1. Craig Pittman of the Times details how Tampa Bay Water was too inexperienced and rushed its massive public works projects, notably the cracked-and-expensive-to-repair CW Bill Young Reservoir. Public officials such as Ed Turanchik lauded its construction at the time, Pittman writes, but put an inexperienced 29-year-old in charge of managing the project and hired an engineering firm that had never built such a large reservoir.

2. Florida’s funniest newspaper columnist-turned-novelist Carl Hiaasen blasts Charlie Crist’s growing turn to political whoredom: “Unlike Sarah Palin, Charlie Crist has chosen not to quit his governorship early. Florida’s own one-term wonder is using his remaining time to ingratiate himself with as many deep-pocket interest groups as possible. The governor’s unseemly burst of groveling is directly connected to his upcoming run for the U.S. Senate. Sucking up to the National Rifle Association and the Christian right, Crist last week declared his opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whose confirmation is already a done deal.”

3. The NYT’s piece on Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, indicted as part of the Jersey 44 last week in a massive corruption investigation. You can almost hear the mayor saying to the cops who arrested him, “I’m afraid there has been a terrible mistake.” He should know; he made it.

4. Cruise ship impales whale, while “horrified” passengers see results. With photo, of course. I’m not saying this made me snigger, or, like Lionel (who gets a h/t here), worry about the Whale Wars folks find out.

5. $147,000 for four rather antique-looking plastic collectible toys from a TV show that nobody has ever heard of? Michael Hinman at Airlock Alpha has the story from Comic-Con.

This week’s HoCast marks a revamp of my format. While I will continue to do long-form interviews with political figures as podcasts, the PoHo brand will feature a fairly regular cast and a quick, funny format that looks at the top political and media issues, the Quotable soundbite and the Political Whore of the Week.

Joining me are Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and Creative Loafing Film & Television editor Joe Bardi.

Our topics this week:

1. The shameful Today Show coverage of the Obama health care newser

2. The firing of the town manager of Fort Myers Beach for marrying a porn actress (shown above)

3. The Barack Obama-as-Witch Doctor e-mail flap

4. ESPN’s multi-problems with censorship (the Ben Rothlisberger story)

5. Mary Mulhern uses tax dollars to go to Cuba

This week’s PoHo Award nominees are:

New York stripper Christy Yamanaka, who was involved in the Judge Thomas Stringer scandal. He pleaded guilty this week to one count of mortgage fraud in connection with a house the two bought in Hawaii.

And, via txt message from an anonymous politician, this nomination:
“The Jersey 44, that’s lookin’ like a real political gangbang! Even by Jersey’s standards.”

Listen to the HoCast after the jump to find out who won:

Download Episode 15.

My guest co-host for this week’s HoCast is Seth Nelson, a Tampa lawyer who is running for the Tampa City Council in 2011 (for Linda Saul-Sena’s citywide seat; she is term-limited).

He is a former law clerk on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, so we look at how Sonia Sotomayor did in explaining her statement about policy being made at the appellate court level. Plus, we discuss Walter Cronkite’s death and how it shows what is wrong with today’s news media and ask ourselves whether Barack Obama’s health care reform effort is in trouble.

And between all those headlines, Seth talks about why he’s running for the Council and what his top priorities are.

DL or listen to the podcast after the jump:

Download here.

Hillsborough County commissioners will discuss dropping conservative activist Ralph Hughes’ name from the county’s Moral Courage Award on Wednesday.

Commissioner Rose Ferlita put the controversial issue on the agenda for discussion weeks after the federal government said Hughes died owing $69 million in unpaid taxes.

Ferlita told the Tribune on Tuesday that Hughes’ son Shea has sent a letter to the commissioners asking that his father’s name be removed from the award.

UPDATE: County commissioners did just that. The vote this morning was unanimous.

Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio

The shocking assassination of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller on May 31 has brought back the volatile issue of abortion on to the national landscape.

Of course, it’s never gone away. But the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor by President Obama to the Supreme Court — and her relatively scant record on abortion issues — has elicited analysis that, perhaps unlike every previous Supreme Court nomination over the past few decades, her nomination won’t be heavily focused by her thoughts on Roe v. Wade.

Pro-choice advocates were stunned when Gallup reported last month that for the first time since it began asking the question, a majority of Americans now call themselves pro-life vs. pro-choice (although a review of other similar polls taken over the past year continue to reflect a majority pro-choice America.)

If that wasn’t at least a soft blow to those reproductive rights advocates, Tiller’s death by the hands of 51-year-old Scott P. Roeder absolutely was.

And for a portion of the public, upon learning of Tiller’s death, thoughts immediately turned to Bill O’Reilly, who focused relentlessly on the controversial doctor’s status as one of just a handful of M.D.’s in the country who continued to perform late term abortions.

Some liberal commentators and bloggers immediately blamed the cable news analyst for inciting Roeder to commit murder.  O’Reilly, predictably, pushed back, and used the opening moments of his show last week to argue that his foils, NBC News and company, were just as responsible for the murder of U.S. soldier William Long in Arkansas by a Muslim convert.

For many in the abortion rights movement, Tiller’s death brought back the dark days of the 1990’s, when doctors David Gunn, Bernard Slepian and John Britton were killed for their work as abortion providers.

Sarasota resident Sherry Svekis received a late-term abortion from Tiller in 1985. Not being a regular Fox News viewer, she was unaware of the very public campaign O’Reilly had wrought against Tiller over the years until his death.

But after hearing the denunciations of Tiller,  Svekis penned a letter to the Tampa Tribune last week, describing her encounter with Tiller, and her very fond memories of him.

Intrigued by her acknowledging the abortion with the late doctor, I spoke with her last week.

In 1985 there were only a few places Svekis knew where she could get an abortion after being 20 weeks pregnant (she says she was at 24 weeks into gestation).

She says her mother, a Unitarian minister, had learned through a contact about Tiller, and after her ob-gyn physician contacted the medical examiner in Kansas, she felt confident that she would be in good hands.

But unlike the Frankenstein depicted by his critics, Svekis says that Tiller was a compassionate man. She says nearly a year after her abortion, Tiller contacted her to see if she was interested in adopting a baby — after diagnosing that a woman patient he had was too far along in her pregnancy to abort.

“It was reminiscent of John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules, the doctor who says he can give you an abortion or give you an orphan…. I don’t know what his guidelines were, but she was too far along for him to give her and adoption, and would we like to accept?”

She respectfully declined. But she was touched by his thoughtfulness. (She subsequently had two children of her own.)

“He spent the time to understand what a woman’s position was. Why she was there. What her physical and emotional situation was … he’d try to work with her and whomever came with that person to support her.”

Svetkis says she’s aware it’s a bit unconventional to want to tell the world about a surgical procedure from more than 20 years ago. She says her family and friends were aware of her abortion.

But, she says, when she heard of Tiller’s death, “It was like I needed to make my experience as public as possible as to what an incredible, compassionate man this was, and how important this service was.”

She continued, “There are so few people who can do it. And those that are and the people that can do this procedure are being intimidated out of their rights, and I view it as terrorism.”

Sherry Svetkis says she hopes that with the considerable skills that Barack Obama posses, that perhaps a discussion can be renewed in America about the issue of reproductive rights.

She says, “We need many more voices from the women, and families in this country who have made these choices, so we can have an understanding to what these situations are, and why its important to have services. It’s a woman’s right to her body, and Dr. Tiller was a firm believer in that. We need to support women so they don’t have to be in this situation.”

The Justice Department announced late last week that it was launching an investigation into whether anyone else was involved in Tiller’s death and investigating for potential violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act.

Big Oil’s offshore drilling scheme appears to be making a comeback. A start-up political group is looking to gather petition signatures and put the idea on the ballot, bypassing the politically sensitive Legislature.

From the Fort Myers News-Press:

Claiming that offshore drilling is the answer to the nation’s addiction to foreign oil, conservative activists are gearing up a constitutional drive to lift Florida’s 20-year-old ban.
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Sponsors of the drive, FloridaOil.org, are exploring a unique approach to getting around what has long been considered the third rail of Florida politics, one so charged that a last-minute attempt in the Legislature this spring quickly died when Senate President Jeff Atwater, a Republican from North Palm Beach, put his foot down.

“Atwater proved that we can’t rely on the Legislature,” said the group’s chief organizer, Dan Baldauf of Bradenton. “Legislators actually prefer that we do it this way, because it helps them keep their hands clean.”

This sounds like it is more about folks who want to procure some spending cash from the oil and gas companies than a legit movement with any legs. The story notes that the group has raised just $2,000 so far but expects a lot more once it attracts the attention of the oil-producing companies.

Although carefully worded polls will show support for offshore drilling, this is a big loser at the ballot box.

Today is the first day of the 2009 hurricane season but a new poll has found that very few people on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts are ready for a bad storm.

Mason-Dixon’s survey found, for instance, that two-thirds of the respondents didn’t have a hurricane survival kit at the ready. The shocking results?

- 83% said they have not taken any steps in the past year to make their homes stronger, even after last year’s active season.
- 66% have no hurricane survival kit.
- 62% don’t feel vulnerable to a hurricane or related tornado or flooding.
- 55% do not have a family disaster plan.

The National Hurricane Center has tips for preparing for storms. Download the poll results in .pdf format, hurricanenewsconferencerelease-2.

The Sun-Times and Tribune both ran partial transcripts Wednesday of a conversation between Roland Burris and Robert Blagojevich last November 13 about the Senate seat president-elect Obama was vacating and Burris longed to be appointed to.

But the transcript in the Tribune ends at roughly the point where the Sun-Times’s transcript begins. As a result, the Tribune version of the conversation supports the idea that Burris did nothing improper — an impression reinforced by the headline to the page-one story accompanying the transcript: “Burris talks cash, Senate on recording / Senator: Wiretap backs his denials of pay to play.”

The Tribune transcript has Burris making it clear to the brother of the then-governor: “I’m very much interested in, in trying to replace Obama,” and then fretting about appearances. Burris says, “I’m a high-profile person….I’m trying to figure out how in the hell, and since you called me I will be honest with you….And I’m trying to figure out how to deal with this and still be in the consideration for the appointment….And, and if I do that I guarantee you that, that will get out and people said, ‘Oh, Burris is doing a fundraiser,’ and, and then Rod and I both gonna catch hell….And if I do get appointed that means I bought it.”

With three Tampa Bay locations, BankUnited is not most ubiquitous of Tampa Bay thrifts, but today its customers have discovered that the failing bank was seized overnight.

The AP reports:

The federal seizure of struggling Florida thrift BankUnited FSB is expected to cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $4.9 billion, representing the second-largest hit to the FDIC’s insurance fund since the financial crisis began felling banks last year.

The costliest was last year’s seizure of California lender IndyMac Bank, on which the bank insurance fund is estimated to have lost $10.7 billion.

The Office of Thrift Supervision, a Treasury Department agency, said Thursday that BankUnited FSB reported $1.2 billion in losses last year as defaults on loans piled up. The thrift “was critically undercapitalized and in an unsafe condition to conduct business,” the agency said in a statement.

Coral Gables, Fla.-based BankUnited FSB is the 34th federally insured institution to be closed this year, and the biggest.

The shockwaves from the government-labor takeover at Chrysler is reverberating in the Tampa Bay area, as seven dealerships are set to be closed as part of nearly 800 dealer closings across the nation.

The local dealerships are:

Venice Nissan Dodge

Bob Boast Dodge, Bradenton

Tarpon Springs Dodge

Winter Park Dodge

Regal Pontiac Jeep, Lakeland

Sarasota Chrysler

St. Pete Jeep Chrysler Plymouth

(UPDATE: A seventh Chrysler-related Bay area dealership, Fitzgerald Countryside Jeep, is also on the closing list.)

Here’s the political angle: Republican Congressman Vern Buchanan has one of his dealerships on the block, and he’s not happy about it. Michael Hinman of The Business Journal reports:

Hours after Chrysler LLC asked a bankruptcy judge to let it part ways with nearly 800 dealerships nationally; one of the owners of the affected dealerships is utilizing his soapbox to protest it.

U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, called the dealership closings “arbitrary” and would do nothing to make car manufacturers more viable financially.

“Last year, I opposed the auto bailout bill before Congress because the automakers failed to develop a restructuring plan,” Buchanan said in a statement. “Now instead of a responsible plan to address the industry’s core economic problems, the automakers are arbitrarily closing hundreds, and possibly thousands of dealerships across the country.”