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Orlando Sentinel – Tea Party Cand. To File Ethics Complaint vs …

Sink has ordered her office to conduct a thorough and immediate review into whether she misused the state plane to pick up and drop off family members. Sink reimbursed the state for the cost of those flights before questions were raised. But the lawmakers say the review might not be good enough. In this letter, they cite a story in which Sink reacts to a Miami Herald investigation of financier Allen Stanford, who struck a deal with state regulators to sell investments and move vast amounts of money offshore without government oversight.

Sink said the Office of Regulation should not investigate itself and the lawmakers are asking Sink to apply the same criteria to her office. If its good for the goose, it should be good for the gander, Dorworth said in an interview.
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Four House Republicans ask for investigation into Sink’s use of state planes

US Constitution, Article 1, Section 10:
“No State shall… pass any… Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts…

Gov. Charlie Crist said Monday he is considering ordering a moratorium on home foreclosures, “especially during the holidays.”

In an informal gathering with reporters following a news conference, Crist was asked what he thought of copying California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures.
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But according to Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “any belief Greenspan ever had in truly free markets was abandoned long ago. While Greenspan long ago wrote in favor of a truly free market in banking, including the gold standard that such markets always adopt, he then proceeded to work for two decades as leader and chief advocate of the Federal Reserve, which continually inflates the money supply and manipulates interest rates. Advocates of free banking understand that when the government inflates the currency, it artificially increases prices and causes booms in certain sectors of the economy, followed by inevitable busts.

But not only did Greenspan lead the inflation behind the  dot-com bubble and the real estate boom, he blamed the market for their treacherous collapses. Greenspan should have recognized that what he wrote in 1966 of the boom preceding the 1929 crash applied here: ‘The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market–triggering a fantastic speculative boom.’ Instead, he superficially blamed ‘infectious greed.’

“Should it be any shock that Greenspan now blames the free market for today’s meltdown–rather than the Fed’s policies, which fueled an inflationary housing boom, which rewarded reckless lenders and borrowers from Wall Street to Main Street? Greenspan didn’t mention the word ‘inflation’ once in his testimony.
Whatever Greenspan’s economic philosophy is, it is not anything resembling a free market.”

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. His articles have been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared on the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, CNN, CNBC, and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

Some of Brevard County’s most widely known farming and ranching families voiced their concerns to state and county water-management officials Thursday about flooding on their properties during and after Tropical Storm Fay in August.
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Crist asked his agencies to provide requests that included plans for a 10-percent cut. He’s hoping that’s not what’s required when he presents his version of the state’s spending plan in January, but his department heads have painted what it would look like if it were.

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“Are we all socialists now?” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Have we learned nothing from the devastation that socialist policies wrought worldwide in the twentieth century? Government intervention distorts markets and causes economic dislocations, no matter whether Uncle Sam controls private companies by regulation or assumes public ownership outright.

“A crisis doesn’t transform poison into medicine. Over decades, government manipulation of money, credit, and mortgages poisoned this economy and left it dangerously weak. Now Hank Paulson and his comrades are hooking up IV tubes filled with more of the same poison–bailouts, loan guarantees, cheap money, and more burdensome regulations–and hoping we will lie still and trust in their cure.

“But the real cure is capitalism, not more doses of socialism. We should act quickly to put government in its place, by rolling back the interventionist measures that caused the present emergency. Government’s proper role is to punish fraud and enforce contracts, not to own and manage the economy. We cannot achieve financial health unless we are willing to free the markets.”

Yaron Brook is executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and a contributing editor of The Objective Standard. His articles have been featured in major newspapers such as USA Today, the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Providence Journal and the Orange County Register. Dr. Brook is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV shows, having appeared in the new Fox Business Network, FOX News Channel, CNN, CNBC, and C-SPAN. Dr. Brook, a former finance professor, lectures on Objectivism, capitalism, business and foreign policy at college campuses, community groups and corporations across America and throughout the world.

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, opening a sea route to vast uncharted territories that awaited the spread of Western civilization. Centuries later, the ensuing cultural migration culminated in the birth and explosive growth of the greatest nation in history: the United States of America.

It is fitting that we have set aside a day to honor the Great Explorer. On one level, Columbus Day honors the man himself for his many virtues. Columbus was a man of independent mind, who steadfastly pursued his bold plan for a westward voyage to the Indies despite powerful opposition–a man of courage, who set sail upon a trackless ocean with no assurance that he would ever reach land–a man of pride, who sought recognition and reward for his achievements.

We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws–his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives–to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.

Thus, the deeper meaning of Columbus Day is to celebrate the rational core of Western civilization, which flourished in the New World like a pot-bound plant liberated from its confining shell, demonstrating to the world what greatness is possible to man at his best.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that reality is a single realm accessible to human understanding.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is both knowable and predictable.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, defined the principles by which bloody tribal warfare, religious strife, and, ultimately, slavery could be eradicated by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization as history’s greatest cultural achievement. What better reason could there be for a holiday?

With patriotic and nostalgic songs from a group of elementary schoolers, today’s rally began at Coachman Park in downtown Clearwater at around 7:30 a.m.

Supporters fill bleachers behind and beside a stage erected in a grassy area of the park near the waterfront. The bleachers are arranged in a square on the green grass, reminiscent of a baseball diamond.

People seated behind the podium have been given red, white, and blue t-shirts by the McCain-Palin campaign. They’re arranged so that they form an American flag across the bleachers. Over their head hangs a tremendously large American flag, swinging from the end of a crane.

After the opening music, a series of local Republican candidates took the stage and addressed the crowd.

Doors opened at 6 a.m., and Palin is set to speak around 9 a.m. All of the tickets for the event were already handed out over the weekend at campaign offices.

To fight parking problems near the event, the campaign has asked ticketholders to park at Jack Russell Stadium, the old Phillies’ spring training ballpark, and take free shuttles over to the rally.

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for vice president, has canceled campaign events scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, because of the death of his mother-in-law. Biden plans to return to the campaign trail on Wednesday, with a rally in Tampa at the Sun Dome at the University of South Florida.

Crowds await Palin in Fort Myers.

Palin has a 3 p.m. rally today at Germain Arena in Estero. GOP supporters have snagged 9,000 tickets for the event, and organizers believe Palin’s drawing power is much higher, but that Lee County doesn’t have a suitable venue.

“She has demonstrated tremendous poise, a delicious personality, an intelligent flair and has an accomplished record as both the mayor of Wasilla and governor of Alaska,” said Gary Lee, Lee County Republican Executive Committee chairman.

The rally initially was scheduled for Alico Arena on Florida Gulf Coast University’s campus. On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee signed a rental agreement with FGCU, but by Friday, party leaders realized Alico’s 4,500 seating capacity was inadequate. FGCU is requiring the committee to pay a $2,600 cancellation fee.

Germain Arena, which lists its seating capacity as 7,082, offers additional floor seating that pushes attendance to 8,800 to 9,000, according to Sammy Wallace, Germain’s vice president of event programming.