Advents Corner

For those of you confused by the notion that Florida’s delegates are not being counted I am posting this explanation.  One of my dear friends emailed one of the writers for the Tampa Tribune for an explanation and this is the response he received.  Thanks Bruce for passing this on to me and everyone else.  I hope this sheds some light on this for you.

This is a point that confuses many people.  I’ve explained it in several stories, but of course, not everyone sees every story I write.  The answer is that your intuition is correct — the national parties have NO right to say when Florida or any other state holds its primary.  However, they DO have the right — litigated up to the Supreme Court more than once — to choose their own nominees for president, including setting the rules by which those nominees are chosen.  That’s basic freedom of association, guaranteed explicitly in the Constitution.  So the Florida Legislature can set the Florida primary for any date it wants.  It chose Jan. 29.

But the national party then gets to decide whether and how to seat delegates to its national nominating convention.  It said it wouldn’t seat any delegates chosen before Feb. 5, or chosen as result of a process that began before Feb 5.

Republicans, of course, had a similar but less draconian rule.  Both parties enacted the rules in an attempt to limit the rush of states moving their primaries ever earlier.  Florida Republicans were happy enough to accept the penalty in their national party’s rule, which was loss of half their delegates.  But the Democratic penalty was worse — in this case, the national party said it would eliminate the entire delegation.

The national Democratic Party asked the state Democrats to hold a caucus on Feb. 5 or later to choose their convention delegates, which the state party legally could do if it chose to (and paid for it).

The state party refused. They said that would amount to refusing to count the votes cast in the Jan. 29 primary, and therefore ignoring the expressed will of the people.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough pine trees for me to include this long-winded explanation in every story I write.

So feel free to pass this on to 250,000 people or so.

William March, reporter

The Tampa Tribune

Office 813 259 7761 wmarch@tampatrib.com 

If you think identity theft can not happen to you then you are wrong.  Last year when we went to Hawaii my identity being stolen was the least of my concerns.  We were in Hawaii for 2 weeks and when we returned I had several letters in the mail from a couple of different companies that I had made purchases with, one of which was Disney.  We had Lani in the book and video club that Disney has out.  According to the letter a person at the credit card processing company Disney uses stole information about people’s accounts.  As I continued to read the letter I discovered they got my birth date, credit card number, my 3 digit security code, mailing address, and phone number.  Before I knew it I was being flooded with phone calls from collection agents.  I did a search on the people that were calling me and they too had a scam going.  It was not until I called my bank to cancel the credit cards that they confirmed the phone scam and suggested I change my phone number as well.  There are several services out there such as life lock that can help you keep your information safe.

I was lucky in the fact that my identity stayed intact but it could have been so much worse.  Life lock will have your name removed for all of the “pre-approved” credit cards you get in the mail, cutting down your chances of fraud.  Also not to mention it cuts down on all of the stuff you get in your mailbox.  Another feature is called Wallet Lock.  If you lose your wallet just give them a call and they take care of helping you to get all of the credit card companies to cancel the cards and get you new ones. 

Today is the day Michaela and I go to get our passports.  We are getting so excited about the trip to Asia.  The girls are going to have so much fun.  We are very sad that Lani will not be joining us but we thought it would be better if she did not come on this trip.  She is so an excellent traveler but it is just too many flights and they time difference would just be so bad for her.  She is going to stay with Grammy for the trip and Grammy is going to try and potty train her while she is there.  Stay tuned for updates on the trip.