The F State (Florida)
Among the 11 proposed constitutional amendments on the November ballot in Florida is one to make pregnant pigs more comfortable by forbidding farmers to house them in "inhumane" 2-foot-by-7-foot cages, even though, reportedly, only two farmers in the state still use the cages, and they say the cages prevent injury to the pigs. If it passes, it will likely be the only animal right enshrined in a U.S. constitution. [Florida Times-Union, 8-10-02]
In August, the state attorney in Palm Beach, Fla., began investigating psychic Linda Marks after two former clients accused her of exploiting them. Veronica Lynn Boys admitted that she had paid Marks $1.1 million over a seven-year-period, including $150,000 cash on the spot at their first session, when Marks warned Boys of bad luck as a small snake emerged from an egg Marks had placed on a table. Also, an 88-year-old woman said she signed over her condo to Marks, and paid $22,000 for furniture and improvements to it, under similar circumstances. [Sun-Sentinel, 8-10-02]
Don Bates, 55, running for the school board in Inverness, Fla., as one of the self-proclaimed "God guys" who would beef up religion at board meetings, resigned in August when it came to light that he had been arrested in 1994 for masturbating (while naked from the waist down) in a parking lot in nearby Crystal River. The day before the story broke, he had asked supporters for unusually large campaign contributions, citing "the scriptures." [St. Petersburg Times, 8-17-02]
In Gainesville, Fla., in August, accused drug dealer Marcus Isom, 26, was convicted of ordering the murder of Lemuel Larkin, who he believed stole from him. According to testimony, Isom had consulted both Georgia spiritual adviser "The Root Man" and "Miss Cleo's" psychic hotline to find out who scammed him, and both gave descriptions that led Isom to finger Larkin. Investigators believe a man named Truth Miller was the hit man, killing Larkin as he emerged from Boobie's Bar in Archer, Fla. [Gainesville Sun, 8-17-02]
Four of the five county commissioners in Pensacola, Fla., were indicted for land-sales corruption in April, and by September, two had agreed to testify against a third (the alleged leader, the former dean of the state senate, C.D. Childers). Among the principals are a commissioner who owns a funeral home with a drive-through window (and who, as a payoff, arranged for bedroom furniture for his paramour, who rejected it as too cheap); a man who needed the bribe money to buy his son's wife breast implants because she said she was "tired of wearing a training bra"; a huge, cigar-chomping car salesman who always carries thousands of dollars in cash; and two commissioners who denied they violated the state open-meetings law during their private scam sessions, in that one of them was always careful to remain silent. [St. Petersburg Times, 8-11-02] |
