Free Republic

In an experiment apparently aimed at keeping down the cost of health-care reform, Orlando-based Darden Restaurants has stopped offering full-time schedules to many hourly workers in at least a few Olive Gardens, Red Lobsters and LongHorn Steakhouses. Darden said the test is taking place in "a select number" of restaurants in four markets, including Central Florida, but would not give details. The company said there has been no decision made about expanding it. In an emailed statement, Darden said staffing changes are "just one of the many things we are evaluating to help us address the cost implications health care...

MIAMI— — A 27-year-old Miramar woman who described herself as the girlfriend of the man killed by police as he gnawed off the face of a homeless man stepped forward Wednesday to speak out against what her counselor called a growing scourge: cannibalism. Yovonka Bryant's counselor? Los Angeles celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred.

Could William Lamb have predicted this? In March 2009, Orlando's nationally syndicated astrologer married Jehan Salih, a much-younger woman from the Philippines he met online, and eventually brought her to live with him in his downtown condo. What happened next varies greatly depending on who's telling the story: Salih claims Lamb abused her and essentially made her a prisoner in their home. Lamb claims his new bride threatened to cut off his penis and kill him. For her part, 31-year-old Salih says — in court documents — that Lamb wouldn't allow her leave the condo, wouldn't let her walk across...

State labor officials asked their inspector general Monday to investigate why a Central Florida agency wants to spend public money to furnish the unemployed with capes. Dubbed the "Cape-A-Bility Challenge," a $73,000 public-relations campaign by Workforce Central Florida features a cartoon character named "Dr. Evil Unemployment" and includes handing out about 6,000 red superhero capes to jobless Central Floridians. The campaign, revealed Saturday in a report in the Orlando Sentinel, was met with derision by many unemployed who questioned spending more than $14,200 on capes and $2,300 on foam cutouts of "Dr. Evil Unemployment." They said the campaign's tone risked...

What began as a dispute between neighbors about yard work ended when one of them was arrested and physically subdued by Lakeland police officers. Joe Florence, 57, 620 Chatham Drive, was stunned with a Taser on Tuesday night and left with a bloody face, broken nose and possibly a broken jaw, he said Thursday. He disputes the police reports of the struggle, which said Florence became very agitated, was told he was being placed under arrest and then fought an officer. Police said Officers Nicholas Ivancevich and Heather Freeman received minor injuries in the scuffle, a portion of which was...

Not even two months into his term, Gov. Rick Scott is already hurting his credibility as the "CEO" governor. He sold voters on his knack to govern Florida like a business. We all took that to mean he would make decisions based on facts and financials after thorough due diligence. Yet when Scott killed high-speed rail this week, he used little more than ideology and politics. He said goodbye to the number-crunching, bid-vetting pragmatism of the boardroom and hello to the fear-mongering of Tea Partiers' living rooms.

ROCK HILL Blood and fur was left behind on the kitchen floor of a Rock Hill house after a break-in, police say. It looks like a deer was dismembered in the kitchen. The owner of a vacant rental property on Robinson Street found the side door kicked in and blood on the kitchen floor, according to a Rock Hill police report. It appears as though someone broke in and mutilated an animal on floor, leaving behind blood and fur sometime between Dec. 7 and Tuesday, the report states. Behind the residence, officers found a mutilated deer carcass in the woods....

KING, NC- The Christian flag is everywhere in this North Carolina town: flying in front of barbecue joints and hair salons, stuck to the bumpers of trucks, hanging in windows and emblazoned on T-shirts. The relatively obscure emblem has become omnipresent because of one place it can't appear: flying above a war memorial in a public park. The city council decided last month to remove the flag from above the Veterans Memorial in Central Park after a resident complained, and after city leaders got letters from the American Civil Liberties Union urging them to remove it. That decision incensed veterans...

NEW PORT RICHEY | She figured the porch light burned out. It was about 1 a.m. Wednesday and Vickie Bankowski was just getting home from seeing her sister in Tampa. The doorway was dark and her two shih tzus — Gizmo, 7, and Beethoven, 5 — weren't in the window waiting for her, as they always do. When Bankowski, 56, unlocked the door to her home on Blayton Street, only Beethoven ran outside. He didn't want to come back in. She still didn't think much was wrong. She scooped him up, went inside and closed the door. The lamp on...

On one of the holiest nights of Ramadan, Marwa Atik chose a crowded Southern California mosque to debut her latest creation. It was just after midnight when the 20-year-old walked into the Islamic Center of Irvine, Calif., dressed in a long, flowing burgundy robe, her head wrapped in a charcoal chiffon hijab, trimmed decoratively with gold zippers. After the group prayers, sermon and Koran recitation, a woman approached Atik, gesturing to the scarf. "OK, I want one," she said excitedly. "How can I get it?" Atik has taken the scarf worn by Muslim women and turned it into a canvas...

Hide the chocolate milk behind the plain milk. Get those apples and oranges out of stainless steel bins and into pretty baskets. Cash only for desserts. These subtle moves can entice kids to make healthier choices in school lunch lines, studies show. Food and restaurant marketers have long used similar tricks. Now the government wants in on the act. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced what it called a major, new initiative Tuesday, giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to find ways to use psychology to improve kids' use of the federal school lunch program and to fight childhood...

So yesterday a letter from my health insurance carrier arrives, informing me that my monthly premium will be rising by another $102.00 a month in December for the exact same coverage. I already carry a high deductible policy for a family. And the letter explained that if you want to migrate to a high-deductible policy, you may do so, but will no longer be "grandfathered" into present coverage levels and will be subject to all provisions, costs, etc of the recently passed National Health Reform Act. Strangely missing from this letter was the reminder that Health Insurers were on board...

ROCK HILL Rock Hill has backed off its threat to shut off water service to a group of homeowners who refuse to be annexed into the city. After receiving a proposal from the Miller Pond neighborhood homeowners association, city officials postponed the termination, said Rock Hill spokeswoman Lyn Garris, who declined to specify what the proposal said. The city's attorney is reviewing the proposal before the mayor and city council see it in a closed-door meeting next week, Garris said. For now, Miller Pond residents will continue to receive water. "That's a good sign," said David Grigg, president of the...

Two Lake Wales residents have filed complaints with the state's human rights agency alleging they were denied service at a Lake Wales bar because they are black. Mildred Richardson Smith, 55, and Ida Mae Royal, 80, said managers at the Just One More bar at 112 E. Crystal Ave. told them they couldn't be served, according to the complaint filed this week. Royal said she and a friend, Emma Frazier, stopped at the bar for lunch June 3 and were turned away. In her complaint, Smith said she was turned away at the door. Kerry Winkler, the bar's owner, denied...

This is about democracy and civic virtue, taxes and tap water. If you're like me, July 4 gets you thinking about democracy - about the history-shattering nature of our country's founding, how we've managed to keep our democracy healthy for more than two centuries, about the blessings (and a few annoyances) of democracy. We grow up bathed in democratic practices. As children, we form clubs and elect officers. At school we elect class presidents and student councils. By adulthood we're in our voting booths sometimes throwing the bums out, but with ballots, not bullets. This came up in dinner table...

Anti-Facebook feelings in Germany grew Wednesday as a major consumer group urged people to abandon the social networking website unless it scraps planned changes to its privacy policy. "If protection of your personal data is important to you, we can only advise users to oppose the planned changes, and together with their friends to choose another operator," said the Federation of German Consumer Organisations (VZBZ), an umbrella group for 42 German consumer associations. The call followed an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg this week from Ilse Aigner, consumer affairs minister, threatening to delete her Facebook account in protest...

A television station is reporting a riot has just broken out at Bethune-Cookman University. WFTV.com just reported three people were hospitalized and "hundreds" were involved in a brawl on the Daytona Beach campus that apparently broke out after a sprinkler went off in a third-floor dorm. A spokesman for the EVAC ambulance company, which responded to the university, just told the Orlando Sentinel no one was transported. The station said Daytona Beach Police Chief Mike Chitwood described what happened as a "free for all." The station said the students, faculty and people from surrounding neighborhoods were involved in the riot....

A Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools bus stop is right in front of a registered sex offender's house, but CMS won't change the bus stop's location despite parents' pleas. That has parents in the Winget Pond neighborhood ticked off. They contacted us after getting their childrens' bus assignments in the mail. His name is Robert Lance Neal. Court records show he's a registered sex offender, convicted for sexually abusing a 10-year-old in Illinois. Now, records show Neal lives on Arrington Heights Place in Charlotte. Out his front door is a CMS bus stop. "Eight to ten that I'm aware of," a mother says...

<p>CHINA GROVE -- Images of President Obama’s face in makeup similar to The Joker in the Batman movie "The Dark Knight" began appearing on flyers posted on telephone poles along Main Street and in surrounding neighborhoods early Tuesday morning.</p> <p>One viewer, who asked not to be identified, told WCNC-TV she was offended by the posters and began removing them from the poles.</p>

Earth 2100 on ABC. What a sky-is-falling fearfest. Cast of usual charachters: Academia, Media, etc going year-by-year on how "climate change" is leading to total destruction of everything as we know it. Of course the "American way of life" is to blame.