FAU tenured Professor James Tracy, who took some withering backlash earlier this year when he questioned whether a gunman had actually killed children at Sandy Hook Elementary, is back at it.

This time, Tracy -- who makes more than $60,000 per year in public money and teaches courses on conspiracy theories -- thinks the Boston bombing was a hoax. According to an impossibly long and impossibly confusing missive he posted yesterday on his blog, the professor of communications thinks the government planted "mass-casualty drill actors" at the Boston Marathon before the bombs exploded.

"A multitude of evidence has already emerged in the last few days suggesting government involvement in the Boston bombing," Tracy clacked. "None of this information has been ferreted out or acknowledged by major news outlets, which... contribute to the mass psychological effect and provide additional rationale for a heightened police state."

See also:
- James Tracy, FAU Professor, Says Sandy Didn't Happen; Revels In Notoriety
- FAU Prof. James Tracy Finally Apologizes but Still Peddling Conspiracies

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The City of Palm Beach has itself a new health insurance broker and a new consultant, which means the chance of having domestic partnership benefits added to its employee health plan is very close to happening.

Town Manager Peter Elwell says that Willis of Florida Inc. will be taking a gander at health benefits such as medical, dental, and life insurance to determine the costs.

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Courtesy Ken Schoenberg

Previously: Voting in Florida today? Good luck!

Banyan Creek Elementary School in Delray Beach is a polling place that's open for voting in today's primary. But when voters from a couple of precincts get there, they're greeted by this sign, turning them away:

Notice anything funny in the picture above?

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joetalleyforsheriff.com

According to this week's New Times, the best place to spy on cops in Palm Beach County is a website called PBSOTalk.com. It's the rare spot on the interwebs where police officers can gripe about high-profile murder cases and pill-popping lieutenants without fear of losing their jobs.

Founded by former PBSO deputy Mark Dougan, the site has never hid its contempt for Sheriff Ric Bradshaw. But lately, its message boards have been promoting a new candidate for sheriff: Joe Talley.

In Palm Beach, as in Broward, the sheriff has incredible political clout. Bradshaw has not

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Lake Worth City Commissioner Andy Amoroso kisses a pig.

The rainy season is upon us, and snowbirds are fleeing fast. To honor the hard-working natives who slog through the summer to make South Florida great, the Pulp is compiling jokes about them. Feel free to add your own.

First up, you know you're from Lake Worth when...

10. The first person you talk to in the morning is the homeless guy who sleeps in the Cultural Plaza downtown.

9. Your city commissioner runs a shop that sells dildos.

8. You look down on anyone who has fewer than four tattoos.

7. Justin Bieber earns the wrath of your favorite barkeep.

6. Once a year, you walk outside to find people painting with chalk in the streets.

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Kim Sargent

"Wild Bill" Koch is no longer flying under the radar.

Bill Koch, the Palm Beach billionaire who criticized his brothers' support of libertarian causes and has long escaped notice on the national political stage, is emerging as a major supporter of Mitt Romney.

Huron Carbon, a subsidiary of Koch's West Palm Beach-based Oxbow Corp., donated $1 million to Romney's Restore Our Future "super PAC" last month. That brings Koch's Restore Our Future donations to a total of $2 million, including $750,000 Oxbow contributed last year and $250,000 Koch gave on his own.

Such visible support of the GOP presidential candidate has attracted national media attention to Koch, who was once known more for his wine collection and romantic entanglements. When New Times published a profile of Koch last August, his spokesman, Brad Goldstein, said Koch's political leanings

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Pembleton Farms.com

Pembleton urged Goodman to call 911.

​Lisa Pembleton doesn't drink. Neither do her friends.

"I don't hang out with those kind of people," she said on the witness stand in a West Palm Beach courtroom today.

Her sobriety is just one of many stark differences between Pembleton, a horse trainer and student of the equestrian sport of dressage, and Wellington polo mogul John Goodman. Pembleton spent her days and nights grooming horses during the winter of 2010, living in a trailer next to a barn. Goodman is a multimillionaire who founded the International Polo Club in Wellington, and was out partying the night before he met Pembleton.

Yet this sober, God-fearing, 28-year-old horse trainer is the prosecution's star witness in Goodman's DUI manslaughter case. She's the first person who saw Goodman after the car accident that led toMore »

​As an 18-year-old vomited, lost control of his bowels, and died slowly in a West Palm Beach juvenile jail cell last July, guards refused to call 911 for more than six hours. A supervisor on duty allegedly thought Eric Perez was faking his illness, although the teenager had twice injured his head before the vomiting began, according to a grand jury report released yesterday on the incident.

"It is indisputable that, given the conduct of the detention officers, Mr. Perez never had the chance to survive," the report says.

Perez died July 10, 2011 of a cerebral hemorrhage. But  the grand jury declined to charge anyone involved with homicide, because experts could not determine exactly what caused

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Improbable as it may sound, there is an entire television series devoted to people who hire hit men to kill their loved/hated ones. The Investigation Discovery show Nothing Personal is hosted by Steve Schirripa, the jovial comedian who played Bobby Baccalieri on The Sopranos. Now he uses his mobster street cred to narrate true-crime dramas about women who plot to kill their husbands -- women like Boynton Beach's own Dalia Dippolito.

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