Julian Assange and Wikileaks are giving Trump a chance to challenge First Amendment freedoms of the press and get a radical ruling from his new buddies on the Supreme Court.
Pierre Tristam
Felons’ Right To Vote and Paul Renner’s Cynical End Run Around Amendment 4
Paul Renner, Flagler’s GOP representative and future Speaker of the House, is being dishonest and disingenuous in his defense of a bill that would make felons’ right to vote dependent on paying back all financial obligations.
Palm Coast’s Disappearing Canopy
Development in Palm Coast is back at a pace not seen since before the Great Recession. Lots are getting leveled, canopies lost. New homes are great., but must 11,000 square foot lots be entirely leveled to make room for 2,000 square foot homes? It’s not either or.
The Familiar Face of White Supremacy
The fad of not naming mass killers is deceptive and self-defeating, an act of cowardice that hides more than it wants to acknowledge. Brenton Tarrant, the killer of Christchurch, is an all–too familiar face.
Jerry Cameron, There Are Better Ways To Save Face Than Blaming Media Over The County’s Homeless Blunder
Interim Flagler County Administrator Jerry Cameron said the media “interjected” themselves in the controversy over the order to vacate the homeless from around the library before the matter was “ripe.” FlaglerLive’s editor disagrees.
What National Emergency?
American leader not only genuflecting to autocrats from Turkey to Russia to Saudi Arabia, but behaving like them is a more serious national emergency than what few migrants are still crossing the border illegally.
Anthony Fennick’s Death and The Sheriff’s Green Roof Inn Smear
Much is unknown in the death of inmate Anthony Fennick, but much is known, including the sheriff’s responsibility for hiring trouble-ridden Armor Health–and for showing inmates contempt from the outset with his “Green Roof Inn” sign.
Trump’s Fabulous Wall Fables
We’re in a post-factual presidency where alternative facts are the equivalent of papal bulls. It’s about belief, not reality. For the sake of appearances though, let’s argue the facts about the wall for a moment.
Sheriff’s Sick Building: How To Hire A Savior
To break out of its leadership lethargy on the future of the Sheriff’s Operations Center, Flagler County government should find an obsessively independent project manager untainted by local politics or current administrations.
Let Craig Coffey Resign. With Severance.
Craig Coffey’s loss of credibility has been painful. It doesn’t need to be cruel. Rather than a public flogging on Jan. 14, he should be allowed to resign with a measure of dignity–and severance.
Democrats’ Arafat Complex
Early possibilities for the 2020 election–Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton–suggest Democrats aren’t learning lessons but clinging to habits of self-destruction.
Flagler’s Beach ‘Renourishment’ Is Exorbitant Futility
Whether it’s the Corps of Engineers’ plan for 2.6 miles of Flagler Beach sands or Flagler County’s ongoing dune-rebuilding over 12 miles, there’s no money to sustain either, yet officials are mortgaging the county’s future on a blank check.
Barbecuing Bing’s
With even Captain’s BBQ owners willing to get “back to the drawing board,” there’s plenty of room for Flagler government to fix what remains a dirty deal that hurts all sides.
The Death of WNZF’s Ron Charles, Friend and Colleague, at 56
Ron ‘Charles’ Gitschier, 56, built Flagler County’s first radio station WNZF as its chief engineer for the past 10 years, was its news director and a man of rare integrity and humility.
Restoring Felons’ Right to Vote:
Why I’m Voting Yes on Amendment 4
In 46 other states, the right is restored either immediately or on completion of probation. Florida stands out for harshness, accounting for a quarter of America’s disenfranchised.
Trump’s Responsibility
Trump can’t have it both ways. He can’t revel in his powers of denigration and incitement then take cover behind a bogus sense of outrage and his usual deflections when the incitement and denigration arm fuses and kill people.
Trump’s Bone Saw Problem
Trump can’t be lavishing praise on tyrants and think it’s not another way of saying, as he did of white supremacists last year, that “some of them are fine people.” He can’t be equating journalists with scum and not have blood on his hands.
News-Journal Redemption: Krys Fluker Is Paper’s New Editorial Page Editor
Krys Fluker has just been named editorial page editor of the Daytona Beach News-Journal. FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam cheers the appointment of his old colleague.
Palm Coast’s Shocking Electric Tax Scheme
Out of nowhere the Palm Coast City Council is about to ram through a large tax increase on residents and businesses with hardly any discussion, no hearings, no public education. No wonder we have tea parties.
Saint Kavanaugh
Whether Kavanaugh was confirmed or not is irrelevant: whoever’s next might be less personally sleazy, more temperamentally amoebic, but judicially? Same shill, different name.
Without Fear Or Favor. Or Whining.
Defending the press against Donald Trump’s “enemy of the people” attacks may have its place, but reporters’ best bet is to shut up and do their job well: it’s the most eloquent response.
Schools Are Safer Than Your Home
We’re making fortresses of the safest places in America, out of fear that one of those 120,000 schools might at some point be the target of a shooting.
America’s Pre-Existing Condition
Florida is among the states suing to end the requirement that people with pre-existing conditions be covered by insurers. It’s the latest cynical attempt to end Obamacare.
Truth Derangement Syndrome
Donald Trump once said he could shoot someone and not lose any votes. He’s right in the sense that he changed the rules of right and wrong, truth and lies, morality and immorality.
Cruel and Usual Trump
The Trump-Sessions zero-tolerance policy of separating children from their parents at the border has no precedent except in America’s slavery times.
Pious Homophobes Win One
The Supreme Court in its wedding-cake ruling declared gays once again second-class citizens, at least when their sexuality has to compete with someone else’s more stone-throwing version of Christianity.
John Ward’s Insult To Puerto Ricans
John Ward is a GOP candidate for the congressional that includes Flagler. He doesn’t think Puerto Rican storm refugees–American citizens, all–should register to vote in Florida. He’s wrong.
Israel’s Mass Shootings
You can always depend on Israel periodically to mass-murder bunches of Arabs in proportions as lopsided and unforgiving as our own mass shootings in the U.S., then scapegoat the bloodletting.
Compromise Over School Deputies in Flagler, But Look Beyond False Security of “Hardening”
There’s an effective way to end the stalemate between the Flagler Sheriff and the school board over deputies in schools without breaking the bank or compromising security.
Flagler School Board Wants To Snoop on Students’ Social Media, And Maybe Yours. Wrong Move.
The School Board is set to contract with Social Sentinel, a company that will troll social media accounts across Flagler for $18,500 and issue “alerts” to select officials. It’s an inappropriate move down a slippery slope.
Trump’s Census Whitewash
The Trump administration’s decision to include a question on the census about citizenship is intended to under-count immigrants and skew numbers to favor whiter voting districts.
Are Drug Addicts Less Valuable Than Students? Florida Says Yes, Wrongly.
Politically there may be a big difference between students’ safety and drug addicts. Ethically, there is none, and financially, addicts are being lethally short-changed.
Thoughts and Prayers, As Pointless as Outrage
The ultimate, most pointless outrage is at lawmakers and gun freaks, one and the same, who stand in pools of blood as they tell us our gun epidemic has nothing to do with it.
Military Inferiority Complex:
Dear Leader Wants A Parade
The military doesn’t need parades. It needs to come home. Worshipping it in time of endlessly losing wars only locks and loads more cannon fodder.
To Keep America Great, Legalize All Undocumented Immigrants
We have a choice: Keep our economy vibrant and enviable or demolish it by expelling and demonizing undocumented immigrants, as short-sighted nations have done in the false name of “purity” over the years.
Reporting on Public Figures’ Extra-Curricular Sex
Married or not, public figures’ affairs are nobody’s business as long as the acts are legal, consensual, off the clock and virally contained. But there are exceptions.
Thank You for Record 7.6 Million Visits to FlaglerLive in 2017: A Review of a Disordered Year
FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam reviews a year of record murders, record fatalities, disappointments in Palm Coast, but a sheriff’s great year, and new readership records for the site.
Alabama Saves The Day. But Not Much Else.
If what it takes for Democrats to win is a Republican pedophiliac predator and compulsive lawbreaker, their victory in Alabama Tuesday helps the GOP more than it does Democrats.
“We Don’t Serve Gays”
Invoking Christian belief to deny service to a gay couple is not a First Amendment right, nor is it a matter of artistic expression. It’s good old discrimination under a new mask.
Scott’s Arab-Baiting Over Jerusalem
Continuing to prepare for his Senate run, Gov. Rick Scott’s Jerusalem ploy is demeaning Palestinians in the occupied lands to appeal to Jews in South Florida. He learned the trick at Trump’s knee.
Fantasyland and the Liberal Delusion
Liberals’s hopes that the likes of Jeff Flake or Bob Corker in any way speak for today’s vanilla-white GOP is a refusal to concede that the Age of Trump is here to stay.
In Kristen Hadeed’s “Permission To Screw Up,” A Cheerful, Nimble Corrective To Millennial Stereotypes
FPC Graduate Kristen Hadeed’s first book traces the stumbles of her 10-year journey as CEO of Student Maid, a cleaning company in Gainesville, with wit and counter-intuitive insights: a review.
An Aryan Ass Vomits At UF
Protesting honors the flag, so does taking a knee during the anthem, but so does letting an idiotic white bigot have his 90 minutes on a stage at UF. Freedom of thought can take it.
Pride In “Our Country”? Count Me Out.
There’s no contending with a president who speaks of his pride in this country in serial tweets even as his every other pronouncement is a cleave, a slur, a boast, a lie or a disgrace.
Palm Coast Charturbation
Breaking its own charter, the Palm Coast council is pretending to be conducting a review of that charter, but the process is a farce and an insult to residents’ intelligence.
FPL Lies
FPL’s response to Hurricane Irma in Flagler has been disgraceful and secretive, both at the expense of local emergency responses and at the expense of residents.
In Flagler Beach, Palm Coast and County, More Contempt For Medical Pot
Elected officials in Palm Coast, Flagler County and Flagler Beach are still peddling false or misleading assumptions as they draw up more restrictive medical pot dispensary zoning.
Confederate Monuments’ Phony History
The irony of the debate over removal of Confederate monuments is that it supposes a removal of history when the monuments themselves were intended to re-write it.
Kim Jong-Trump
There is no pre-emptive military option against North Korea. None. No matter how much Korea “provokes.” There is only containment, and shutting up Donald Trump.
Trump Will Win In 2020
There’s nothing original in Donald Trump’s presidency when seen through Nixon-colored glasses, considering the similarities–and the invaluable help both got from Democrats to get elected.