Jim Greer sentenced to 18 months in prison

Jim Greer, hand shaker, party thrower, power seeker, former head of the Republican Party of Florida, was sentenced in Orlando on Wednesday to 18 months in state prison.

Greer, 50 and a father of five, last month pleaded guilty to money laundering and theft charges, admitting he had created a company called Victory Strategies to siphon to himself and an associate some $200,000 of party donations....

Free-spending ex-Florida GOP chief Greer gets 18 months in prison

ORLANDO — Jim Greer, hand shaker, party thrower, power seeker, former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was sentenced on Wednesday to 18 months in state prison plus one year of probation.

Greer, 50 and a father of five, last month pleaded guilty to four counts of theft and one count of money laundering, admitting he had created a company called Victory Strategies to siphon to himself and an associate some $200,000 of party donations....

Everglades Python Challenge hunters on trail of invasive snakes

The crowd gathered on the grass around the man with the bag. In the bag was a 13-foot Burmese python. This was last month, a hot, sunny Saturday morning, in Davie at a University of Florida research center, the official start of the state-sanctioned snake hunt in the Everglades called the Python Challenge.

Gawkers, contestants and cameras waited for the tutorial by Jeff Fobb, a snake expert with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. He let the python out of the bag but held on to her tail. He pointed out what she wasn't doing. She wasn't trying to attack him. What she was doing was trying to get away. She slithered around the ground. People gasped and took pictures. He quickly grabbed her behind the head....

Biological mother makes mission of contesting adoption after 31 years

Joy Hunley crossed her arms and stood still. She watched her attorney walk up to the clerk in the courthouse in Clearwater to ask for the adoption records a judge finally had said she could see. She breathed in. She breathed out.

Something happened in July of 1981. It triggered a process at the end of which Joy no longer had custody of her toddler daughter. For more than a quarter century, she convinced herself she had made an awful mistake, had signed something she shouldn't have signed. Over the last few years, though, she had learned new information. She believed she had been the victim of a fraud. ...

Monstrous St. Petersburg sign: right words; wrong message

The city wanted a sign saying St. Petersburg out on the Pinellas County side of the Howard Frankland Bridge. It just couldn't afford it. Local businessman Bill Edwards did a few things. He paid for it. He decided it had to be huge, because "if you're going to put up a sign," he reasoned, “put up a sign.” And he wanted it to be finished in time for the Republican National Convention in August so those thousands of visiting strangers would see it and know where they were. It was nice of him to do all that. ...

Wisdom: Artist Frank Strunk faces void left by Mia Lucretia

St. Petersburg's Frank Strunk III, the well-known metal artist, has a tree-trunk torso, tattoos up and down his arms, red-head scruff on his face and a hairdo that conjures a bowed-up rooster. How he looks and what he makes seem somehow linked. His stern vibe is an almost imposing industrial aesthetic. But these days? Conversation with him gets most real when he talks about his dog. Michael Kruse, Times staff writer ...

Pumpkin conspiracy: Nothing can squash appetite for this gourd

Pumpkin penetration.

Those are the first two words of the title of a recently released chart from a food industry research company called Datassentials. It manages at once to be utterly unsurprising and totally startling. Over the last five years the use of pumpkin flavor in beverages at major restaurants in this country has gone up . . . 400 percent.

Starbucks has the Pumpkin Spice Latte. Fancy bars coast to coast make pumpkin cocktails that cost 13 bucks. Breweries, craft or not, have Punkin Ale, Pumpkin Ale, Imperial Pumpkin Ale . . . ...

Freed from death row, he faces a new murder charge

A black man named Joseph Green Brown was accused of raping and killing a white woman in 1973 in a Tampa clothing store called the Just Kids Shoppe. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Fitted for a burial suit. Granted a stay some 15 hours before his scheduled electrocution in 1983. He was set free in 1987.

In the years since then, Brown worked as a truck driver, a homeless shelter cook, a convenience store clerk. He got married. He moved from Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, N.C. He talked to church groups about staying out of trouble....

47-percenters share low income but not outlook on Romney

Middle of the day, middle of the week, and two instructors and a dozen others readied for a waltz class in the Hillsborough County retirement enclave Sun City Center. They have time to read and watch the news. They had heard about what Mitt Romney said.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," the Republican presidential candidate said in a speech to a small group of rich donors a while back in Boca Raton. A video of which was leaked earlier this week. He said this 47 percent are "people who pay no income tax" and "who are dependent upon government" and "believe that they are victims."...

'Janesville' shorthand for 'middle class'

JANESVILLE, Wis. — The Labor Day parade here in Paul Ryan's hometown started with a police siren. It moved slowly down Milwaukee Street, followed by clowns, a green-fatigued Vietnam vet with a rifle and a limp, a high school marching band's pimple-faced clarinetists, members of the United Auto Workers Local 95, and its many retirees.

Sitting in a lawn chair on the curb, Lisa Hansen watched the parade move past in the direction of her former workplace — the shuttered General Motors plant on the bank of the Rock River, more than 4 million empty square feet surrounded by chain-link fence and barbed wire....

Inside the Big Tent the theme is diversity (or the lack of it)

Inside the Big Tent on Thursday, the theme was diversity (or lack thereof) — of opinions on Paul Ryan's speech, and in racial representation at the RNC.

Paul Ryan's speech was … (insert opinion here)

Paul Ryan's speech was dazzling but also deceiving and distracting (foxnews.com). Paul Ryan's speech was admirably reckless red meat from a cheesehead (the New Yorker). Paul Ryan's speech was "the emergence of a new generation of Republican leaders willing to reshape the main pillars of a social safety net that has been in place since the 1960s" (Wall Street Journal). Paul Ryan's speech was greeted with deafening applause (Tampa Bay Times). Paul Ryan's speech hit the Republican G-spot with the force of 10,000 vibrators (Esquire). Paul Ryan's speech was a masterpiece (CNN). Paul Ryan's speech was inspiring and electrifying (Catholic Online). Paul Ryan's speech was exciting because the speeches before him were so boring (the Guardian). Paul Ryan's speech was hypocritical (the New Yorker). Paul Ryan's speech was about trust (foxnews.com). Paul Ryan's speech was lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies (Washington Post, Slate, Salon, Politifact). Paul Ryan's speech was tendentious (Atlantic). Paul Ryan's speech was mendacious (@Daniel_Sweeney). Paul Ryan's speech was appallingly disingenuous and also the most effective speech of the convention (New York)....

Race proving more toxic in this election than in 2008

Inside the Big Tent on Wednesday, the theme was tolerance — for heat, for long drives, for no sales, for each other.

so much for a post-racial political debate

There are black Republicans. Just not many. But Jacksonville's Chelsi Henry, 24, feels embraced by the party, she told the Times' Tia Mitchell on Tuesday in Tampa.

"I happen to be an African-American, but that's not all of who I am," she said....

Inside the Big Tent it's all about messages

Inside the Big Tent the theme of the day Tuesday was messages — from a busload of trapped delegates, from an actor who sees one where there are many, and from a very optimistic developer.

Is this the most provocative thing said so far?

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse: "Fact-checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."...

Inside the Big Tent it's all about success

Inside the Big Tent Monday the theme was differing measures of success — the police and protesters see the demonstrations a little differently.

Protesters blame bad weather, police for poor turnout

The Times' report on Monday's surprisingly meager Coalition to March on the RNC:

About 5,000 demonstrators were expected.

But by midmorning, as Tampa felt some minor effects from Tropical Storm Isaac, the number of protesters out at Perry Harvey Sr. Park didn't reach 500. There were as many journalists as there were protesters....