The governor vowed to “stand our ground” in defense of low taxes, parental rights in education, “law and order,” and more — although Democrats, independents, and overall progressives in Florida would likely beg to differ. The theme and tenor of the speech suggests that DeSantis spoke to a larger goal: running for president.
In Putnam, a 38-Year-Old Man Is Sentenced to Die, Again, and a 21 Year Old Will Serve Life in Prison
Timothy Wayne Fletcher, 38, was sentenced to die at the state’s hand for the murder of his stepgrandmother Helen Googe in 2009. Anthony Foxx will serve life in prison without parole with the stabbing death of his Ayana Belton, who was 16.
A Defendant Says he’s Going to Prison for Doing What His Domestic Violence Classes Told Him to Do
Leon Marcus Criswell was sentenced to 17 months in state prison in a domestic battery case, but he says his case was aggravated because he did just what his counselors in domestic violence classes taught him to do: he sped away from what he saw as trouble before it got physical.
Divided Appeals Court Rejects Protection for Transgender Bathroom Use in St. Johns School Case
After a five-year legal battle, and reversing a lower court ruling, a sharply divided federal appeals court upheld a St. Johns County School Board policy that prevented a transgender male student from using boys’ bathrooms at a high school.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Tuesday, January 3, 2023
Courts back in session, rediscovering The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, by Franz Werfel, on the Armenian genocide, WEB Dubois on the campaign of slander against “carpetbaggers.”
Slavery as Theme Park: How a West African Country is Making Tourism of Atrocity
Benin in West Africa hopes to market itself as a major destination for Afro-descendant tourists in the diaspora. But the latest developments are walking a fine line, balancing education and remembrance with crude commerce and rank tourism.
American Impressions 9 | South Dakota: Crazy
For the Sioux of South Dakota it’s been a tragic, unresolved legacy of exploitation in the Black Hills. The rape of the mountains by gold and uranium prospectors was followed by the carving of Mount Rushmore and, for the past 75 years, the ongoing desecration of the hills in the name of Crazy Horse–what was to be the largest sculpture in the world, but has turned into a lucrative tourist trap.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, January 2, 2023
New Year’s Day extra, James K. Galbraith on American Capitalism, the day Richard Nixon forced America to slow down to 55.
Myocarditis: Covid-19 is a Much Bigger Risk to the Heart than Vaccination
Perhaps the most common point of conflict concerning Covid-19 vaccines is the risk of myocarditis following immunization, particularly among young people. In Florida, Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and Gov. Ron DeSantis have turned against vaccinating younger people based on that misconception.
American Impressions 8 | North Dakota: A Life in Missiles
Virginia Lillico and her family spent their life in their homestead on land in the shadow of an ICBM missile silo in North Dakota at the height of the cold war and beyond. She never took safeguards seriously, thinking it was pointless.
Man Dies in Single-Vehicle Crash on I-95, North of Palm Coast Parkway
A 29-year-old man died in a single-vehicle crash when his SUV veered into the wood-line on I-95, a mile north of Palm Coast Parkway, Sunday morning.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Sunday, January 1, 2023
Happy new Year. America’s Top New Year’s Resolutions for 2023, why we want the extraordinary in all things, including the impossible.
Cats in the Middle Ages
For the most part, cats were quite at home in the medieval household. And as their playful depiction in many medieval manuscripts and artwork makes clear, our medieval ancestors’ relationships with these animals were not too different from our own.
American Impressions 7 | Montana: Ghost of the Prairie
It rises from wild grasses in Montana’s Golden Triangle, at the western extremity of the Great Plains, a massive hulk of concrete that makes no sense, that is as out of place as could be, and that will be there for thousands of years. It is a ghostly monument to the follies of the nuclear age.
Collin Calvert, 21, Charged with Mobil Station Armed Robbery in Palm Coast, Plus 8 Volusia Charges
Collin Ray Calvert, a 21-year-old resident of Tropical Drive in Ormond Beach, was charged on Friday with first degree armed robbery in connection with a Dec. 19 incident at the Mobil gas station on Pine Lakes Parkway in Palm Coast. He also faces grand theft, armed burglary and other charges in Volusia County, where he is jailed.
Jacob Oliva Is Headed to Arkansas to be Gov. Huckabee’s Education Secretary
Jacob Oliva, a senior chancellor at the Florida Department of Education and a former Flagler County superintendent who maintains family ties locally, will be the next Arkansas secretary of education in incoming Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s administration.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Saturday, December 31, 2022
Reflections on ruins on the last day of the year, Loren Eiseley’s Autumn memory, Bach’s Violin Partita.
Pelé: The One and Only
Pelé, soccer’s first global superstar, was the best to have ever played the game, the symbol of soccer played with passion, gusto and a smile. He helped to forge an image of the game, which even today lots of people continue to crave.
American Impressions 6 | Montana: Backtracking Lewis and Clark
Lewis and Clark traveled the longest distances of any state in Montana. Backtracking their trail is an exercise in contrasts: Indian voices could now be heard as they couldn’t then, but so can those of Lewis and Clark, vividly, wonderfully and sometimes disturbingly, while the landscape has either been remade or remains as intact as it was then.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Friday, December 30, 2022
Black Elk recalls the massacre at Wounded Knee, and how the New York Times reported it, a reminder on FEMA benefits for Hurricane Ian survivors, the Bach Festival.
Putin’s Unintended Boost for Clean Energy
Below the surface of almost weekly bad news, significant changes are underway that have the potential to create a more sustainable world – one in which humanity can tackle climate change, species extinction and food and energy insecurity.
American Impressions 5 | Alaska Highway
The endless Alaska Highway is a famed road shrouded in impossible isolation and amnesia, where boundaries disappear into a twilight zone of the beautiful and the bizarre. It is an endless wormhole where the unexpected and the sublime are so common that they become monotonous, where the emptiness is so complete that you can feel like the last person on earth.
Smiles Nite Club’s David Ghiloni Gets Sheriff’s Lifesaving Award for Jumping Gunman
David Ghiloni along with other bar patrons intervened when a gunman was holding a gun to a woman’s head at Smiles Nite Club in November.
GasBuddy Predicts Florida Gas Prices Will Climb Over $4.50 By Summer Before Falling Again
The Boston-based GasBuddy, in an annual outlook released Wednesday, predicted that pump prices will peak at an average of $4.25 to $4.65 a gallon in Miami, $4.15 to $4.55 in Orlando and $4.10 to $4.45 in Tampa.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Thursday, December 29, 2022
Flagler Beach pier pass refunds, H.G. Wells on Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the waning days of Fantasy of Lights in Town Center.
Five Space Exploration Missions to Look Out for in 2023
From the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer to the return to Earth of an asteroid explorer to India’s first India’s private space launch, 2023 is set to be as busy a space exploration year as 2022. Here’s a preview.
American Impressions 4 | Alaska: The New Suburb
Big, brutal, poetic, a hero among states, Alaska has always been America’s national park of the imagination, a 600,000-square-mile invention colonized by a few tracts of reality. An exploration of Kodiak Island defeats a few stereotypes and reveals to what extent even Alaska is becoming a suburb of the Lower Forty-Eights.
A Driver Is Killed on I-95 as Car Goes Under Semi Near Matanzas Woods Parkway
A woman was killed this morning when she drove her car under a semi truck in the northbound lanes of I-95 just south of Matanzas Woods Parkway.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Kwanzaa Celebration at the African American Cultural Center, What the Black Man Wants, Woodrow Wilson, anti-hero.
Calling Politicians Clowns Is a Disservice to Clowns. Seriously.
Clowns have a long history of contributing positively to politics and society. They have brought disruption, subversion, comfort and joy to healthcare, education and humanitarian efforts. Politicians? Not so much.
American Impressions 3 | The Road
The Colorado National Monument, Yellowstone, Salt Lake City and Wyoming frame reflections on the romance of the road, that essentially American love affair made of myths and wanderlust, and those insufferable RVs.
Jan. 6 Attack: 3 Florida Extremist Groups Allied ‘to Work Together to Shut This Sh** Down’
The final report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol includes chilling sections about the force of extremist groups from Florida that formed an alliance, traveled to Washington, D.C., and stormed the Capitol.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Have you been to the Fantasy of Lights show in Town Center yet? The cold-weather shelter opens yet again, Anne Frank’s Christmas, Stone Mountain’s bland of inoffensive consumables.
Only the Richest Ancient Athenians Paid Taxes – and they Bragged About It
In ancient Athens, only the very wealthiest people paid direct taxes, and these went to fund the city-state’s most important national expenses – the navy and honors for the gods. While today it might sound astonishing, most of these top taxpayers not only paid happily, but boasted about how much they paid.
American Impressions 2 | Heartland
America is more paradox than exception, often more invention than reality, an invention as old as 1619 and as recent as the transformation of the American “heartland” into a utopia. The contradictions of Cedar Bluff State Park in Kansas tell a different story.
The Only Doctors Florida Needs Are Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Dr. Laura, and Dr. Feelgood
Doctors! Those guys are a menace to decent Americans. Thankfully, our right honorable governor is fixing to fix this medical mess. He’s going to get a Grand Jury to investigate what he so rightly calls “crimes and wrongdoing” in the vaccine industrial complex.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, December 26, 2022
More cold weather, if geologic time could somehow be seen in the perspective of human time, Bach’s Magnificat.
Don’t Be So Quick to Call Deion Sanders a Sellout
When Deion Sanders announced he’d leave Jackson State University to become head coach at the University of Colorado Boulder, ardent fans and supporters reacted with dismay and disbelief – particularly supporters from the Black community.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Sunday, December 25, 2022
The cold weather shelter is open again tonight, Omar Thomas’s “Of Our New Day Begun,” from the Narrative of James Albert Ukawsaw.
Congress Passes Legislation That Will Close Off Presidential Election Mischief and Help Avoid Another Jan. 6
Legal theories were floated by allies of President Donald Trump after the 2020 election that suggested ways to undermine the results of the election, culminating in a failed insurrection at the Capitol. That’s why a bipartisan group of congressional leaders aimed to pass reforms to the 1887 law governing this process, the Electoral Count Act, before the end of 2022.
Gratitude on Christmas Eve
For long-time Flagler Beach attorney Scott Spradley, an image he took of the moon above the pier’s A frame not long ago provoked a range of feelings and emotions and led him to reflect on the meaning of gratitude even in an age of stresses and sorrows.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Saturday, December 24, 2022
The cold weather shelter is open tonight, WKCR’s Bach Festival, speed limits and the holidays, On the pleasure and necessity of digressions.
How Democrats Won the West
Since 1992, Democrats have flipped the West away from Republican control, a shift that began with the end of the Cold War and carried through a Pacific Coast economic recession, anti-racism demonstrations and violence in Los Angeles and the area’s increasing diversity.
Fred the Great Leapfrogs 10-Year-Old Palm Coast Girl Into Young Children’s Book Author
Fifth Palm Coast fifth-grader Bella Soumokil several years ago started writing and drawing what became “Fred the Great,” a 56-page book for children about humility and family, published locally and selling on Amazon.
Is Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin Running for Paul Renner’s Seat? Maybe.
Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin is considering a run for Re. Paul Renner’s House seat, which is up in two years. Alfin, who revealed Machiavellian political instincts in a lengthy interview, will make his decision by the end of January, depending on whether other viable candidates are lined up for the seat.
New Smyrna Beach Weighs Development Moratorium in Wake of Storms. Shouldn’t All Coastal Florida?
Moratorium: Using this word in Florida is like that scene in “A Christmas Story” where Ralphie says a word that he shouldn’t and gets his mouth washed out with a bar of Lifebuoy soap. But the sense that sprawl is out of control is springing up all over, not just Deltona and New Smyrna Beach.
It’s Groundhog Day for Deficit-Ridden Belle Terre Swim and Racquet as School Board Again Dithers Over Fate
The Flagler County School Board for the latest of innumerable times could not decide what to do with the money-losing Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club, now projected to run a $169,000 deficit, other than ask for yet more information. But the district’s administration is making clear that it is getting tired of carrying the club with subsidies better spent elsewhere.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Friday, December 23, 2022
The cold-weather shelter opens in Flagler tonight, State Attorney R.J. Larizza and Sheriff Rick Staly on Free For All, Maurice Sendak, Jane Austen and “women’s fiction.”
LGBTQ Americans Are 9 Times More Likely to be Victimized By a Hate Crime
Almost half of violent hate crimes with LGBTQ victims involved an attacker who was a close friend, family member, partner or former partner, and victims were more likely to have physical and psychological symptoms as a result of the attack.
Acceding to DeSantis, Florida Supreme Court Impanels Grand Jury to Investigate Vaccines
The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday approved a request by Gov. Ron DeSantis to impanel a statewide grand jury to investigate alleged wrongdoing related to Covid-19 vaccines.