijuana; they also approved a "right to hunt" amendment. Florida and Nevada raised the states' minimum wage.
Source:

New York Times

November 6, 2004It was noted that anomalous voting patterns in Florida (where a disproportionate number of Democrats apparently voted for George W. Bush) were all confined to counties where optical-scanning machines are used to read paper ballots. Such votes are tabulated by Windows-based PCs that are vulnerable to tampering.
Source:

Truthout

November 6, 2004A six-year-old Florida girl took $1,000 worth of crack cocaine to school; her mother said she must have got it trick-or-treating.
Source:

Associated Press

November 5, 2004Some voting machines in Broward County, Florida, started counting backward once they reached 32,000.
Source:

Palm Beach Post

November 3, 2004Votes were also lost in Palm Beach County, Florida.
Source:

Bradenton Herald

October 31, 2004Early voters in Florida, especially in heavily Democratic districts, were standing in line to vote for up to six hours.
Source:

Talking Points Memo

October 29, 2004 Broward County's election supervisor said that up to 15,000 absentee ballots would be resent to voters whose ballots mysteriously disappeared.
Source:

New York Times

October 28, 2004A Sarasota man failed to run over Florida Republican representative Katherine Harris in his car. "I intimidated them with my car," he said. "I was exercising my political expression."
Source:

Associated Press

October 4, 2004 Election officials across the country were reporting record numbers of new registrations, and Republican state officials in Ohio and Florida were doing their best to invalidate them on technicalities.
Source:

New York Times

September 27, 2004Another hurricane hit Florida.
Source:

Washington Post

September 3, 2004Millions of people in Florida were evacuated because of Hurricane Frances.
Source:

Agence France-Presse

August 14, 2004 Hurricane Charley killed 13 people in Florida and caused an estimated $20 billion worth of damage.
Source:

Reuters, New York Times

August 12, 2004A 480-pound Florida woman who had not left her couch for six years died when doctors attempted to separate her from the couch, which was fused to her body.
Source:

WFTV.com

July 24, 2004 Janssen Pharmaceutica Products, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, warned doctors that it had "minimized potentially fatal risks, and made misleading claims" about Risperdal, an anti-schizophrenia drug; the drug can cause stroke, diabetes, and other fatal complications, the company said, and contrary to claims on the label it is not safer than similar drugs. It was reported that some boys who were given Risperdal in Florida, where it is used as a "chemical restraint" in state facilities, developed lactating breasts.
Source:

Miami Herald

July 22, 2004An alligator bit off a landscaper's arm in Florida.
Source:

CNN

July 7, 2004Governor Jeb Bush was asked to list the angles on a three-four-five triangle, a question that appears on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which high school students must pass to graduate. Bush replied: "I don't know, 125, 90, and whatever remains of 180?"
Source:

Associated Press

July 2, 2004More than 2,100 Florida residents were found to be wrongly included on a list of ineligible voters.
Source:

Miami Herald

May 19, 2004The Humane Society complained that racing dogs in Florida were being given cocaine.
Source:

Associated Press

April 15, 2004A man in Ocala, Florida, was in trouble after his fiancée caught him raping her rottweiler dog.
Source:

Ocala Star Banner

April 13, 2004A Democratic club in south Florida took out a newspaper ad saying that Donald Rumsfeld should be "put up against a wall" and shot.
Source:

Associated Press

February 12, 2004An elderly Florida man robbed a bank to pay for his wife's medical bills.
Source:

Ananova

February 12, 2004 Florida's state department decreed that touch-screen votes need not be included in manual recounts of elections.
Source:

Associated Press

January 22, 2004An expert panel that was asked to review a Pentagon-funded Internet voting system declared that the system was fundamentally flawed. "Using a voting system based on the Internet," said one of the experts, "poses a serious and unacceptable risk for election fraud." The Pentagon nonetheless said that it "stands by" the program, which will be used in several primaries this year. "We feel it's right on," said a spokesman, "and we're going to use it."
Source:

New York Times

January 20, 2004President George W. Bush made his State of the Union address just one day after the Iowa caucuses and appealed to voters to reelect him so that he could continue to wage war on terror.
Source:

Associated Press

January 11, 2004A 64-year-old webmaster sued the Tallahassee, Florida, Department of Elder Affairs for age discrimination.
Source:

Talahassee.com

November 29, 2003A Wal-Mart shopper in Orange City, Florida, was trampled and knocked unconscious during a stampede at a Wal-Mart Supercenter; the stampede occurred at the 6 a.m. opening of a big sale. The victim, who was first in line, was found clutching a DVD player.
Source:

Daytona Beach News-Journal, New York Times

October 9, 2003A lightning bolt killed 20 pregnant cows in Florida.
Source:

Associated Press

September 3, 2003Paul J. Hill, a Christian who murdered an abortion doctor in Pensacola, Florida, was executed by lethal injection. Hill said that he was looking forward to getting his reward in heaven.
Source:

New York Times, New York Post

August 22, 2003Tampa, Florida, shut down its face-recognition software that scanned crowds in the Ybor City neighborhood for criminals but led to no arrests after two years. "I wouldn't consider it a failure," said one policeman.
August 6, 2003It was reported that Florida police are building an "antiterrorism" database called Matrix that will be used to detect patterns of suspicious activity among the citizenry; the system, which will be partially financed with federal funds, is remarkably similar to the Pentagon's Terrorist Information Awareness program. Mayor Anthony Williams of Washington, D.C., said that District police are working with police in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York to build a similar data-mining system.
Source:

Washington Post

May 15, 2003Governor Jeb Bush of Florida asked a court to appoint a guardian to safeguard the rights of a fetus.
Source:

New York Times

April 29, 2003 “On principle, we don't want the United Nations running around Iraq.” Hans Blix, the U.N. weapons inspector, pointed out that “We found as little, but with less cost.” Military officials admitted that they were holding children in the high-security prison for terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, even though they have not been accused of any offense, and said that they would be detained “until we ensure that they're no longer a threat to the United States.” A Florida mother said she accidentally stabbed her 19-year-old son in the buttocks with a 12-inch knife when he wouldn't get out of bed for work.
April 8, 2003 Florida recalled an AIDS brochure that quoted Scripture and urged compassion toward AIDS patients but made no mention of AIDS prevention.
March 18, 2003 The United States tested its “mother of all bombs,” a Massive Ordnance Air Burst (MOAB), at Elgin Air Force Base in Florida.
March 4, 2003 Lightning struck a small plane that was carrying Florida governor Jeb Bush but failed to destroy it.
January 7, 2003 The Naples, Florida, branch of the Salvation Army refused a $100,000 donation from a lottery winner because its director won't take money associated with gambling.
December 17, 2002 A police dog in St. Petersburg, Florida, bit off a robbery suspect's penis.
October 22, 2002 It was confirmed that a 22-year-old Florida woman has mad cow disease, but officials claimed she was infected in England.
October 1, 2002 Four large African lions were killed near Quitman, Arkansas, and an alligator bit off a man's arm in Florida.
September 17, 2002 The men, who were detained in Florida for 17 hours, turned out to be medical students on their way back to school.
September 17, 2002 General Tommy Franks was busy moving the U.S. Central Command from Tampa, Florida, to Qatar, in the Persian Gulf.
August 20, 2002 Governor Jeb Bush of Florida asked members of a Pentecostal church to pray for his daughter Noelle, who has been arrested recently on drug charges.
August 6, 2002 Janet Reno, who is running for governor in Florida, booked Elton John to sing at a fund raiser.
July 30, 2002 A Florida jury ordered two retired generals from El Salvador to pay $54 million to three civilians who were tortured by U.S.-funded security forces during that country's 12-year civil war.
July 23, 2002 A Walgreens pharmacy in Florida sent a 16-year-old boy an unsolicited one-month supply of Prozac.
July 9, 2002 Sheriff's deputies seized several computer hard drives from a library in Naples, Florida, because of a citizen's report that three Middle Eastern men were whispering to one another at a computer. “The basis for the complaint was that they were believed to be reading Islamic newspapers,” a spokesman said.
May 14, 2002 Janet Reno got into a fender bender in Miami while driving her red pickup.
May 7, 2002 Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, started crying during a drug summit when he addressed the subject of his daughter's arrest on drug charges.
April 23, 2002 A British woman living in Florida was diagnosed with mad cow disease.
April 16, 2002 Astronomers announced the discovery of a small star, only seven miles in diameter, that they believed was composed of “strange quark matter.” An eight-year-old boy in Temple Terrace, Florida, was suspended from school for ten days after he missed the schoolbus and then drove himself to school in a car that his uncle had stolen.
April 9, 2002 A lawyer in Florida filed suit against the pope, claiming that the Vatican had helped cover up for child molesters.
April 9, 2002 “It can give women big thighs.” Governor Jeb Bush of Florida was trying to trademark his name.
April 2, 2002 A man who hates Muslims drove his truck into a mosque in Tallahassee, Florida; the man had tried to join the military so he could kill Muslims but was rejected.
April 2, 2002 Nielsen Media Research announced that it will equip ten homes in Tampa, Florida, with experimental face-recognition equipment that will allow the ratings company to know who is in the room when the television is on.
March 12, 2002 There was heavy fighting in Afghanistan; eight American soldiers were killed. “First let me say that our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and the friends of the service members who have lost their lives in our ongoing operations in Vietnam,” said General Tommy Franks, who oversees Operation Enduring Freedom from Tampa, Florida. “Certainly that sacrifice is appreciated by this nation.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that “the United States is leaning forward and not back.”
March 12, 2002 A Florida bong maker was nominated for Republican of the Year; he was arrested recently when his bongs, marketed under the brand-name Chills, turned up in a raid.
March 12, 2002 The Roman Catholic bishop of Palm Beach, Florida, resigned after he was exposed as a child molester.
March 5, 2002 Bubba the Love Sponge, a radio announcer in Tampa, Florida, was found not guilty of animal cruelty for having a wild boar killed on his program.
February 26, 2002 Two drunk fisherman got into a fight in Florida; the first hit the second with a beer bottle; the second stabbed the first with the bill of a swordfish.
February 26, 2002 A dental researcher at the University of Florida announced that he had created a genetically modified bacteria that will prevent tooth decay.
February 12, 2002 A man was decapitated with a machete in St. Petersburg, Florida, by his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend; when police arrived at the scene, neighbors were watching the killer put the victim's head on the hood of a car. “He was adjusting the mirror,” said a police spokesman, “so the head, if it were alive, could see itself.”
February 5, 2002 Florida governor Jeb Bush's daughter Noelle was arrested for impersonating a doctor and calling in a prescription for Xanax, the anti-anxiety drug, to a Tallahassee Walgreens; Noelle pretended to be Dr.
February 5, 2002 Noel Scidmore, a male doctor who no longer practices in Florida.
January 29, 2002 A woman from Jacksonville, Florida, was taken in for psychiatric evaluation by police in northern California after she made some “unusual statements” at a hotel, thus interrupting her 10,000-mile taxi ride to Alaska.
January 22, 2002 A plaque that was meant to honor the actor James Earl Jones at a Martin Luther King celebration in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was instead engraved: “Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive.” James Earl Ray murdered Martin Luther King in 1968.
January 15, 2002 It was reported that the patriotic teenager who flew a small airplane into a Tampa, Florida, office building, dedicating his suicide to Osama bin Laden, was taking Accutane, a prescription acne medication that has been linked to suicides.
January 8, 2002 In Tampa, Florida, a 15-year-old student pilot stole an airplane and crashed it into a downtown office building, killing himself but no one else.
December 4, 2001A 38-inch-tall Floridian dwarf sued to overturn Florida's ban on dwarf-tossing.
November 27, 2001In Florida, a man riding a jet ski at about 55 mph died after he collided with a flying duck.
November 20, 2001A newspaper review of the ballots cast in Florida's presidential election found that Al Gore probably received more votes than George W. Bush, who this week signed an executive order that will permit the government to use military courts to try foreigners accused of terrorism.
November 20, 2001Lists of Florida flight schools, a flight-simulator program, and a map showing power plants in Europe were also found. It later emerged that the atomic-bomb recipe was a parody that has been circulating on the Internet for years.
November 13, 2001Trevor Harvey, the president of Mad Dads, an anti-violence group, was arrested in Sarasota, Florida, for punching a referee during his son's football game.
November 6, 2001 Florida banned shark feeding.
October 30, 2001 Florida's obesity rate rose by 94 percent; 38 percent of Floridians are now fat.
October 23, 2001The president flew to Shanghai, China, for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. He rode around in a limo and pronounced the city “mind-boggling” and “miraculous.” He wore a traditional Chinese silk jacket; it was blue with gold trim. He noted that “there is no isolation from evil.” At a joint press conference with President Jiang Zemin, President Bush answered questions about anthrax. “These are evil people and the deeds that have been conducted on the American people are evil deeds,” he said. “And anybody who would mail anthrax letters, trying to affect the lives of innocent people, is evil.” The president also cautioned that the anthrax attacks could turn out to be “a hoax.” Preliminary analysis of the anthrax found in New York and Florida showed that the bacteria was “professional grade” and all from the same strain.
October 16, 2001” Nine pilot whales beached themselves on Pensacola Beach in Florida.
October 16, 2001Citrus canker was spreading in Florida.
October 9, 2001A dozen Burger King employees were treated for first- and second-degree burns after they walked barefoot over white-hot coals at a “corporate bonding” retreat in Florida.
October 9, 2001 Anthrax killed a man in Florida; spores were found on the man's computer keyboard and in the nose of a co-worker at American Media Inc., the publisher of supermarket tabloids.
October 2, 2001A consortium of newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal decided not to announce the results of its recount and analysis of 200,000 disputed Florida ballots.
September 11, 2001 Osama bin Laden, the famous CIA-trained terrorist, quickly became the prime suspect as federal authorities identified the hijackers, many of whom had been in the United States for years, learning to fly big jets in Florida.
September 11, 2001 Florida banned the use of bloody bait to lure sharks to “interactive” scuba dives.
September 11, 2001In Florida, a 16-year-old boy was saved by his Bible when it deflected a shotgun blast fired by his mother; his six-year-old brother was less fortunate.
August 28, 2001Potato Head, a gift from their sister city in Rhode Island; the $6,000 present was part of the tourist board's campaign to position the state as “the birthplace of fun.” The metal tail-fin of a high-speed missile dropped from an F-16 fighter jet into a residential neighborhood in Florida, landing within ten feet of two children playing there.
August 14, 2001In the ensuing scuffle the plane crashed into the sea near Florida and the couple drowned.
August 7, 2001After two weeks of flying lessons, a Pizza Hut employee took off in an airplane from the Florida Keys on his first solo flight and ended up in Cuba, where he suffered a “hard landing” and was hospitalized.
July 31, 2001Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State, decided to run for Congress.
July 17, 2001 Florida officials discovered the West Nile virus in a dead crow.
July 10, 2001 Police in Tampa, Florida, were using surveillance cameras and face-recognition software to scan for suspected criminals in the crowds of Ybor City, an historic downtown neighborhood.
July 10, 2001 Florida's supreme court was considering a constitutional amendment that would enshrine the right of pigs to spacious quarters while pregnant.
July 10, 2001A shark attacked an eight-year-old boy near Pensacola, Florida, and bit his arm off; the boy's uncle wrestled the shark to shore where it was shot three times by a park ranger.
June 19, 2001In Florida, a 73-year-old woman attacked a pit bull, biting it on the back of its neck in an attempt to save her Scottish terrier; the pit bull released its victim and was rewarded with another bite from the old woman.
June 12, 2001The United States Commission on Civil Rights released its report on the Florida election, concluding that blacks were widely disenfranchised by the actions of state officials and calling for an investigation by the Justice Department.
May 29, 2001An honors student in Fort Myers, Florida, was suspended and banned from her graduation after a school security guard found a kitchen knife in her car; the young woman, who spent the weekend in jail on a felony weapons-possession charge, tried to explain that the knife was left there accidentally after she moved house over the weekend.
May 29, 2001The Committee of Names of Fishes of the American Fisheries Society for the second time in its history changed the name of a fish; henceforth the jewfish, Florida's largest species of grouper, will be known as the goliath grouper. Previously the society changed the name of the squawfish to pikeminnow.
May 8, 2001 Florida banned the execution of retarded people.
May 8, 2001“I don't get it,” said Governor Jeb Bush, after he was criticized for allowing nepotistic appointments in the Florida Department of Education. “What's the point?”
May 8, 2001 Florida decided to reform its election system.
March 13, 2001A Florida judge named Lazarus sentenced a fourteen-year-old boy to life in prison without parole for the murder two years ago of a six-year-old girl.
March 13, 2001Browne & Williamson Tobacco Corporation paid $1,087,191 to a seventy-year-old former smoker in Jacksonville, Florida, who lost a lung to cancer.
February 27, 2001American newspapers and other content providers were still ignoring growing evidence, reported in the British press, of George W. Bush's electoral coup, including new evidence that thousands of black Floridians were improperly removed from the list of approved voters.
January 30, 2001 Florida's 67 county election supervisors called for uniform voting standards.
January 9, 2001Members of the Congressional Black Caucus tried unsuccessfully to block the acceptance of Florida's electoral votes during a joint session of Congress. Federal law requires at least one senator and one member of the House to sign a formal objection questioning a state's electoral votes; no senator was willing to sign. Black congressmen repeatedly interrupted the proceedings and were repeatedly “gaveled down” by Vice President Al Gore, who presided cheerfully over his own electoral demise.
January 2, 2001There were wildfires in Florida and California and on the Alaskan tundra.
January 2, 2001An unofficial recount of Florida's ballots was being undertaken by journalists under the state's freedom of information act; Gore was ahead by 140 votes, and a statistical projection showed him winning Florida by 23,000 votes.
December 19, 2000With his brother safely appointed president, Governor Jeb Bush announced that he would appoint a panel to reform Florida's election equipment and procedures.
December 19, 2000Mazen Al-Najjar, a Palestinian professor from Tampa, Florida, who was held by the U.S. government for three and half years based on secret evidence and charges, was finally released on the order of a judge.
December 12, 2000The United States Commission on Civil Rights voted to open a “systematic investigation” of voting irregularities in Florida.
December 12, 2000The Supreme Court of Florida ordered that 45,000 “undercounted” ballots, ballots for which vote-counting machines had not registered a vote for president, be manually recounted.
December 5, 2000 Florida authorities arrested a young man whom they had photographed running through toll booths 705 separate times.
December 5, 2000An investigation of Florida ballots found that at least 445 felons voted illegally in the presidential election, mostly in Palm Beach and Duval counties; many were registered Democrats, including 7 kidnappers, 16 rapists, 45 killers, 56 drug dealers, and 62 robbers.
November 28, 2000The United States election continued in Florida: “Pregnancy doesn't count in chads in Palm Beach,” one lawyer told a Palm Beach judge. “Only penetration counts in Palm Beach.”
November 28, 2000 Florida's supreme court reinstated a $750,000 award to an ex-smoker; a lower court had said Brown & Williamson did not have to pay.
November 21, 2000 Republicans accused Democratic vote counters in Florida of eating chads they had secretly and illegally punched for Al Gore.
November 21, 2000An Air Force F-16 fighter plane collided with a little Cessna airplane in Florida; part of the Cessna landed on a golf course.
November 14, 2000 Ralph Nader prevented Al Gore from winning a clear victory in the U.S. presidential election. Although Gore won a popular majority nationwide, the Electoral College outcome awaited a decision in the contested Florida vote, where widespread “irregularities” occurred; most commentators were pleased to believe that the irregularities were the result of mere incompetence and stupidity in the state governed by Jeb Bush.
October 31, 2000State agricultural agents were storming homes in Florida and chopping down citrus trees in an effort to eradicate the citrus canker virus; Agriculture Secretary Bob Crawford ordered sensitivity training to help soothe homeowners who were upset at having their property destroyed.
October 17, 2000Governor Jeb Bush of Florida restored Charles W. Colson's civil rights; Colson, who was convicted in the Watergate scandal, is a born-again Christian and the author of several apocalyptic Christian thrillers.
September 19, 2000People in Coral Gables, Florida, were upset over a new rule allowing the City Commission to bar irritating people from meetings.
September 12, 2000Two Florida state representatives, both Republicans, had a fistfight in the parking lot of Radio Mambi, a talk-radio station in Miami.
September 5, 2000A 69-year-old man was eaten by a shark while swimming in Florida's Intracoastal Waterway, in shallow water just ten feet away from his backyard; the man's wife said she saw the shark's dorsal fin as her husband struggled to get away.
August 0, 2000A Florida man was arrested after killing a prostitute and asking his fifth-grade son to help him get rid of the body.
Source:

Fox News

February 0, 2000 Republicans launched an organization called National Council for a New America. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush urged his party to “listen a little bit, learn a little bit”; former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney called the Democrats “the party of the monarchists.”
Source:

CNN


December 2009

THE GENERAL ELECTRIC SUPERFRAUD
Why the Hudson River Will Never Run Clean
By David Gargill

THE MASTER OF SPIN BOLDAK
Undercover with Afghanistan’s Drug-Trafficking Border Police
By Matthieu Aikins

MERMAID FEVER
A story by Steven Millhauser

UNDERSTANDING OBAMACARE
By Luke Mitchell

Also: Dave Hickey and Wendell Berry