The weeks leading up to November’s presidential election saw Miami-Dade County swell with an unending inflow of lawyers from both parties, election observers, human rights-watchers, and activists of all sorts. Locals got in on the excitement as well, working to get out the vote on behalf of their candidates. The…
The similarities to an actual divorce are remarkable: The bitter fights. The name calling. The locked doors. You got the sense they were staying together simply for appearances. And in the end I think we can all agree splitting up is for the best. I am referring, of course, to…
The race for mayor of Miami-Dade County is over. And none too soon. We’re done with million-dollar ad campaigns trying to convince us that our savior would emerge on election day. We won’t have to watch any more caustic debates or listen to partisan speeches about who will lead us…
Long before they lead the charge to annex more than half of Bicentennial Park, the good folks who run the Miami Art Museum should consider offering a master class on the art of political subterfuge. They are masters at it. Not only did the museum’s director and trustees persuade one…
Doran McDonald’s decision to stay in the U.S. and receive quality medical care prompted Royal Caribbean to set in motion the federal government’s immigration policy machinery.
As an Episcopalian pastor, the Rev. Wilifred Allen-Faiella has a reputation for being an outspoken advocate of social justice and Christian compassion. As the top administrator of her Coconut Grove parish, which includes an expensive and elite elementary school, Allen-Faiella has a somewhat different reputation — that of an autocrat…
Jeffery Allen, the City of Miami’s newest commissioner, has only been in office since October 1, when he was appointed to the seat by three of his colleagues amid a political circus. It’s too early to tell what kind of advocate he will be for District 5, which encompasses the…
Computer programmer Byron Jones knew big trouble was looming before he arrived at work on Wednesday, August 25. Earlier that morning he’d received a call from a co-worker at the Miami-Dade satellite courthouse in Coral Gables: Jones’s computer and several others had just been removed from their workstations and locked…
Katherine Fernandez Rundle is running for re-election as the Miami-Dade State Attorney. She says don’t vote for her opponent Al Milian because he’s a tool of the Police Benevolent Association, which wants someone in office it can control. In addition, she adds, he lacks experience and has a hot temper…
You open your mailbox one afternoon after a hard day at the office this past August and pull out your junk mail and maybe a copy of a magazine that you subscribe to but never read. Amid the refuse is a large envelope that turns out to be campaign literature…
“I know that light is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor any gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitokris beneath the Great Pyramid; yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage … I know always…
Like a comet passing through Miami on its way to Los Angeles, Carlos Arias creates a trail of glitzy stardust. The aggressively ambitious scion of a well-to-do Key Biscayne family is a connected nightclub promoter and insurance broker on the cusp of realizing his dream of becoming a Hollywood producer…
Miami Commissioner Johnny Winton has trouble understanding how anyone can take Xavier Suarez seriously. “He brought this city to its knees!” Winton cries. “He is an absolute opportunist, not to mention an irrational and dangerous man!” From his downtown Miami business office, an incredulous Winton recalls that Suarez had journalists…
Katherine Fernandez Rundle is facing the most significant election challenge of her eleven-year tenure as Miami-Dade State Attorney, and she saw it coming. Eight years ago she ran unopposed. Four years ago political newcomer Al Milian came within eleven percentage points of defeating her. Backed by the county’s powerful police…
Anyone with a digital video camera and at least one person willing to perform a sex act in front of it can make and distribute pornography.
The Florida panther is a beautiful creature, endowed with leonine dignity and feline grace. As with all big predatory cats, our local panther is made even more alluring by a furtive sense of menace. If the panther has become an appealing symbol for the environmental movement, it is also evocative…
Viola Drees, Lorain Enright, and Clara Lewis never knew one another while they were alive. But they had a lot in common. All spent their adult lives in Miami. All of them had been married, but had no children. All lived into their nineties, widows left to grow old in…
Carlos Alvarez is running for county mayor based on his record as director of the Miami-Dade Police Department. He hopes that, because he wore a uniform, voters will see him as more trustworthy than his opponent. Alvarez has the support of the Police Benevolent Association, the county’s largest police union,…
Lida Rodriguez-Taseff was trying to grab a quick lunch on September 11, 2002, when Keith Hartley cornered her in the Pollo Tropical downtown. He wouldn’t let her go until a wad of napkins covered in a girlish scrawl lay piled beside her tray of dessicating chicken. “This was a disaster,”…
The life of Felix I. Rodriguez provides a tour through the dark heart of America. From the Bay of Pigs fiasco to Vietnam to the El Salvador death squads to the Iran-contra scandal, the Cuban exile and self-described “CIA hero” was there. His most famous assassination mission came in 1967,…
It’s safe to say that as John Kerry and George Bush lay their heads down upon their pillows late Saturday night two weeks ago, they had never heard of Miami-Dade Police Ofcr. Keenya Hubert. And no doubt, as the 26-year-old Hubert arrived at the Intracoastal substation to begin her 11:00…
You think you know all about the local education system — the politics, the money crunch, the learning gaps. But schools are not mere hatcheries of learning, into which varying measures of intellectual formaldehyde are mixed with an inchoate population to produce the Alphas, Betas, Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons of…
