It never gets hot here in Florida.
Never.
It turns out there’s a scientific explanation behind the saying, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!” Learn why a hot and humid day feels so dismal and some tips to avoid the really sweaty, gross days on today’s Quick Question!
We have written about the City’s approval of three amusement rides on this blog before.
(See: Cocoa Beach: The Pier And Amusement Park Rides, Westgate, Cocoa Beach, And Expectations, and Cocoa Beach: Cocoa Beach Pier Damaged In Storm.)
Now a group of owners of the Ola Grande Condominiums have banded together and filed a “Complaint for Declaratory Judgement and Injunctive Relief,” which is basically a lawsuit. (You can read the complaint below or click here.)
The owners have hired Attorney James C. Brady of the firm Arnstein and Lehr, LLP. Arnstein and Lehr is a huge law firm with offices across the country. Mr. Brady is a partner in the firm and works out of the Fort Lauderdale office.
If you are a follower of this site, you know that we address things that appear to be wrong, especially when those wrong actions are by a government entity. We look at laws, statutes, ordinance, etc., to get what is happening and then try to decide if the action is right.
We look at lawsuits the same way. When we write about a lawsuit, we opine on what we think is right or wrong about the suit itself. Our belief is that it is wrong to hold one group of people such as governments to one standard, and then not hold other people to the same standard.
In light of that, we want to offer our opinion on the complaint in this case as written.
First, the complaint states that the application was filled out incorrectly and the owner of the property was not listed as Westgate Resorts but rather David Siegel, who was acting as the agent for Westgate at the Board of Adjustment (BOA) meeting.
We have argued many times about what can only be called the “sloppiness” of the City’s Building Department when it comes to applications for variances and special exemptions. We don’t understand why the City continues to allow people and companies to not fill out a form correctly. We truly don’t understand how this continues to happen. It is the City’s form. They designed the application. One would think that would mean the City would know what they want on the application and how different fields should be completed. If the application doesn’t meet the standards, you give it back to the applicant and explain what is wrong. It should be noted that this application is not the only one that has been filled out incorrectly. The City wrongly lets this happen. At the same time, until the City clamps down on all applications, they shouldn’t single out a particular company for non-compliance. That is just as wrong as giving a company special treatment and a pass on not complying. The same rules should apply to all.
The complaint says that Westgate Cocoa Beach Pier LLC owns the property and they are not listed on the application. However, the application does list the Owner as “Cocoa Beach Pier” and gives the address as the Pier itself.
The question is then, “does the absence of the words “Westgate” and “LLC” mean the application is wrong?
(more…)
We aren’t sure what to make of this, but it isn’t good.
At least 3.5 million more people are on U.S. election rolls than are eligible to vote.
Some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America’s adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud.
The Election Integrity Project of Judicial Watch — a Washington-based legal-watchdog group — analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011–2015 American Community Survey and last month’s statistics from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The latter included figures provided by 38 states. According to Judicial Watch, eleven states gave the EAC insufficient or questionable information. Pennsylvania’s legitimate numbers place it just below the over-registration threshold.
My tabulation of Judicial Watch’s state-by-state results yielded 462 counties where the registration rate exceeded 100 percent. There were 3,551,760 more people registered to vote than adult U.S. citizens who inhabit these counties.
“That’s enough over-registered voters to populate a ghost-state about the size of Connecticut,” Judicial Watch attorney Robert Popper told me.
This is a problem:
California, for instance, has 11 counties with more registered voters than actual voters. Perhaps not surprisingly — it is deep-Blue State California, after all — 10 of those counties voted heavily for Hillary Clinton.
Los Angeles County, whose more than 10 million people make it the nation’s most populous county, had 12% more registered voters than live ones, some 707,475 votes. That’s a huge number of possible votes in an election.
(more…)
Back in May, we wrote about a case before the Cocoa Beach Board of Adjustments where the Cocoa Beach Tattoo Company was looking for a special exception in order to move into a retail space that was located 1730 feet from another tattoo parlor. The Board denied the exception even though there was case law saying the ordinance the City had passed was unConstitutional and therefore unenforceable.
Ten days after the Board of Adjustment meeting, the Cocoa Beach Tattoo Company filed a notice challenging the BOA’s ruling.
Complicating the matter was the timing of the notice and the case itself. If you remember, this was during the period when the City was re-examining its relationship with the legal firm representing it and eventually changed the firms.
The new City Attorneys have agreed that the Board of Adjustment was wrong to deny the special exemption and will recommend at BOA meeting on September 20, 2017 that the BOA approve the request by the Cocoa Beach Tattoo Company.
The response from the City on this matter is below.
In our opinion, this is a win for economic freedom and also the freedom of expression. The City shouldn’t have a say what legal businesses that cause no harm to anyone can be in the City. At the same time, while it is something that we would never do, tattoos are an art form and a type of expression. The freedom to express oneself is fundamental to everyone.
(more…)
DreamHost is an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that sells hosting of websites, domain registrations, cloud services, etc. When we started to look at hosting companies for Raised on Hoecakes, DreamHost was certainly on our short list of companies. We decided to go with Hostwinds, but we know of sites that are on DreamHost and speak highly of the company.
DreamHost has announced that they are fighting the Department of Justice over the DOj’s demand that DreamHost turn over information concerning a site they host.
For the past several months, DreamHost has been working with the Department of Justice to comply with legal process, including a Search Warrant (PDF) seeking information about one of our customers’ websites.
At the center of the requests is disruptj20.org, a website that organized participants of political protests against the current United States administration. While we have no insight into the affidavit for the search warrant (those records are sealed), the DOJ has recently asked DreamHost to provide all information available to us about this website, its owner, and, more importantly, its visitors.
While DreamHost is saying that the warrant if for all information concerning the site and its users, that doesn’t appear to be the case. The government is looking specifically at:
All information described above in Section I that constitutes fruits, evidence and instrumentalities of violations of D.C. Code § 22-1322 involving the individuals who participated, planed, organized, or incited the January 20 riot, relating to the development, publishing, advertisement, access, use, administration or maintenance of any website enumerated in Attachment A, including:
We all have heard this version or similar versions of marriage vows either in person, in books, on television, in movies, or some other media. The vows go something like this:
“I, ___, take you, ___, for my lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part.”
Walter Olson over at Overlawyered.com take notice that to some, sickness, health, good, bad, richer, and poorer all take a back seat to a reason to get divorced:
Donald Trump.
If you’re married to a Trump supported, get a divorce. That’s the message.
It is a message that is not isolated. From Harpers’s Bizaar:
(more…)
Nissan lined up three cars on the roof of a car park in Croydon, London and challenged Dalton to take on the Guinness World Records title for the Most consecutive cars jumped over on a pogo stick
There is more on the Guinness World record site and they explain that the stunt was to promote a new 360 degree camera from Nissan.
From the FloridaToday:
The government has started court proceedings to deport more than 165 immigrants living in Brevard County, according to data compiled by a Syracuse University organization that tracks federal agencies.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) data show that three out of every four counties in the U.S. have residents with pending deportation cases in U.S. Immigration Courts. Although most counties had fewer than 24 residents with pending immigration cases, 10 percent had 200 or more residents with pending cases.
“We were focusing on the (legal) representation issue and wanted to look at how many cases were pending,” said Professor Susan Long, co-director of TRAC. “We were shocked at the geography and distribution, that is was as widely distributed.”
We aren’t sure why anyone should be “shocked” at the number of cases nor the geographical distribution of those cases. If one assumes that people are going to move into communities and neighborhoods where people of similar national backgrounds reside, all the distribution shows is what many Americans have claimed: America is a land that welcomes immigrants who enter into the country legally. Counties aren’t putting up barriers to legal immigrants. The country wants a diverse population in terms of ethnic heritage, but a commonality in thought on the guiding principles on which the country was founded and has prospered.
What the article doesn’t talk about is that the illegal immigrants that are “caught” seldom have to have a case brought against them. They are mostly released by the Federal government with an admonition to get “legal” or “leave.” A second contact with immigration authorities will start a case against you.
Unless, of course there is more to the story.
(more…)
