The Cooler

Here's your news of the day. Comment as necessary.

A- Herald: I think it's called a "shakedown," isn't it?

Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones, the likely swing vote on the Florida Marlins stadium deal in Miami, is playing hardball -- demanding that her Overtown district receive half-a-billion dollars worth of projects and a youth academy to ensure her vote.

''Overtown must get its fair share,'' she said in a statement released Friday, a week before Miami commissioners decide whether to go forward with the long-debated stadium in Little Havana.

B- Herald: Tough love?

A Miami child-welfare judge drew the ire of his chief and local children's advocates when he told a 15-year-old runaway foster child she would end up a ''toothless, dead crack whore'' if she didn't mend her ways.

Exasperated that the girl was refusing to return to a home where she said her caregiver hit and cursed at her, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Spencer Eig lectured the sobbing teen about making bad choices during a hearing Tuesday.

''You're throwing your life away,'' Eig told the girl. ``You could end up on the street toothless. You've seen these toothless hags on the street? You know how they get there? They blow their opportunities in life when they're 15. They run away. They end up . . . People turn them into whores.''

''Toothless, dead crack whore. Dead at age 19? Is that the destiny you're looking for?'' he added.

[...]

In a statement released to The Miami Herald by the judiciary's spokeswoman, Eunice Sigler, Eig expressed regret at the language he used to scold the teen.

''The child in this case had been running away,'' Sigler wrote in a short statement. ``Judge Eig regrets that the language he used was strong, but it was his intention to try to warn the child about the dangers of life on the street, and what people could do to her. His intention was to help, not harm.''

C- Herald: They write letters.

Preference for Palin

As a life-long Republican, I can say with complete certainty that the one undisputed outcome of Gov. Bobby Jindal's televised response to the president's address to Congress was the great desire to see Gov. Sarah Palin return as a nominee of our party.

JOHNATHAN ROSE, Miami Shores

D- Sun-Sentinel: Better have deep pockets if you plan on running reds in Pembroke Pines.

Pembroke Pines - Starting Sunday, Pembroke Pines police will start issuing $125 tickets to anyone caught on camera blowing through a red light, ending a year-long pilot program that led to 1,833 warning citations being mailed out, an agency spokesman said Thursday. Officials also plan to add red-light cameras to five more intersections by April, in an effort to crack down on unsafe motorists in the city.

As a Pines resident who regularly travels Pines Boulevard where a number of these cameras are set up, you have to wonder whether the traffic engineers who [don't] synchronize lights in the city are really that incompetent or simply a part of the city's revenue generating plan.

E- Sun-Sentinel: And in Juno Beach, watch out for a parked van if you're speeding.

JUNO BEACH - Next time you see a red, blue and white van with an antenna parked on the roadside, check your speedometer.

Town police are using the unmanned van to catch drivers traveling over the speed limit. Violators for the next three weeks will receive a warning.

Starting March 23, they will receive a notice of infraction with a $125 penalty. Second infractions will be $250.

The infraction is a civil penalty and will not go on a driver's record. The notice of infraction will be sent to the owner of the vehicle. Drivers can file an appeal with the town.

[...]

The van uses two lasers to measure the speed of passing vehicles. When the lasers determine a vehicle is moving above the speed limit, two cameras snap photos, one of the vehicle and the other of its rear license plate.

F- CBS4: Great column on the newspaper industry and an old friend with the Rocky Mountain News.

This town needs a strong and healthy Miami Herald.

This industry is going through the greatest upheaval in its history. And no one knows how it will look five years from now. Will newspapers survive? I still say they will – I just don't say it with the same conviction I did six months ago.

The need for people to go out and gather information will remain. How that information is presented, how it is packaged, how it is displayed – that is what will change. Will it be solely online? If it is then at some point people are going to have to start paying for access to those sites because the work we do has value and it can't be done for free.

G- WPLG: Speed racers.

A Cessna airplane circled over Kendall Drive.

Meanwhile, motorcycle riders, roaring to and from the local Fuddrucker's restaurant for a Thursday night rally, had no idea they were being watched.

A man's voice boomed from police radios.

"That's the pilot. He's seen him farther north, coming this way," a trooper told Local 10's Janine Stanwood.

From the air, a sport bike was seen zooming down the Palmetto at 92 mph.

The plan: An FHP aviation unit clocks speeding motorcycle riders from the sky. The trooper in the plane alerts the troopers at the busway with a description and a location of the bike.

Troopers stopped southbound traffic on U.S. 1 and picked out the speeding bike.

[...]

But there was little sympathy Thursday night as FHP gave out 31 tickets and arrested a 19-year-old driver who was clocked at 148 mph on his sport bike. He wasn't even supposed to be driving; troopers said his license was suspended.

.