Ghosts of past come calling at sheriff's office
The sheriff must wonder, as he opens the newspaper each morning, which ghosts of past investigations will come haunting. The specter, this week, comes out of a wrongful-arrest civil suit stemming from an investigation of a 1986 homicide. A Broward Sheriff's Office sergeant remembers stashing evidence in a sock drawer. Crucial evidence. Evidence that could have prevented yet another botched murder investigation. Evidence that could have kept innocent men out of jail. Stashed in a sock drawer.
( 10/02/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Catanese affair suggests a new FAU nickname
Owls won't do. The nickname isn't sexy enough to generate the sales volume of logo-festooned merchandise necessary for a big-time university.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/30/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Telemarketing decision has an ugly ring to it
They refuse to go gentle into that good night. Rather, they continue to barge, uninvited, into your ruined evenings. Telemarketers managed to find a federal judge in western Oklahoma (wonder if they're selling many time shares out in Chickasha) who ruled last week that the Federal Trade Commission overstepped its authority by establishing a nationwide do-not-call list.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/28/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Some of us were a soft touch for voting machines
Who was it, back in 2001, who belittled the county commissioners for their ``deep and irrational fears of new technology?'' Oh . . . that would be me.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/25/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

IN MY OPINION
Managers get ax, taxpayers get the shaft
Any pro football coach understands the dynamics at work in the ouster of Floyd Johnson. Football coaches lose, of course. They labor under a mathematical certainty that half will lose every weekend, no matter how well they prepare their teams. Of course, that hardly staunches the bitter criticism that erupts in the sports media every Monday.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/23/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

The boom in kids: Is it just a state of mind?
We've got to stop these old folks fooling around. Ban Viagra. What else but Viagra explains how Florida became such a demographic aberration? The U.S. Census Bureau reported last week that while Florida remains the nation's undisputed haven for Cadillac-driving, AARP-discounted, early-bird specialists, something has gone amiss.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/21/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Apathy, drugs a potent mix for foster kids
Substitute the word ''my'' for ''foster.'' Then consider that psychotropic drugs are being popped into these children like aspirin. Some without ever seeing a psychiatric pediatrician. Some of them infants and toddlers. Most of them unmonitored for side effects.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/18/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Bias was alive when hundreds died in storm
The rotting bodies of farm workers were collected from fields and roadsides and from the smashed shacks where they perished. Corpses were tossed into piles, doused in kerosene and cremated.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/16/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

When states are left behind, who is accountable?
Consider the heft of the thing -- 1,200 pages of federal dictates. This single law could fill a law book. The stack of papers that constitute the No Child Left Behind Act could give the impression that it lists each child in question.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/14/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

They met their enemy; its name was `apathy'
It was an exercise in nostalgia, without the tear gas. They marched up and down the sidewalk and waved signs disparaging the Prez and chanted: ''Bush lied, soldiers died!'' But they were notably well-behaved. The cops told the demonstrators to move back and, by gosh, they moved back. Confrontations with police become a bit more subdued with kids' tuition and a mortgage to consider.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/11/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Trapper John's tangled Web
Surely, (Mouse) Trapper John didn't have access to his laptop behind bars. Monday morning, he was standing before a magistrate in Fort Lauderdale, about to be shipped to New York to face federal charges that he had lured children to Internet porn sites.
( FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/09/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Bad behavior on the Internet
In a more innocent time, the charges against John Zuccarini might have shocked the community. Just a half dozen years ago, waves of outrage would have washed over South Florida. This guy busted Wednesday in a Hollywood beachside hotel was charged with a money-making scheme to expose innocent, unwitting children to pornography.
( BY FRED GRIMM, fgrimm@herald.com, 09/07/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Out of step at military school
The lofty hopes that accompany a proposed military charter school bump up against the discouraging reality that is me. Class of '65. Castle Heights Military Academy. A place that promised to crank out cadets who exude discipline and academic excellence and pride in appearance and military bearing -- goals similar to those of the Broward Military Academy Charter School described this week in an application submitted to the Broward School Board.
( 09/04/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Reality and the myth of growth control
We live the lie. We've seen the Florida Growth Management Act obliterated by elected officials. We've noticed that the local comprehensive growth plans mandated by the 1985 law proved no more than inconveniences for developers, who instructed their wholly owned subsidiaries on city and county commissions to approve thousands of exceptions.
( 08/31/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Elections office needs a nerd
At least, she's not a crook. Miriam Oliphant may exude an unfortunate combination of incompetence and arrogance. The office of supervisor of elections may have hemorrhaged money since she took office. Her hiring practices may have been questionable, her leadership chaotic, her judgment wanting. Her office may have been run so haphazardly that 268 uncounted absentee ballots could have been misplaced.
( 08/26/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

No business like woe business
What scares me . . . is everything. Thirty-five years of writing about floods, murders, tornadoes, hurricanes, chemical spills, fires, drownings, traffic fatalities, train derailments, dog maulings, shark attacks, construction accidents, mine disasters, electrocutions, small airplane crashes, big airplane crashes, hang-glider smash-ups and, of course, blackouts can have a cumulative effect on one's outlook.
( 08/17/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Poll funding you can bet on
The audience was sparse. Plenty of good seats were still available at showtime. And those in attendance demonstrated none of the raucous enthusiasm the leading lady once commanded at these performances.
( 08/14/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Anti-French diehards insist: Vive le boycott!
Ken Wagner muttered something about mass graves and slammed down the phone. Yes, the French boycott continues. The raison d'tre seems to have altered since those heady days when Wagner made nationwide TV news in February, pouring 11 bottles of French wine into a gutter outside his West Palm Beach bar. Back then, there was much talk about weapons of mass destruction and how those damned haughty Frenchies refused to recognize the immediate necessity of disarming Iraq.
( 08/12/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Prescription scammers: the worst kind of drug dealers
The ''worst of the worst'' are said to be those confined in the solitary cells along Death Row. But for criminals of utter moral repugnance, a better address might be Weston.
( 08/10/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

The dreaded stadium pitch
The D-Train winds up, reaches back and . . . lifts your wallet. Baseball in South Florida, with Dontrelle Willis and company surging in the standings, has become a pleasurable pastime again, widening the fan base beyond a sparse scattering of hot-weather masochists.
( 08/03/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Justice demands facts, not rumor
The moment passed. The judge asked for anyone with evidence of a murder to come forward. Anyone who saw something or heard something or knew something that contradicted the official notion that Ray Golden had hanged himself.
( 07/31/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Seniors agree: Test older drivers
I expected an onslaught. After an elderly driver in Santa Monica lost control of his car and plowed through an outdoor market, killing 10 and injuring 45, I wrote a column suggesting expanded testing for older drivers -- a fearsome subject in Florida, where 1.2 million drivers are over 75.
( 07/29/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Neighborhood's promised change
Change is still just a rumor down these streets. At least change for the better. The last few years, the neighborhood has gradually lost ground to druggies and young toughs. ''Oh, it's gotten worse,'' said Gloria Powell, 52, who grew up in the little enclave just west of I-95.
( 07/27/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Some cops could drive us to drink
We'd all like a little of that magic police ``discretion.'' The kind of discretion that grants certain drunk drivers a ride home in a taxicab.
( 07/24/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

For Miami, 'Bad Boys 2' a hit-and-run
We sacrificed for art. We gave up our causeway. We surrendered a mile of A1A. We detoured around city blocks. South Florida donated its very arteries to the art of film making.
( 07/22/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Horror on road: a call for testing
So much carnage. Blood and anguish and screams and mangled bodies. Eight killed immediately. Two died at the hospital. More than 50 others injured. As if a terrorist had attacked Santa Monica.
( 07/20/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

FCAT: Fear can alter totals
In the interest of full disclosure, I cheated. Or nearly did. It was 1965. A passing grade in French II was in the balance, and I went to heroic and dishonest lengths to ensure I slithered through.
( 07/17/2003 03:01 AM EDT)

Vista View Park defies skeptics
Thousands of sea gulls 20 miles from the sea. Clouds of flies. A stink so sour, so intense that it seemed to thicken the very air. Just breathing brought the odor crawling down your throat like a slithering animal. All day, a fleet of garbage-laden trucks lined up from the gate far down Southwest 142nd Avenue, waiting to add a few more tons of dank atmospherics to the rising hills.
( 07/13/2003 03:01 AM EDT)