The life of Felix I. Rodriguez provides a tour through the dark heart of America. From the Bay of Pigs fiasco to Vietnam to the El Salvador death squads to the Iran-Contra scandal, the Cuban exile and self-described “CIA hero” was there. His most famous assassination mission came in 1967,…
It’s about 10 p.m. at the smoky jazz bar O’Hara’s (722 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale), and the place is full of the usual 30- and 40-something singles. Dave Shelley and Bluestone plays funk on-stage. A female bass player with blond dreads bobs her head funkily. I am just…
Battle-scarred Hospital A mother speaks: I just finished reading “The Hospital on the Hill” (Wyatt Olson, September 9). It’s enough to bring tears to my eyes. Is there anyone at the upper levels of government to whom I can write? What needs to be done to ensure that Edward Seiler…
Tailpipe thought that developer Gary Posner’s sunny promises to keep the Hollywood Playhouse afloat were too good to be true. Last September, Posner and his partner, Patricia Peretz, bought the theater building on Washington Street where the fiscally-troubled playhouse has been putting on award-winning plays for 50 years. They promised…
So last week, I told Tim Donnelly, head of the Broward State Attorney’s Office public corruption unit, that his office seemed pretty much useless. And Donnelly came back with: “Well, it seems like when we do prosecute public officials, nobody notices.” Which public officials had his office prosecuted? “The sheriff…
Military Intelligence Really is an oxymoron: I am not surprised by Wyatt Olson’s article, “The Hospital on the Hill” (September 9).We have the exact same situation in the Grand Junction Veterans Hospital here in Colorado. The atmosphere is one of retaliation and fear of job loss. The associate director, Patt…
In a well-worn T-shirt and shorts, Ed Little appeared a bit disheveled. There was stubble on his face, and his graying blond hair was uncombed — not surprising, perhaps, for anyone disturbed at home on a Sunday afternoon. He stood at the wooden gate of his brick patio, which was…
Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman should know ethics. As a lawyer, she specializes in defending politicians against ethics complaints. And her law partner, Stuart Michelson, is likely the most prolific defender of accused pols in the county. The pair met back in the early 1990s, when Lieberman, then mayor of…
From a distance, the West Palm Beach Veterans Administration Medical Center sits there like a castle on a hill. Just west of I-95 on Blue Heron Road, the veterans hospital perches atop a man-made knoll anchored by a cavernous parking garage. A single, narrow drive curls up to the hospital’s…
Who the hell let Frances in? Long before Florida’s second hurricane this year blustered through the door and commenced spilling drinks, throwing the furniture around, and peeling away roofs, she had worn out her welcome. Frances was one neurotic storm. Loud, weepy, volatile, ponderous. Preposterously unpredictable. In the lead-up, on…
Everglades Paved Over? In search of the truth: Re: Eric Alan Barton’s “Bitter Sugar: (August 26), “We could never figure out where he was,” says Gaston Cantens, the Fanjuls’ new lobbyist for public relations, explaining why the richest farmers in the United States couldn’t come to help a Mexican worker…
Listen up, Jamaicans. There are approximately 5 million of you on the planet — 2.6 million on the island and another 2.5 million living in Toronto, New York City, London, and especially here in South Florida. Parts of Miami-Dade County and especially the Broward enclaves of Lauderhill and Miramar are…
In the Corner Pocket Dave Lovik, who was playing pool the other day at the Cloud 9 bar in Davie, described Ed Heeney, the former Broward County resident who’s now running for state representative in Palm Beach County, like this: “He’s one of those guys you can’t wait to stay…
Richard Grayson is an anomaly. Though politicians usually don’t discuss their faults and neuroses, he’ll happily tell you that he’s cheap, anxiety-ridden, susceptible to panic attacks, and medicated daily with antipsychotics. “But I’m generally laid-back,” Grayson insists at the Roasted Bean coffeehouse across from Nova Southeastern University on University Drive…
“They flee from me, that sometime did me seek, with naked foot stalking within my chamber.” Would the forsaken 16th-century poet Thomas Mallory feel even lonelier today, when so many bedchambers are abuzz with the cricket song of battery-powered lovers and the month-old Hollywood Hustler Store (1500 E. Sunrise Blvd.,…
Afflict the Sweet Sweeten life for the afflicted: Bravo to Eric Alan Barton and New Times for the story on the Fanjul family and its wicked ways (“Bitter Sugar,” August 26). This type of writing and the reporter’s active prodding to force the Fanjuls to do right by injured employee…
420 Lux Apts w Rivr Vw. Cheap. Build it and they will come. Right? But build it and build it and build it? Maybe not. With more than 1,100 new luxury rental units just coming on the market and many more condos waiting to be swept up, downtown Fort Lauderdale…
For a glimpse into the mind of Pompano Beach businessman and admitted felon Steven West, flip through his company policy manual, a document positively Dilbertian in its detachment from usual human comportment. Among its edicts: “If I am talking to someone else do not interrupt me in the middle of…
A man with a horribly painful case of shingles can’t get medicine. A woman suffering from an agonizingly abscessed tooth is denied care. A homeless man with pneumonia is released from the hospital with no medication and no instructions to see a doctor. These are just a few true stories…
In the western expanse of Palm Beach County, where sugar cane stretches to the horizon like an endless green sea, sits the Osceola Farms refinery, an island of grime-covered cement, an eyesore of human creation. A maze of steel pipes rings the five-story factory that billows waste from a pair…
You Need Bad Guys To get bad guys: I just finished Trevor Aaronson’s August 19 story on Luis Martinez (“An Imperfect Murder”). I think Martinez is guilty as hell. However, I’ve got good news and bad news… You don’t catch the shitbags of the world — like Max Charlot –…
How can Tailpipe be delicate about this? We’re talkin’ here about, er, bathroom mechanics — the things you do when you just gotta go. It was apparently an overpowering sense of urgency in that area that, on May 1, 2002, sent 36-year-old Fort Lauderdale resident James Reed into the public…
