Quinnipiac University has been ringing Florida phones off their hooks the past week or two -- a poll yesterday showed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pulling ahead of Barack Obama in the state, and there's a poll about Florida baseball that came out this morning that's of pretty much no consequence.More >>

"I can help! Look! Hey! Mitt!"

Took a little while to get to because Quinnipiac University's website is being duct-taped together today, but here are the results of its latest poll, taken May 15 to 21 with a 2.4-percentage-point margin of error.More >>

Pony up, Mr. Used-to-Be-Speaker.

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via YouTube

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Florida Senate

Budget chairman Alexander voted against the bill last year.

As the U.S. Supreme Court debates the Arizona law destined to make life miserable for brown-skinned people, advocates on both sides of the immigration-reform issue are freaking out.  Senate Bill 1070 requires Arizona cops to detain immigrants they suspect are in the country illegally and check their status. Not carrying immigration papers in public would be a state crime. If the highest court in the land says this is constitutional, won't cops in the Sun-Baked State start doing the same thing?

No, probably not. Florida is crazy but not entirely stupid. Take state Sen. JD Alexander, the Republican budget committee chairman who last year voted against Florida's proposed anti-illegal immigrant bill, which never passed the state House. Alexander happens to be a citrus grower, and big growers do not want to lose their workforce of cheap, often-illegal labor. As he told the Miami Herald last May, "I probably know more about the reality of these issues than anybody else on the floor." More >>

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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No diapers for you.

Making the state's poorest residents piss in a cup before qualifying to receive welfare benefits was going to save Florida up to $77 million, Rick Scott said when he was campaigning for governor. The goal of the drug tests was "to make sure we don't waste taxpayers' money," Gov. Voldemort added when he signed the bill last May.

Well, damn. None of that happened. According to state documents the ACLU of Florida provided to the New York Times, the tests actually cost the state $45,780. Plus, they didn't reduce the welfare rolls. From the Times:

An internal document about Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF,

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