This week Daryl Jones is headed into combat — Washington-style. In yet another sign that Jones’s nomination to become Secretary of the Air Force is in serious trouble, Strom Thurmond, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has decided to reopen Jones’s confirmation hearing so that several members of Jones’s…

As a former fighter pilot, Daryl Jones knows about rocky landings. During routine exercises several years ago, Jones twice in one day scraped the tail of his F-16 along the runway at Homestead Air Force Base, causing thousands of dollars in damage to his aircraft. On another occasion, Jones lost…

Poring over the transcripts of the secret tape recordings compiled by the Dade State Attorney’s Office as part of its criminal case against former Miami city commissioner Humberto Hernandez, three things became clear: First, Hernandez’s former chief of staff, Jorge De Goti, has a vivid, albeit limited, vocabulary. Second, Evelyn…

Last week I chanced upon Humberto Hernandez in the parking lot of Miami City Hall. After some small talk, the commissioner began complaining that he and his allies were being singled out by state investigators. Plenty of politicians engage in sleazy election tactics, he huffed. Why doesn’t the State Attorney’s…

In Tallahassee he is known as El Mudo — the mute. When he does speak, his voice barely rises above a whisper as he struggles to piece together sentence fragments into something coherent. It’s not a speech impediment or a language barrier that prevents him from articulating his thoughts. It’s…

No one knows better than Mario Pons what a glorious document is the U. S. Constitution. Last month the public works employee for the City of Miami showed his appreciation by invoking his constitutionally guaranteed Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 266 times during a two-hour deposition. Attorneys for Dade County…

Was Miami City Commissioner Art Teele charged with wire fraud last week? Only a few prosecutors know for sure, but there are strong indications that Teele, along with former seaport director Carmen Lunetta and California financier Calvin Grigsby, was secretly indicted on charges stemming from an $85,000 loan that Teele…

Here’s a riddle. Why is the criminal investigation of a little-known Broward-based insurance company by the statewide prosecutor in Tallahassee causing so much anxiety in the offices of Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas? One reason: The target of the investigation, David Sanz, was a significant contributor to Penelas’s 1996 mayoral…

Strolling into the press room at county hall last week, the lobbyist had a news flash. “It’s going to be Thursday,” he said confidently. “I just talked to Tallahassee.” The two Miami Herald reporters in the room stared back without saying a word. No one needed to translate this information…

Alex Penelas is obsessed with opinion polls. So much so that he just spent $110,000 of taxpayers’ money to learn that registered voters oppose a sales tax increase — a fact most politicians could have figured out by simply holding aloft a moistened finger. But the poll served another purpose…

Since his election five years ago as a Dade County commissioner, Javier Souto has developed a reputation for delivering bombastic, often nonsensical speeches from the dais. But any snickering is muted by the genuine respect Souto enjoys from his colleagues. A Bay of Pigs veteran, he is considered a man…

As chief of staff for Mayor Alex Penelas, it is Brian May’s job to keep his boss out of trouble and to avoid stupid mistakes that could embarrass the mayor. But Penelas’s woes continue to mount, and so May’s effectiveness is being closely scrutinized. In recent weeks, May has become…

Last week the National Football League voted against bringing back the instant replay. Too bad. Sometimes the game just moves so quickly it becomes nearly impossible to make the right call. The same is true with local politics. Scandals and allegations of wrongdoing come and go so fast in Dade…

Alex Penelas has a problem. An image problem. After rising to power as a reformer, Penelas is now seeing his reputation challenged. Ironically (some might say fittingly), this attack comes not from the mayor’s enemies but from some of his oldest allies, the very people who helped put him in…

Daryl Jones thought he would be in Washington by now, overseeing a $62 billion budget and the welfare of more than 600,000 men and women in his new role as Secretary of the U.S. Air Force. Instead the state senator from South Dade finds himself back in Tallahassee for another…

It’s difficult to say which is the more troubling revelation of the past week — that Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas’s office may have been corrupted by money-grubbing influence peddlers, or that the mayor was so naive as to think that firing Armando “I Know Where the Bodies Are Buried”…

Bruce Kaplan was not widely known when he first ran for county commissioner. He had never run for office in South Florida, his law practice had garnered him little attention, and he had no big-name backers supporting him. Surprisingly, though, he did have money. On July 31, 1992, eight months…

A few years ago a political consultant told me, “Jim, write down the following letters: N-T-B-K. Stick that right next to your computer and keep it there.” “Okay,” I said, “but what’s it stand for? Something new on the menu at Burger King?” “N-T-B-K: Never trust Bruce Kaplan,” he replied…

An opera in four acts. Music by Giuseppe Verdi with libretto in Italian by Giacomo DeFede, based on depositions taken by Miami-Dade County officials. OVERVIEW While operas based on contract disputes are relatively rare, Il Signatore, or The Signature, seeks to bring the excitement of bureaucratic governmental wrangling to a…