While this entire stimulus bill saga is gripping DC, Senator Bill Nelson found time to tackle another problem. He filed legislation on Tuesday seeking to ban the import and interstate trade of reptiles. Nelsons interest in the matter stems from the problem of alien pythons in the Everglades, who we…
Does bad news come in threes? With Macy’s slashing 600 local jobs, the Miami Herald announcing imminent lay offs, it now seems Crispin Porter + Bogusky is joining the lay-off band wagon this week. Ad Age reports that Crispin will be cutting 6% of its work force, that’s about 60…
Well, this is just not good news for anyone. Bob Norman at the Pulp got a hold of a Miami Herald memo announcing that there’s more cuts coming to the paper, very soon. Publisher David Landsberg blames a decrease in ad revenue due to the hard luck of many local…
When the Herald reported yesterday that Donna Shalala might be returning to D.C. to take the reigns once again at the Department of Health and Human Services after Tom Daschle scampered off with his Sally Jesse Raphael glasses and tax mess, we kind of thought it smelled funny. First, nobody…
Larry Coker got fired from his gig as University of Miami’s football coach after a six-loss season, and left the school with a respectable winning percentage of .800 and a national championship. Shortly thereafter, he lost out on a coaching job at Rice and has held some analyst gig at…
Every time you think that as a nation we’ve made huge strides past racism, some bullshit like this brings you back to the realization that too many people are bigoted pricks. Carol Carter, a Republican state committeewoman from Hillsborough County, recently sent out this email to a group of eight…
The 2010 election in Florida is shaping up to be insane — actually it’s already insane — and only two people of any consequence have announced their candidacy for either governor or senator. Former Speaker of the House Marco Rubio has this nice campaign website all set up and ready…
Mayor Manny Diaz is in D.C. exercising his duties as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and hoped to get some face time with another president. You know, that President Obama one. Flanked by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and others, Diaz is running around our nation’s capital in…
The former partners at a major Miami architecture firm are accusing one founder of fraud. [Herald]Wingnuts everywhere rejoice. Miami’s ACLU affiliate was forced to cut 20 percent of its staff. [Herald]Authorities rounded up 117 illegal immigrants. Only 30 had previous criminal records. [NBC6]How cold was it last night? It was…
Up until last night, the ’09 edition of the University of Miami basketball team had been acting more like a UM football squad circa the 1990s, in all its cocaine-fueled, felonious glory. Except without all the victories. Best of both worlds, really. The school tossed point guard Eddie Rios off the team last month…
Who says the electric chair should stand in the way of your dream job? Not Michael Lambrix. Sure, the 48-year-old is on death row for fatally bludgeoning and strangling two people outside Fort Myers in 1983. But that hasn’t stopped the articulate, overachieving inmate from applying to be Florida’s newest…
A brushed-chrome-and-wood elevator rises through a Sunny Isles tower just off Collins Avenue, lifting Jenny Huertas toward an 11th-floor condo with an eye-popping balcony view: the barrier island stretching green and leafy to the north, slicing between a sailboat-speckled slate-colored bay and a placid aquamarine ocean. “We’re getting this place…
Under any other circumstances, the girl sitting in the oversize red chair might be screaming for help or begging for mercy. A tall, pale young man — his eyes lined in black — inches toward her with a sharp blade in his hand. It’s just after 1 a.m. on a…
It never fails: Just as we finish explaining to our out-of-town friends that Miami is not really like that, we catch wind of something like this: a plastic surgery fashion show. Last Thursday night, you could smell the silicone in Bay Harbor Islands. As a mitzvah-trained DJ spun techno music,…
On March 15, 2008, a fireball shot into the midday sky over Albania’s capital, Tirana. The blast echoed 100 miles away in Macedonia and Kosovo. Its force was comparable to that of a small nuclear weapon. But this wasn’t atomic. It was an accident at an arms depot, where poor…
The idea that the free broadcast of views opposing the state sponsored media could, in part, help to tumble Communism in Cuba is certainly a noble one, but its chances of success would certainly be helped if more Cubans were receiving those broadcasts. Reports today from Congressional investigators state that…
University of Miami used to have this wonderful, magical football program that everyone feared. Then sometime a few years ago everyone got tired of being wonderful and magical and stopped winning games, and they’ve officially been having “a rebuilding year” every single year since. Today is the first official day…
Miami is generally seen as a vacation destination. A nice place to relax, get a tan, go out, play some golf and indulge in other hedonistic pursuits. Generally this has been a huge benefit in attracting corporate events, but not anymore in this “new era of responsibility (® Barack Obama)”…
When it comes to the 2010 Senate election, just about anybody who’s nobody is getting in. Rod Smith, a former state Senator of the conservative Democrat variety, made a decent run in the 2006 Gubanotorial primary, but ended up losing to Jim Davis. Along the way though he picked up…
Last night, a friend and fellow UM grad and I were talking about the sudden opening for Health & Human Service Secretary, and she said, “Obama should appoint Shalala.” To which I said, “I was hoping someone on the internet would say it, so I can blog about it.” She…
Brrrrr. It’s cold out there. [CBS4]Traffic fines are going up because the State can’t pay its bills. [NBC6]And because the State can’t pay its own bills, it sure as hell isn’t going to start paying more of the poor’s rent. [NBC6]A cigarette smoker nearly burnt down his apartment complex. [Herald]The…
Two months ago, the New Times brought you the story of the “Black October” legal case in Miami’s federal court, where a handful of poor Bolivians are suing Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada and Carlos Sanchez Berzain — Bolivia’s former president and defense minister — for allegedly leading the massacre…
