In a statement obtained by the Washington Post, Fox News Vice President Bill Shine said that “Representative West’s congressional and military experience along with his fearless approach to voicing key issues will provide a valuable point of view to the FOX News lineup."

Since losing his race, West has been hosting an online show on Pajamas Media on which he's described NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a “gnome,” called MSNBC host Touré a “coward,” and mocked Fox News’ own Brit Hume for wearing a salmon-colored shirt.

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The ill-named Timely Justice Act would require the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a review of a capital conviction by the State Supreme Court. The state would then be required to execute the defendant within 180 days of the warrant. So if signed intolaw, 13 of Florida's 405 death row inmates will be immediately issued death warrants. The legislation aims to save money and time but, as Rania Khalek pointed out, at the possible expense of innocent lives:

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"It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today," Pantoja wrote in a letter to the Florida Nation. "I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them."

Pantoja was referencing the recent Heritage Foundation study on Congress' immigration reform legislation, which was written by Jason Richwine, who also once wrote: "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against."

"Studies geared towards making – human beings – viewed as less because of their immigrant status to outright unacceptable claims, are at the center of the immigration debate," Pantoja wrote.

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True the Vote, a Houston-based Tea Party group that bills itself as anti-voter fraud, will acquire voting records from the St. Lucie County supervisor of elections in Florida, including 2012 voting records from West's race, as well as voter registration records since 2009. In a press release, True the Vote said that it will conduct a "reconstruction and review" of the race to determine "exactly what happened before, during and after," which will be "unprecedented in that it will be led not by government entities or political parties, but by concerned citizens."

The Broward-Palm Beach New-Times reports:

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There has always been a powerful current of self-mockery, or at least self-awareness, in Bay’s ludicrous “Transformers” movies, which embraced bigness, loudness, dumbness, visual incoherence and cartoonish female pulchritude (see: Fox, Megan, entire career of) as central formal elements and stylistic first principles. I wasn’t the only critic to observe that Bay’s enormous 2011 hit, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” had elements of avant-garde surrealism and elements of high camp, and could be described as a “performance-art act of juvenile Id-fulfillment.”

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And the phrase seems a fitting way to describe how a wealthy, global elite manages to bypass the often harsh inequalities that exist at many of the most expensive, members-only golf clubs around the world.

The well-to-do who can afford the expensive course fees only rarely recognize just how vastly different life is for those who toil on the grounds or carry the golf bags and live below the poverty line. GlobalPost set out to explore this divide in the highest realms of golf, from the Gary Player-designed course on the desperately poor outskirts of Myanmar’s capital Yangon to the Trump International Golf Club in a deeply divided West Palm Beach, Florida.

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Two congressmen from Florida, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, have raised this point in a letter to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, demanding to know the exact purpose of the celebrities' trip and how it was approved. The letter notes that under U.S. law "the licensing of financial transactions for 'tourist activities' in Cuba" are prohibited by law." According to OFAC, notes the letter, only Americans with a "full-time schedule of educational exchange activities that will result in meaningful interaction between the travelers and individuals in Cuba" are allowed to visit. "These restrictions are in place because the Cuban dictatorship is one of four U.S.-designated state sponsors of terrorism with one of the world’s most egregious human rights records," write Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart.

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Pulitzer, who married into the famous newspaper family, got her start in fashion by spilling orange juice on her clothes. A rich housewife with time to spare and a husband who owned orange groves, she opened a juice stand in 1959, and asked her seamstress to make dresses in colorful prints that would camouflage fruit stains.

The dresses hung on a pipe behind her juice stand and soon outsold her drinks. The company's dresses, developed with the help of partner Laura Robbins, a former fashion editor, soon caught on.

"Lilly has been a true inspiration to us and we will miss her," according to a statement on the Lilly Pulitzer brand Facebook page. "In the days and weeks ahead we will celebrate all that Lilly meant to us. Lilly was a true original who has brought together generations through her bright and happy mark on the world."

Her death was confirmed by Gale Schiffman of Quattlebaum Funeral and Cremation Services in West Palm Beach. She did not know Pulitzer's cause of death.

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Chris Moody from Yahoo! News reports that West is hosting an online talk show for Pajamas Media, and in recent episodes has called NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg a "gnome," MSNBC Host Touré a "coward," and made fun of Fox News' Brit Hume for wearing a pink shirt. From Yahoo:

"Not a fan of salmon?" [co-host John] Phillips asked him after a brief rant about Hume’s clothing.

"Eating salmon," West replied. "Not watching, you know, a guy dressed in salmon."

West also described his reaction to seeing a Calvin Klein ad with a male model wearing only underwear. "I was like ewww, you know?" he said.

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Obama fleshed out the details during a visit to a Miami port that's undergoing $2 billion in upgrades paid for with government and private dollars. The quick trip was designed to show that the economy and unemployment are top priorities for a president who also is waging high-profile campaigns on immigration reform and gun control.

Obama said the unemployment rate among construction workers was the highest of any industry, despite being cut nearly in half over the past three years.

"There are few more important things we can do to create jobs right now and strengthen our economy over the long haul than rebuilding the infrastructure that powers our businesses and economy," Obama said. "As president, my top priority is to make sure we are doing everything we can to reignite the true engine of our economic growth — and that is a rising, thriving middle class."

Among the proposals Obama called for, which require approval from Congress, are:

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Scott wrote a letter to the state university system chancellor asking for a report on the incident and saying he is "deeply disappointed" and it raises questions about "the lessons being taught in our classrooms."

From the Sun-Sentinel:

Instructor Deandre Poole's March 4 exercise in the Intercultural Communications class on the FAU Davie campus created a nationwide stir, with blogs and social media sites abuzz with complaints from critics who called it an affront to Christianity.

"This exercise will not be used again," an FAU statement said. "…We sincerely apologize for any offense this caused. Florida Atlantic University respects all religions and welcomes people of all faiths, backgrounds and beliefs."

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All the requests were detected and rejected, but the incident has nonetheless raised concerns about cyberthreats to online voting systems. The improper requests came from a small number of computer IP addresses overseas, which drew the attention of election workers. As NBC noted, "it is not clear whether the bogus requests were an attempt to influence a specific race, test the system or simply interfere with the voting." The originators of the phantom requests could not be traced, the grand jury report noted, as they used proxy servers that make Internet activity untraceable.

NBC noted that while there have been allegations of U.S. election system rigging in the past, experts believe this incident to be the first (although long-anticipated) documented cyberattack attempt. Via NBC:

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Police were called to the dorm after a fire alarm went off. Arriving officers found a man dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police told local TV stations they found an assault weapon and improvised explosive devices on the scene.

A university spokeswoman said the devices were found in Tower 1 dorm. Police said a bomb squad was sent to the campus.

About 500 students were evacuated from the dorm and a parking garage was closed.

The university cancelled classes through noon Monday as a precaution.

A statement on the university's website said the UCF Arena will open Monday morning to accommodate displaced students. Counselors would be available to talk to students who need assistance.

It was not immediately known whether the dead man is a student.

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"Just because I want to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot," Rubio said, adding: "Just because I believe that life, all life, at all stages of development, deserves to be protected," does not make him closed-minded.

"The people who are closed-minded in our society are the ones who love to preach about climate science" but ignore that "science has proven that life begins at conception."

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Jennifer Carroll's resignation was announced Wednesday, one day after she gave her resignation letter to Gov. Rick Scott. His chief of staff, Adam Hollingsworth, says her resignation was spurred by an investigation into the Allied Veterans of the World, which was once represented by Carroll.

Officials from that nonprofit Internet cafe company were recently arrested on racketeering charges. The owner was arrested Tuesday in connection to allegations that he made $290 million after supplying illegal gambling software in Florida and claiming the games' proceeds would benefit a veterans group. Authorities also interviewed Carroll.

Carroll's ties to the company were questioned when she was in the Legislature when she proposed a bill that would benefit Internet cafes.

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The documents, recently obtained through public-records requests by The American Independent, show that the Witherspoon Institute recruited a professor from a major university to carry out a study that was designed to manipulate public policy. In communicating with donors about the research project, Witherspoon’s president clearly expected results unfavorable to the gay-marriage movement.

The think tank’s efforts paid off. The New Family Structures Study came out just in time for opponents of gay marriage to cite it in multiple federal cases involving marriage equality – including two cases soon to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

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From the Miami Herald:

The bill, SB 58, bans courts or other legal authorities from using religious or foreign law as a part of a legal decision or contract relating to family law. Florida law would supercede foreign law regarding divorce, alimony, the division of marital assets, child support and child custody. The bill is ready to be heard on the House floor but it has more committee stops in the Senate. Last year, the bill passed the House but died in the Senate.

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From the AP:

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported Tuesday that the two ex-employees were charged with a third degree felony. But prosecutors back in January decided to place both of them on probation because neither has a criminal history.

Strategic Allied Consulting was hired by Republicans to do voter registration drives in Florida and other states. But last fall, the state party fired the company and took the additional step of filing an election fraud complaint against the company with state officials.

Rebekah Joy Paul submitted 20 fake voter registration applications, according to the FDLE, while Christian Davis Price submitted seven. Both alleged that they were told they would not get paid unless they submitted a certain number of applications, and Paul alleges that she was instructed not to register Democrats.

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Regardless of which names actually end up on the ballot in January 2016, there are two participants in a Florida primary happening right now: Jeb Bush and his ascendent former protégé, Marco Rubio. And it took on added intrigue this week with the flap over Bush’s book.

People who have worked in Florida politics say Rubio would be nowhere without the former governor. His initial election as a young state legislator; his meteoric rise in state House of Representatives to speaker after just five years; his improbable victory in the 2010 Republican Senate primary against establishment-backed Charlie Crist; his national visibility as a GOP rising star -- none of it would have happened without Bush’s imprimatur and guiding hand, they say.

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