Like all of you, I have been mesmerized watching reports about the catastrophe in Texas from Hurricane Harvey. Just couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and couldn’t help thinking what it would be like if a storm like Harvey washed ashore from the mouth of Tampa Bay.
If Mark James Asay is executed tonight, that will be the first time the state of Florida has used capital punishment on a white man for killing a black person.
People go to sports for escape, entertainment, wagering (hey, it happens), or any number of other reasons. I’ve been around sports all my life and covered a wide variety of them for 40-some years as a newspaper hack.
The argument made by supporters of Confederate monuments is based on the premise that the statues and markers preserve southern heritage. I have heard that point repeated often by those folks and so have you. So, in the interest of moving the discussion forward, I ask a simple question: What is so great about the heritage that it’s worth creating a community-wide divide to preserve?
The buffet restaurant owned by my friends Ralph and Nancy Lupton in Temple Terrace was as stuffed Monday morning as one of my plates when I go through the chow line there. Don’t tell my doctor about the times I piled it high with fried chicken, bacon, sausage gravy and all those other things that are supposed to be bad for a body. Put it this way, if that’s bad then I don’t want good.
If Hillsborough County commissioners were looking to the community for guidance about the Confederate war monument that has been so much in the news lately, even the oft-tone deaf representatives couldn’t fail to hear what was being shouted: Move the damn thing.
State Sen. Tom Lee of Thonotosassa has never been shy about discussing his ambition to become Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, but he has stopped short of formally declaring his candidacy to run in 2018. That likely is about to change. “It’s my intention to run for the Republican nomination (for CFO) in 2018 and it is my intention to announce my candidacy this fall,” he told me.
