I have no idea what possessed a couple of amateur psychics (pardon the redundancy) in Richmond, Virginia, to make a supernatural connection with Simmie Williams, the cross-dressing teen who was murdered in Fort Lauderdale in 2008. But maybe that’s because I’m not psychic. Judge for yourself:You see, that’s Simmie’s ghost…
Technically, Burgess Hanson is merely the “interim” city manager of Deerfield Beach. But only five weeks after he was given that title, he has managed to perform a feat that has eluded every other city manager in recent memory: Every commissioner thinks he’s doing a great job.Which is surreal. At…
Here’s what’s making news in South Florida this morning:Broward County Administrator Bertha Henry gave a stern warning to the commissioners that they’ll need to raise taxes this year or else face a round of budget cuts that would risk, well, anarchy? [Sun-Sentinel]At the Seagull School in Fort Lauderdale, burglars pried…
The Lake Worth City Commission voted last night to pass an emergency ordinance that would place a 180-day moratorium on filing or receiving any applications to establish a pain management clinic within city boundaries. The commission scheduled a second reading and public hearing for Monday morning, March 1, hoping to…
He was a Ponzi schemer who went to school in the Bronx, promoted bogus deals for investors, and used the illicit proceeds to buy political influence before he was finally busted and put in prison. No, not Scott Rothstein. I’m talking about Solomon Dwek. You might remember Dwek as the lead…
A few minutes ago, the Deerfield Beach City Commission voted to hire Kessler International, a forensic auditing firm that will try to find out how the city spent its federal housing dollars.The request came from City Manager Burgess Hanson, who has been reviewing that spending since he took over the…
We’d like to think of it as some sort of response to our extensive expose of South Florida vice, though maybe that’s presumptuous. Either way, the “pain clinic” problem is simply too big for anyone with a conscience to ignore. A Florida Medical Examiners Commission report estimated that on average,…
The mystery ingredient in last Saturday’s Garlic Chef Competition at the Delray Beach Garlic Fest came from an unlikely source. Mayor Nelson “Woodie” McDuffie provided 60 pounds of pork for the occasion — and slayed the hogs himself.”I was also sworn to secrecy,” McDuffie says. But now that the fest…
Broward State Attorney’s Office has elected not to file criminal charges against Marc Goldstone, the former general counsel of Broward Health who was fired in May of last year after the hospital district’s commissioners claimed he’d deceived them about how he would be admitted to the Florida Bar Association.The move…
And it’s not even Model Citizen’s latest photo illustration of Ken Jenne as a tortoise. It’s the rather extraordinary shot taken at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul below. I’ll let you have fun identifying the folks in the photo. Remember, Rothstein was a delegate at the convention (another…
Last Wednesday, in the midst of an argument over where he’d parked his Jeep, Virlyn Watson grabbed a bat, then threw it at the man he was arguing with. That man dodged the bat, then picked it up and beat Watson with it.The incident, which occurred around 1:45 in the…
He was a star first baseman for the World Series champion Mets and a central character in one of the best Seinfeld episodes ever. But who knew that Keith Hernandez was also a paying subscriber to the right-wing rhetoric of our local congressional candidate, Col. Allen West?In the last fundraiser…
He coached the Miami Hurricanes. He coached the Miami Dolphins. Now Jimmy Johnson is coaching men to buy ExtenZe, a “male enhancement tablet” that promises to “really make a difference.”In television commercials, the company is very sly, never making specific claims about what “difference” the product makes. But on the…
Based on a scan of recent Broward County mug shots, it appears local police are using the lack of a bicycle light as the basis for stopping and then searching a person they suspect of carrying drugs.Check out the mug shot slideshow on the Sun-Sentinel’s website. If you search it…
It all depends on what your definition of free is. A decade ago, just as CityPlace was planning its grand opening in downtown West Palm Beach, lawyers and developers were debating just how much democracy, in the form of public speech, the new live/work/shop development could tolerate. “Profit Relegates Free…
You’d think an anti-hate group would show some love for people of a different race and religion. But this is the Orwellian irony of Americans Against Hate, which just announced that it will stage a demonstration outside the Broward County Convention Center, where the Council on American-Islamic Relations is having…
A city commissioner has a buddy who wants a meeting about getting a city contract: Is there a city manager who hasn’t been there, as Miramar’s Robert Payton was?There’s no evidence that Payton knew the agent posing as a contractor had bribed Salesman. But the most frustrating aspect of this…
Tuesday morning’s news in Broward and Palm Beach:The federal corruption investigation in Miramar goes right to the top, as filings in that case indicate that former commissioner Fitzroy Salesman set up a meeting between an undercover agent and City Manager Robert Payton, who then helped the agent land a contract…
Manhattan news source and media aggregator The Daily Beast appears to have committed a major media no-no. It’s investigative reporter, Gerald Posner, has admitted to plagiarizing the Miami Herald.We know this thanks to some investigative reporting by Slate.com. (Little-known secret: We investigative journalists are losing jobs in droves, but to…
Every day like clockwork, Scott Rothstein would finish work at his law firm and go downstairs to his restaurant and headquarters, Bova Prime, where he would drink vodka and smoke cigars. And that was just the start of it. During the day, Rothstein was busy with a 70-member law firm and billion-dollar Ponzi…
