Word: floridas
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...Charles Zelden, a history professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale and an expert on judicial politics in Florida, says Rothstein could still "create a real mess" in the state's public arena. He doubts that Rothstein - who could be facing life in prison on the charges of fraud, racketeering and money laundering leveled against him - would plead guilty if he hadn't struck a beneficial deal with the feds. They in turn almost certainly expect Rothstein "to name names," says Zelden, not only of those who might have aided the Ponzi scheme, "but of politicians who may have...
...terms of his plea deal. But if Rothstein does sing, says Zelden, he's "likely to name more Republicans" than Democrats because Rothstein gave the GOP the lion's share of his political donations - more than $600,000 from Rothstein and his law firm in the past five years. (Florida's Democratic Party got about $200,000.) "Republicans are the ones running the state today," Zelden notes...
Under that scenario, Florida's mess also becomes the country's in at least one respect. The state's GOP Senate primary contest between Crist and former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio is widely considered a focal point of this year's internecine war between moderates and conservatives for control of the Republican Party. Should the Rothstein scandal leak into that powder keg, it could exacerbate what already promises to be a particularly nasty campaign on both sides before the August primary. (See the 25 crimes of the century...
...Rubio and his conservative backers have fixed political floodlights on a photo of Crist sharing a hug with President Obama last year as the governor welcomed federal stimulus money into Florida. But they probably won't be so eager to exploit the support Crist received from Rothstein (who, by the way, helped Crist blow out the candles on that $52,000 birthday cake), because some of those conservative boosters may well be shown to have received Rothstein's dirty largesse themselves. They could include GOP legislators in Tallahassee, where federal agents last month came calling to question politicians from both...
...judge by the frequency with which we go. But judge for yourself whether you think we're being reckless with the odds we're playing with. The chances of being attacked by a shark while swimming in the ocean, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History, are 1 in 11.5 million. The chances of a fatal attack are 1 in 264.1 million. Both odds decrease somewhat if you are bleeding or, it turns out, peeing. By comparison, the chances of drowning during a visit to the beach are just 1 in 2 million...