It’s been awfully hard to get Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper to talk about the consulting contract that her city manager gave to real estate agent Joe Kessel in 2008. When I reached her last week, she first told me that it wasn’t newsworthy. (I think otherwise.) Then she told…
What do you call a man who downsizes from two jobs to one in the middle of this rotten economy? How about… smart?That’s because Anthony Niedwiecki (on the left, with husband Waymon Hudson) is trading in two good jobs — law professor at Nova and vice mayor of Oakland Park…
Many people have wondered how Debra Villegas could fill two seemingly conflicting roles. How could she be the confident, right-hand woman to Scott Rothstein as he ran a massive Ponzi scheme out of his law office, yet go home every night to an allegedly abusive husband who beat her kids…
The South Florida Tea Party has landed itself a minicelebrity for the anti-tax rally tomorrow in downtown West Palm: Hannah Giles, the young woman who in August 2009 pretended to be a prostitute for a pimp seeking help with tax evasion and human smuggling from ACORN, the voting registration outfit…
Bill Parcells, the Dolphins’ executive vice president of football operations, is “not worth a shit.” At least that’s what his former boss, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, was caught slurring on a shaky phone camera in video originally posted by Deadspin.The conversation starts when an unidentified man asks Jones –…
Citing league sources, NFL.com has confirmed reports that Denver Broncos wide receiver has been traded to the Fins for a two second-round draft picks.Marshall, who’s originally from Winter Park, is exactly the kind of big, productive receiver the Dolphins have been lacking. Some ascribed his huge statistics to the skill…
Last week, we brought you the sad tale of Darrin Podder, handcuffed and hauled to jail by Broward Sheriff’s deputies for “littering” a 20-foot tree on a construction site in Pompano Beach that he’d been hired to landscape by Butters Construction. Podder was in the middle of replacing a row…
Here’s what’s happening in local news this Wednesday morning:As expected, Democrat Ted Deutch coasted to victory in the special election to replace Robert Wexler in the 19th Congressional District that straddles central Broward and Palm Beach counties. [Palm Beach Post]Four weeks after she was nearly beaten to death at a…
The so-called “Public Ethics Academy” at Florida Atlantic University is supposed to serve as something of a lifeboat of good government in Broward County’s sea of wrongdoing public officials. Instead the academy is nothing more than a symbol of the county’s ethically bankrupt nature, and it should be disbanded immediately. I say that not just because its…
If pink flamingos framed against curiously striped orange suns cause you to immediately start scrounging your pockets for a dollar bill… then you’re probably a redneck Floridian. As eponymous as the lotto symbol is to our din of sundrenched wealth, the Florida Lottery is actually struggling: Total sales for the…
When a corruption case strikes in North Broward, Woody Poitier has a peculiar way of being near the scene of the crime. He’s the Pompano Beach commissioner who appointed activist Vicente Thrower to an advisory committee of the city’s development agency. On Monday, Thrower was arrested on charges of unlawful…
In advance of the tea party rally Thursday, local activists are circulating tips for how to spot a liberal prankster seeking to infiltrate, then sabotage. According to a note sent to “patriots,” these spies can be detected thus: 1) They make signs with ludicrous allegations against politicians. 2) They can’t…
This week’s feature story details the escalating battle between Big Agriculture and the Humane Society, the organization behind a nationwide campaign to legislate the safety and comfort of farm animals. The Humane Society helped push through Florida’s “pregnant pigs” constitutional amendment in 2002 — its first such victory in the…
Tamarac homeowner LeRoy Browne moved from Washington D.C. to Paradise Estates in the 1980s because he was looking for, well, Paradise. But now his heavenly retreat is threatened: Browne’s house sits directly on a golf course that the city wants to rezone. The plan is to pave Browne’s Paradise and…
On March 10, 2008 Plantation police detectives confronted Tony Villegas at the Florida East Coast Railway depot in Fort Lauderdale with a search warrant. He told them he had been expecting them. By this time, detectives had been quietly questioning people about the murder of Melissa Britt Lewis for four…
Maucker, who oversaw the merger between the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel in 1982 and has been top editor since 1994, had great strengths and great flaws. In a lot of ways, he was a paradox — a corporate man to his core who managed to win the loyalty of the…
This weekend was eventful for animal rights activists in South Florida, especially for the people most staunchly opposed to businesses selling commercially bred puppies. Thursday in West Palm Beach, protesters held signs and chanted outside Palm Beach Puppies. Two activists were given citations that could cost more than $1,000 each…
That’s video from yesterday at the campaign headquarters of Ted Deutch, the Democract who’s running for the open 20th Congressional seat vacated by Robert Wexler. I wouldn’t dare wish for another musical act like Journey, but isn’t it time that some modern group conceives a campaign anthem that displaces “Don’t…
Perhaps you’ve seen the bright-green T-shirts worn by roadside newspaper distributors advertising a new slogan for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel: “The Sun-Sentinel – How grandpa used to get his news.”These T-shirts were a gift to the Sun-Sentinel, actually. From the Juice.See, a few weeks ago, the Sun-Sentinel held a “Best…
Your daily glance at the Broward and Palm Beach headlines:Randy Tunidor Sr. really was the tenant from hell. The man being held on charges of murdering Nova Professor Joseph Morrissey had been evicted several times before renting a home from Morrissey. Tunidor anticipated Morrissey’s eviction notice and allegedly told his…
