Notes For Thursday, January 16, 2003

BROGAN TO LEAVE, BUT NOT ON A BULLET TRAIN. No surprise that Brogan wants to go. Or that Bush is uninterested in carrying out the public's constitutionally mandated desire for a bullet train. 8:09 AM [Go to current Florida Politics site (no popup ads)]

BOB GRAHAM UPDATE. Senator Bob Graham is locking down the Florida money. "Graham is calling money people every day and asking them either to help him raise funds if he does run or, if they have prior relationships with other candidates, to withhold their commitments to the others for now", reports.the Miami Herald's Tyler Bridges.

The Tampa Tribune's political writer Bill Marchman has a thoughtful analysis of Graham's chances here. There is a more extensive analysis in The New Republic.

Florida Blog has some links to Andrew Sullivan's cheap shots at Graham, and responses thereto. More responses to Sullivan here, here and here.

8:04 AM [Go to current Florida Politics site (no popup ads)]

DEATH PENALTY PANDERING. The Sun Sentinel editorial board says Gov. Bush is on "the right track" in considering each death penalty case indivividually before making a decision on whether to commute a death sentence. And just how many death sentences has our Governor commuted? In fact, Bush is on record saying the death penalty works just fine as it is. And, when Bill McBride "In last fall's race for governor . . . said he supported the death penalty but called for suspending executions to ensure the system was working fairly . . . Bush responded by airing ads accusing McBride of being against the death penalty." Bush, like Bill Clinton, is using the death penalty as a political device; period.

Learn about Florida's death penalty at Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. 7:52 AM [Go to current Florida Politics site (no popup ads)]

GOV. BUSH INJECTS HIMSELF INTO NATIONAL POLITICS (YET AGAIN). First Gov. Bush stuck his nose into the Trent Lott matter." Today he "will join his brother, President Bush, in what could become a landmark legal battle aimed at ending affirmative action. The Florida governor intends to make his controversial One Florida Initiative the centerpiece of a legal brief his office will file with the U.S. Supreme Court, an argument designed to buttress his brother's contention that race-based admissions to universities are unconstitutional."

Peter Wallsten, always quick to praise our Governor, claims that while "the [One Florida] program was initially contentious, the uproar has subsided as the state releases statistics each year showing stable -- and even slightly increasing, in some cases -- minority enrollment in schools and minority contracting with the government." Wallsten misstates things. Controversy remains over the One Florida scheme and the phoney numbers ginned up by the state to justify it. For example, the numbers relating to certified minority contractors working with the state agencies are not to be believed - agencies know full well they need, at least foe the forseeable future, to keep up some minority contractors on board. And, at Florida's leading university, "[s]ince Bush's order banned the the consideration of race in university admissions, the percentage of black freshmen at UF has dropped from 11.8 percent to 7.2 percent", according to the St Pete Times. And, where are the numbers on Law School admissions, particularly at UF?

Isn't it convenient that the Governor would ask the most right wing component of U.S. Government (the Scalia Five) to put its stamp of approval on the "One Florida" scam. However, one good thing may come out of it: by putting One Florida at issue in the Supreme Court, national civil rights groups will be forced to give One Florida the critical scrutiny it has never received.
6:30 AM [Go to current Florida Politics site (no popup ads)]