In Other News

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson reversed his opposition to gay marriage on Thursday, joining a swell of moderate Democrats to do so recently as public support for gay marriage has grown. Nelson, a Protestant who last week insisted marriage should be between a man and a woman, said he concluded that stance was inconsistent with the [...]

President Obama will propose cuts next week to Social Security and other entitlements as part of a renewed effort to strike a long-term deficit-reduction deal with Republicans, the White House said Friday. Obama will embrace a plan — known as chained CPI — that would reduce cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients through a more [...]

The immigration debate may be ramping up in Washington but it’s chilled in the states, where the crackdown fervor of two years ago has given way to a cautious approach amid changing political currents and court decisions. Gone is the appetite for broad “omnibus” bills such as Arizona’s 2011 law that instituted state criminal penalties [...]

Two months have passed since Florida glimpsed how its long-suffering jobs market was faring. It was worth the wait. The state’s unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent in January — the first time it fell below the national jobless rate in five years. A major revision also shows the state added about 80,500 more jobs [...]

Imagine turning 25 again and being toasted by a party packed with family and friends. Imagine there’s an older brother there you’ve looked up to for years, who spends the night telling everyone that, while you might have had some growing pains, the neighborhood’s a better place because you’re around. You’re doing all right.he says.

Doesn’t [...]

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott’s endorsement of a plan to expand Medicaid has many Republicans fuming, but not Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist. The former governor says the state should press ahead with a plan to expand Medicaid rolls to cover an additional 900,000-or-more poor Floridians. “I never think it’s harmful to explore other alternatives in addition, [...]

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul has finally stopped talking, but the conversation about presidential war powers and extrajudicial killings sparked by his filibuster continues. On Thursday morning, pro-Paul hashtags like #StandWithRand remain among the top trending topics on Twitter. Nearly ever major news outlet has covered Paul’s filibuster, which delayed the confirmation of President Obama’s [...]

There must be something about Florida. In spite of regular hurricanes and alligator attacks, the state keeps growing: Its population is on track to hit 20 million by 2015, making it the third-biggest state in the union. With all this growth comes a further quality-of-life problem: Sinkholes. Thrust into the national spotlight last week after [...]

Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is a real-life Murray Blum. Blum, played by Charles Grodin, is the president’s accountant in the comedy “Dave,” which I think of every time we have one of these spending dramas in Washington. In my favorite scene in the movie, President Dave Kovic, played by Kevin Kline, asks Blum [...]

Gov. Rick Scott sketched a rosy picture of Florida in an upbeat State of the State address Tuesday, telling the Legislature his policies are working and that the economy is strong enough to award teachers a big pay raise. • In a speech marking the opening of the 2013 session, Scott sounded eager to run [...]

Green groups are reeling after the release of a draft State Department report that seemed to put the Keystone XL oil pipeline on track for approval. Opponents of Keystone are furious at State’s environmental assessment of the project, which brushed aside of one of their central arguments against it: namely, that it would exacerbate clime [...]

President Obama plans to nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the president of the Walmart Foundation, as his budget chief, a White House official said on Sunday. Ms. Burwell, if confirmed by the Senate, would step into the role amid heated budget battles with Congressional Republicans. Federal agencies have started to implement the budget cuts known as [...]

Florida Gov. Rick Scott faces a dire political situation and his awkward relationship with the Legislature makes a rebound even more difficult. As the Florida Legislature prepares to open its annual 60-day session Tuesday, Scott needs lawmakers’ help more than ever to win some convincing political victories and reset his relationship with a public that [...]

A University of California-Berkeley engineer who played a prominent role in investigating levee breeches in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is scheduled to be the first witness Tuesday at a trial involving another Gulf Coast catastrophe: the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Robert Bea, an expert witness for the plaintiffs who sued BP [...]

Politics Confidential Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R – La.) accused President Obama of playing “political theater” by warning that looming across-the-board spending cuts set to go into effect on Friday will have a devastating impact on the government’s ability to function and provide for the nation’s most vulnerable, saying the cuts can be made in ways that [...]

The statements at issue: “No American prosecutor can imprison or execute someone except on the orders of a judge or jury. That fundamental principle applies no less to the suspected terrorists that the executive branch chooses to kill overseas. … A growing number of lawmakers and experts are beginning to recognize that some form of judicial review is necessary [...]

A ceremony honoring six people who died 20 years ago in the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was being held Tuesday at the 9/11 memorial, where the twin towers were destroyed eight years later. More than 1,000 people were injured in the 1993 blast in an underground garage below one of the towers. It [...]

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, a pediatric surgeon known for his anti-smoking campaigns and efforts to improve diet and nutrition, died at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on Monday. He was 96 years old. Koop served as Surgeon General from November 1981 until October 1989, taking stern and sometimes controversial stands on abortion, AIDS, fatty foods, drugs and cigarettes. In [...]

Gov. Rick Scott weighs in on the threat of the federal sequestration cuts, saying it threatens Florida’s vital defense industry and will hurt the state’s national guard force. “There is no doubt that budget cuts must be made at the national level, just as we have done here in Florida,” Scott said in a statement. [...]

MIAMI — When Banah International Group, a sugar company, agreed to establish its headquarters in Miami-Dade County — lured by $430,000 in state and county tax breaks — the announcement was trumpeted from County Hall to Capitol Hill. The county’s mayor, Carlos Gimenez, last year named a stretch of road in Hialeah as Banah Sweet [...]