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The Sunshine State

Florida (Spanish for "land of flowers") is the southernmost contiguous state in the United States. The state is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean and to the south by the Straits of Florida. Florida is the 22nd-most extensive (170,300 km²), the 3rd-most populous (21,312,211 inhabitants) and the 8th-most densely populated (148.4/km²) of the U.S. states. Jacksonville is the most populous municipality in the state and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. The Miami metropolitan area is Florida's most populous urban area. Tallahassee is the state's capital.

Geographical type: Territory

Latitude: 28.1° N — Longitude: 81.6° W

Area: 170,304 km²

ISO 3166-2 code: US-FL

Other Places

Home To

Libertarian Party of Florida, Key West

Deathplace of

Roy Childs, in Miami, on 22 May 1992
Brad Linaweaver, in Apopka, on 29 Aug 2019
Roger MacBride, in Miami Beach, on 5 Mar 1995

Measures of Freedom

Freedom in the 50 States 2015-2016 | Florida | Cato Institute
2014: Overall rank: 8, fiscal policy rank: 4, regulatory policy rank: 19, personal freedom rank: 36, economic freedom rank: 6
LP State-by-State Membership Numbers [PDF], Libertarian Party News, Apr 2006
31 Dec 2005: Number of Members: 1058

Articles

Eminent-Domain Chutzpah, by Sheldon Richman, 30 Oct 2006
Discusses a case in Riviera Beach, Florida where a developer was threatening to sue the city council for reneging on a supposed deal to use eminent domain on an area for private redevelopment
Five years ago the city declared an area blighted, although homeowners disagreed with that description ... The designation made it eligible for condemnation and development by a private firm ... The city last year approved a $2.4 million project for a 400-acre area now occupied by 1,700 homes and businesses. Last May it agreed to let Viking develop the area for homes, condos, fancy stores, and yacht slips. The city pledged to use its power of eminent domain ... That led to three homeowner lawsuits ... The day after the agreement was made, Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill prohibiting eminent domain for redevelopment.
"Free-Speech Zone", by James Bovard, The American Conservative, 15 Dec 2003
Provides various examples of "free speech zone" incidents as well as reactions in the U.S. and overseas
Similar suppressions have occurred during Bush visits to Florida. A recent St. Petersburg Times editorial noted, "At a Bush rally at Legends Field in 2001, three demonstrators—two of whom were grandmothers—were arrested for holding up small handwritten protest signs outside the designated zone. And last year, seven protesters were arrested when Bush came to a rally at the USF Sun Dome. They had refused to be cordoned off into a protest zone hundreds of yards from the entrance to the Dome." One of the arrested protesters was a 62-year-old man holding up a sign, "War is good business. Invest your sons."
Hard Cases Make Bad Law, by Jacob G. Hornberger, 23 Mar 2005
Discusses the attempt by members of the U.S. Congress to have U.S. federal courts intervene in the Terri Schiavo case, already decided by a Florida district court
In the Florida proceeding, Michael Schiavo requested the judge to permit him to withdraw the water and feeding tube that has been keeping his wife Terri alive for many years. Terri's parents opposed the action, requesting the court to prevent Michael from withdrawing the tube and thereby letting their daughter die ... the judge found, as a fact, that Terri Schiavo had orally declared ... the equivalent of a "living will" ... The parents appealed ... and the appellate courts ruled against them, affirming the trial court's judgment. This case will undoubtedly go down as one of the most litigated cases in Florida history.
What This Country Needs Is A Good, Old-Fashioned Constitutional Crisis, by Gary North, 7 Dec 2000
Discusses the attempts by Al Gore to annul Florida's Electoral College votes in the 2000 U.S. presidential election and the benefits of the resulting crisis if the Florida legislature were to act to name the electors (as provided for in the Constitution)
Gore will win the election if Florida's electoral votes do not get counted. So, his goal is not to get any more ballots counted. ... This is why the Florida legislature is preparing to meet next week, just in the case of court-imposed gridlock. ... To have the Florida legislature make the final decision would be a great thing for the United States. ... [Lewis] did not mention that this legalistic tactic would disenfranchise the Florida voters who voted for Bush and all the other voters who voted for Bush nationally. He did not mention that by annulling the state's 25 votes and electing Gore, this tactic would de-legitimize any Gore administration.
Will You Be Safer If Guns Are Banned? Part 1, by Jarret Wollstein, Freedom Daily, Jul 1994
Considers whether banning guns would reduce crime, citing studies, articles and statistics that show the apparent paradox that gun-control laws tend to increase crime and violence, and explores some reasons for the continued increase in violent crime
If firearms increased violence and crime, Florida’s murder rate should not have been falling since the introduction, seven years ago, of a law that makes it easier for ordinary citizens to get permits to carry concealed handguns. Yet the murder rate has remained the same or fallen every year since the law was enacted. ... Self-defense does work. ... In Florida, forcible rapes sharply declined in Orlando and other cities after police trained women to use guns.

Interviews

Cold Comfort: An Interview with John R. Lott, by Michael W. Lynch, John Lott, Jacob Sullum, Reason, Jan 2000
Focuses primarily on Lott's More Guns, Less Crime (1998): what led him to write it, approving, critical and other reviews and interpretations of the data presented
Take the case where violent crime rates are rising right up to the point when the law goes into effect and falling afterward, and let's say it was a perfectly symmetrical inverted V. If I were to take the average crime rate before the law goes into effect and the average afterward, where the point of the V is when the law changed, they're going to be the same. Does that mean the law had no impact? When you drop Florida from the sample, [the results] look more like this inverted V than they do when Florida is in there. So I would argue that it strengthens the results, if what you care about is the change in direction.

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Florida" as of 1 Nov 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.