from Sun Sentinel

An article in the Daily Mail, tweets from Nancy Grace and other reports are claiming that representatives for Casey Anthony are currently shopping her first post-acquittal interview for $1.5 million.

While many media outlets say they do not exchange money for interviews, some offer to pay high amounts for photographs and other images. After taking a public-relations hit in several high-profile cases, ABC News representatives said the media giant will no longer be buying photos or video as a way of getting a news subject to cooperate, reports The Daily Beast .

“We can book just about anyone based on the strength of our journalism, the excellence of our anchors, correspondents, and producers, and the size of our audience,” said ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider in an article from The Daily Beast . “These licensing deals had become a crutch, and an unnecessary one.”

According to TMZ, NBC representatives have said they are not among media outlets in the battle for Anthony’s first interview.

An NBC representative told TMZ, “NBC News has not and will not be in a bidding war for a Casey Anthony interview. No money has or will be offered, no licensing or other arrangements. If we were to conduct an interview it would be under our standards.”

TMZ  also reported that Anthony’s parents, George and Cindy, have been offered $250,000 to appear on a syndicated talk show.

from the Sun Sentinel

Gov. Rick Scott has made amends with animal rights activists.

They had been unhappy with his alligator hide boots.

They also were displeased by his recent comments that alligators were his least favorite Florida animal and that he wouldn’t mind shooting one.

But on Friday the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida issued a news release praising Scott’s line item budget veto of $150,000 to promote alligator products.

Spokesman Don Anthony says the foundation is happy that Scott “recognizes in a difficult year, marketing the meat and skin of alligators killed in Florida” should not be a state priority.

from khaughney@tribune.com & Sun Sentinel

Thousands of the state’s poorest Floridians will have to take a drug test if they want to qualify for welfare assistance, under a law signed by Gov. Rick Scott Monday.

The idea, plugged by Scott and the GOP-dominated Legislature, is that drug tests will root out welfare recipients who are using public dollars to buy drugs. But Democrats and advocates for the poor say the requirement could violate individuals’ constitutional rights to privacy, and the American Civil Liberties Union is likely to challenge the law in court.
“While there are certainly legitimate needs for public assistance, it is unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction,” Scott said in a news release. “This new law will encourage personal accountability and will help to prevent the misuse of tax dollars.”

According to legislative analysts, 113,346 people are receiving temporary cash assistance. However, only people 18 and older will be tested, and officials from the Department of Children and Families estimate that will total about 4,400 adults who apply for aid each month.

Officials estimate the initial screenings would cost about $10 per person – refundable if the individual passes – and first-time failures will be disqualified for one year from receiving benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. A second failure disqualifies the individual for three years.

TANF recipients are eligible for cash assistance for a lifetime cumulative total of 48 months, and their eligibility is checked every six months.

Advocates for the poor worry about the cost of the tests – which one DCF official said could go as high as $40 — and also about the message the new rule sends to people already facing financial problems.
State Rep. Gwen Clarke-Reed, D-Deerfield Beach, said the new law could hurt families by delaying welfare money they rely upon. And, Clarke-Reed noted, a potential welfare recipient, presumably lacking cash, must pay for their own drug test.

“How are you going to have money for that?” she asked.
Mitch Ceasar, chairman of the Broward County Democratic Party, said the new law was “very wrong headed” and motivated by political grandstanding. “This is just the governor and the Legislature appealing to their far-right constituency,” he said.

Whether the law passes legal muster isn’t a concern of its authors, he added.

“This Legislature and this extreme governor care less about whether the bill stands up constitutionally,” he said. “They care more about the message they’re sending to their extreme right-wing groups.”
Sid Dinerstein, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, said the law could have several benefits, including forcing addicts to confront their problem. It would also serve taxpayers.
“If it separates an addict from public assistance then it’s a benefit to everybody, including the children of the addict,” he said. “The thought of us giving tax dollars to someone who has a substance abuse problem is absurd.”

Richard DeNapoli, chairman of the Broward County Republican Party, agreed, saying Scott campaigned for the law. “It was something he promised to implement when he was running for office and he lived up to his promise,” he said.

However, the new law does allow DCF to designate a person to receive funds on behalf of children whose parent fails a drug test. This could include an immediate family member.

Florida’s welfare caseload spiked as the economy tanked and the housing market folded. But it is slowly starting to decline as the state begins to recover. The 52,911 families receiving assistance in May was 6.1 percent below the total 12 months earlier, DCF said.

No other state currently requires drug testing for welfare recipients, but a number of states are considering similar action.

The effectiveness of testing is unknown. A pilot program that tested some welfare recipients between 1999 to 2001 found that there was little difference in employment and earnings between those who tested positive for drug use and those who were clean, according to an evaluation by a Florida State University researcher.

The American Civil Liberties Union has indicated that it may challenge the new law in addition to a number of other bills that the governor has already approved or is likely to sign in the coming weeks. The group is slated to announce action today related to a separate order by Scott that mandates drug-testing of all state employees.
In 1999, Michigan began drug-testing all welfare recipients, prompting the ACLU to sue. In 2003, a federal appeals court ruled that universal testing was unconstitutional, and the ACLU and the state reached an agreement that allowed drug tests of welfare recipients only if there was reasonable suspicion that the person was using drugs.

Howard Simon, the executive director of ACLU of Florida, released a statement saying that the governor was ignoring privacy law and treating people who have lost their jobs “like suspected criminals.”

Simon said that the governor surely was aware of the 2003 a federal court ruling.

“Nevertheless, their zeal to score political points on the backs of Florida poor once again overrode their duty to uphold the Constitution,” Simon said of Scott and his GOP supporters. “Searching the bodily fluids of those in need of assistance is a scientifically, fiscally and constitutionally unsound policy.”

‘Bath salts’ banned

In a separate action Tuesday, Scott also signed a measure that would make so-called “bath salts” a Schedule 1 controlled substance, lumping it in with drugs such as heroin. The bill, HB 1039, was a major priority for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who issued a temporary statewide ban on the sale of the hallucinogenic substances earlier this year.

“Bath salts,” which could be legally purchased at some convenience stores and smoke shops, are usually snorted, although the crystals can be smoked or swallowed. They can cause increased heart rate, hallucinations, paranoia, seizures and kidney failure.

Staff writers Robert Nolin and Kate Santich contributed. khaughney@tribune.com or 850-224-6214. Follow her on Twitter @khaughney.

by K Haughney – tribune.com

College students seeking to vote at their campus precinct will find it harder to do. So will women who’ve changed their name but not re-registered before an election.

The time for early voting would be cut from 14 days to six.

Groups like the League of Women Voters will find it tougher to register voters.

And citizens attempting to amend the constitution will have to gather more than 600,000 signatures in two years instead of four.

All these changes are in Republican-backed bills steaming through the Florida Legislature, despite vigorous opposition from county supervisors of elections as well as Democrats, who’ve labeled them GOP attempts at “voter suppression.”

The election supervisors worry that the changes — after two relatively problem-free elections — will inconvenience and frustrate voters.

“If there’s something we don’t want to happen, it’s that registered voters lose confidence in the process if they’re faced with obstacles when they try to exercise their right to vote,” said Evelyn Perez-Verdia, spokeswoman for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office.

Republican lawmakers argue that the changes will stamp out fraud and save local governments money.

“If we don’t take action to put an end to the fraud, our vote doesn’t matter as much,” said Rep. Eric Eisnaugle, R-Orlando, during a House debate on HB 1355 last week.

But their arguments about rampant fraud are on shaky ground.

The office of Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who served under two Republican governors, has said the past few elections have been clean, thanks to reforms passed after the notorious 2000 election. Chris Cate, a spokesman for Browning, said via email the state Division of Elections is trying to determine if there have been any voter fraud cases referred to the state lately.

Eisnaugle, on the House floor, recalled that Orange County election officials received a registration form for “Mickey Mouse,” among other fictitious names, in 2008. But Orange Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles says the “Mickey Mouse” registration was rejected by his office — and that firm evidence of voter fraud is hard to come by.

Asked to cite evidence of fraud, Sen. John Thrasher replied, “You’d have to ask the election supervisors about that.” Thrasher is the former chairman of the state Republican Party.

But despite the lack of evidence of fraud — and protests from election supervisors — Republicans in both chambers are moving full speed ahead.

Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, said there was some “good stuff” in the bill and said the proposal to cut early voting may be an “efficiency.” SB 2086 would allow just six days for early voting, with sponsor Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, arguing that it will save local government money.

“There is a trickle of two to three people per day at a very high cost to keep those public libraries and polls open and people working them and so forth,” said Diaz de la Portilla.

In the 2008 general election, 32 percent of all voters voted early, according to a state report, including those who cast absentee ballots. But 52 percent were Democrats — compared to 30 percent who were Republican — prompting Democrats to charge this is an effort to hold down their vote in a presidential election year.

Cowles said that in non-presidential years, a shorter early voting period would be fine. But in presidential election years, turnout rises — and in 2008, there were long early-voting lines reported by many counties.

“I think in presidential elections, we need more time,” Cowles said.

But elections supervisors are most troubled by a section of both bills that would make it difficult for people to change their names or addresses at the polls on Election Day. That’s allowed under current law, and tens of thousands of voters — many of them college students and women who were newly married or divorced — took advantage in 2008.

During the 2008 election, Broward County processed 5,000 name and address changes, Perez-Verdia said. Cowles said in Orange County, there were 3,000 address changes that year.

The House would allow only voters whose previous address was in the same county to change it at the polls. The Senate version, in its final committee today, does not allow even that: voters with a new address or name change would have to cast provisional ballots and then later show proof of their identity and residency.

Democrats, who relied heavily on college students in the 2008 presidential race as they will in 2012, say they fear that voters forced to cast provisional ballots won’t provide follow-up documentation, meaning their votes won’t be counted.

“Clearly this is a partisan power grab by the Republicans and its shameful,” said Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff. “It’s clear this bill is designed to disenfranchise college students, members of the military, women and minorities.”

The 157-page House bill also gives groups seeking to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot two years to gather sufficient signatures, rather than the four years in current law and sets out more stringent requirements for voter registration groups, including one that they turn in voter cards within 48 hours of them being filled out by a potential voter.

khaughney@tribune.com or 850-224-6214. Follow her on Twitter @khaughney.