Sunday exclusive: Small-town shooting story that begs to be told

Bob Gabordi's blog Bob Gabordi is executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com. He can be reached through this blog, at bgabordi@tallahassee.com or (850) 599-2177

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Sunday exclusive: Small-town shooting story that begs to be told

Posted 10/21/2010 2:11 PM EDT on tallahassee.com

This is a different kind of story for us. It takes place in Jasper, in rural Hamilton County, about halfway between Jacksonville and Tallahassee, somewhat outside our normal coverage area. Because of that, we wrestled with whether it was our story to tell when we were contacted by Lenny Joeris’ mother, Betsy James of Eastpoint.

Joeris was accused of shooting his wife, Lorrie, to death. She was a beloved fourth-grade teacher whose secret “other” life became public knowledge in her death and provided what law enforcement believes is the motive for murder.

In an interview at the Hamilton County Jail Lenny told our reporter, Jennifer Portman, the shooting was an accident. The details he told Portman of how it happened were different than what he told investigators. The story goes in multiple directions from there, and I’ll leave it to Portman to fill you in on the rest on Sunday.

But with no daily newspaper covering Hamilton regularly, we decided if we didn’t tell this story it might not get told, and that, simply, would be wrong. It is a story that just begs to be published and it will be Sunday exclusively in the Tallahassee Democrat and on Tallahassee.com.

To see the videos, go to http://www.youtube.com/TDOdotcom

Vote early and often for TLCASC

Help us help Tallahassee-Leon County Animal Services Center win up to $125,000. Go to www.votetosavelives.org to vote for TLCASC today and every day through Oct. 31. For more information of adoptions, contact the shelter at 891-2950 or visit the TLCASC website at http://www.talgov.com/animals/.

You can send your comments by clicking the button below, e-mailing me at bgabordi@tallahassee.com, sending a private message on Tallahassee.com, Twitter @bgabordi, LinkedIn or Blogger.com. You can also find links to my blogs on Facebook but you have to request to be my friend.

What to do if your candidate really is a dog? Vote for TLCASC

What to do if your candidate really is a dog? Vote for TLCASC

Posted 10/20/2010 6:00 AM EDT on tallahassee.com

Voting is underway and, say, you just found out that your candidate is a dog – or a cat, for that matter. What are you going to do?

Go ahead and vote anyway – for the Tallahassee-Leon County Animal Services Center. The local shelter is competing against other shelters across the country in the national $125,000 ASPCA Challenge. They can win grants one of two ways:

· By getting the most pets a new home with good families the TLCASC could win a $100,000 grant.

· Or it could get $25,000 by getting the most votes in a community engagement/awareness effort. Visit www.votetosavelives.org to vote.

As of midnight Wednesday, our shelter was in second place, slipping behind the Kansas Humane Society. To help, I voted for us twice this morning, one vote per e-mail address per day is allowed. Hey, dead people in Chicago helped elect John F. Kennedy president. It’s OK.

More important than voting, however, are the dogs and cats at the shelter. The TLCASC has set a goal of reaching 1,200 adoptions by the end of the month to try to win the top prize. But in any case, as of yesterday, TLCASC was 211 adoptions short of qualifying for a prize. We can do this!

For more on how to help:

http://bit.ly/aKZKwe

Politics Live at 10 today: Too much courthouse or too much politics?

Bob Gabordi is executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com. He can be reached through this blog, at bgabordi@tallahassee.com or (850) 599-2177

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Politics Live at 10 today: Too much courthouse or too much politics?

Posted 10/19/2010 5:14 AM EDT on tallahassee.com

Politics Live shows at 10 a.m. today on Tallahassee.com. Only it’s not live because of a scheduling conflict I have this morning.

It was recorded Monday when 1^st District Court of Appeal Chief Judge Paul Hawkes visited the Tallahassee Democrat for more than an hour, sitting down with Florida Capital News editor Paul Flemming and I for the show and then with the editorial board.

What it lacks in "live" we hope to make up for in interesting and lively.

Last week, CFO Alex Sink, the Democratic Party nominee for governor, released an audit that concluded the $49 million 1^st DCA building nearing completion near SouthWood in southeast Tallahassee was out of control and skirted rules without breaking the law.

Speaking of Hawkes, Sink said the project is “an outrageous example of an overactive judge who was lobbying the Legislature and then became, in effect, the personal contract manager to build something outrageous like this building full of 20 miles of mahogany, private facilities for judges, a 120,000-square-foot building to house 120 people.”

Republican Mike Haridopolos, the incoming Senate president, cited Sink’s audit in calling for the resignation of Department of Management Services Secretary Linda South.

Hawkes also has been the subject of a campaign to get voters to vote no on his retention to the bench.

For more on this

http://bit.ly/amHW9U

'Funny' Rubio sends message on Arnold's endorsement

Bob Gabordi's blog Bob Gabordi is executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com. He can be reached through this blog, at bgabordi@tallahassee.com or (850) 599-2177

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'Funny' Rubio sends message on Arnold's endorsement

Posted 10/13/2010 8:14 AM EDT on tallahassee.com

OK, so maybe the guy the pollsters say cannot lose in the U.S. Senate race has a sense of humor after all, despite what some of the reporters who cover Florida politics say. Marco Rubio is smart, articulate and focused, yes. But funny -- as in telling jokes -- funny?

Who knew?

Maybe his ever-widening lead over Gov. Charlie Crist and Congressman Kendrick Meek has Rubio just so giddy and a little silly.

The former Florida House Speaker responded quickly – if just a little wittily – to word that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, had endorsed Crist, a former Republican running as an independent against Rubio and Meek.

Schwarzenegger sent out a Tweet Tuesday saying: “I endorse Gov @charliecristfl for Senate. Great leader, works with both parties, and our country needs someone like him in DC right now.”

If you are counting, that’s 137 characters. Perhaps he’ll be back with the other three. (Get it? It’s from Arnold’s famous line, “I’ll be back.”)

And that lame attempt at humor is a great segue to Rubio’s press release, which also seemed to try just a little too hard to not take the govinator’s endorsement too seriously. (Remember Arnold's film “Terminator”? Well, it’s a play on words: govinator, “Terminator”.)

For more on this blog, click on this link:

http://bit.ly/bwi4Es

Politics live promo

Time for straight talk on commission race

Bob Gabordi's blog Bob Gabordi is executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com. He can be reached through this blog, at bgabordi@tallahassee.com or (850) 599-2177

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Time for straight talk on commission race

Posted 10/11/2010 8:04 AM EDT on tallahassee.com

For those of you who post on my blog, send me e-mails or write letters to the editor about my columns, let me offer this piece of advice: It’s useless to try to psychoanalyze me; there is just not that much there.

Some of you already realize that, I’m sure. For the rest, oh, go ahead and scoff. But you are trying to read way too much into what I write. By the time I finish reading what some of you write about what I wrote, I don’t like myself – or am at least very conflicted.

Did you know, for instance, that in my blog about political candidates and negative campaigning resulting in too much whining that was published in the Sunday Democrat that I committed “the fallacy of false equivalency. It is the phenomenon of pretending to stand above the fray to criticize ‘both sides’ where only one side is guilty of the sin in question.”

Wow, who knew I was that clever? No one at my house.

For more on this topic, go to:

http://bit.ly/bzfJ44

Don't ask, I won't tell

Bob Gabordi's blog Bob Gabordi is executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com. He can be reached through this blog, at bgabordi@tallahassee.com or (850) 599-2177

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Don't ask, I won't tell

Posted 10/8/2010 8:26 AM EDT on tallahassee.com

I’ve come to realize that I have a very serious personality defect. There might be others – more than one – but I've just come to realize this one is a defect. Most people are not so direct or rude, it turns out.

Here it is: When people ask me a question, I answer it directly.

You would think this is not a problem, but it is. I’m not good at sugar coating.

These are approximations of real conversations:

“Do you like my new hair style?” I was asked. No, no I don’t, I replied.

“Why won’t you play my boy at shortstop (second base, catcher, third, pitcher – it has happened at all positions),” the irate parent asked. Because he’s not very good there, I responded.

“Don’t you think news should be free?” the caller asked. No, I said, but that black Mustang convertible I’ve had my eye on should be.

“Do you think I should run for (such and such) office?” No, I don’t think you are qualified, I answered.

“Are you suggesting that I’m not honest?” a local politician asked. Me: Yes, that seems to be the case.

“Do you think I’m cheating your players,” the umpire demanded. No, sir. I just think you are not very good (I might have said horrible instead of “not very good” – I just don’t remember).

What I don’t know is whether it is a defect I acquired as a newspaper editor or a personality trait that helped me become a newspaper editor. I know this, though: it helps keep down conflicts on my calendar. Not a lot of people invite me over the house.

I’ve never understood why people ask questions for which they are unprepared to hear the answer.

For the complete blog:

http://bit.ly/9LUKz0

1st DCA building: Too much money or just too much politics?

Bob Gabordi's blog

Bob Gabordi is executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com. He can be reached through this blog, at bgabordi@tallahassee.com or (850) 599-2177

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1st DCA building: Too much money or just too much politics?

Posted 10/7/2010 10:20 AM EDT on tallahassee.com

It’s the most talked about new building in Tallahassee since, well, since the Apalachee built the Council House and its mere presence must be as impactful to the “scene-scape” of modern Tallahassee as that enormous center was more than 500 years earlier.

This week, our Florida Capital News editor, Paul Flemming, looks at the new 1^st District Court of Appeal building, and the politics that have erupted around it.

At $49 million, is it really too expensive and too grandiose or is it just a convenient whipping post for the ugliness of the current campaigns?

If the courthouse's existence is a testament to how things get done in political Tallahassee, just how did it get done?

You can also find the interviews on this link on our YouTube channel.

You can send your comments by clicking the button below, e-mailing me at bgabordi@tallahassee.com, sending a private message on Tallahassee.com, Twitter @bgabordi, LinkedIn or Blogger.com. You can also find links to my blogs on Facebook but you have to request to be my friend.

If you want my vote, quit whining

Posted 10/6/2010 6:24 AM EDT on tallahassee.com

I don’t know who is getting paid how much to advise political candidates these days but allow me to say they are overpaid. My political science degree seems a waste of money. All the science in politics in this campaign comes down to this:

1. Attack the other person’s character, wife or husband (or lack thereof) and religion (or lack thereof).

2. Deny that you are now or ever will run a negative campaign, and become indignant at the mere suggestion.

3. When you get caught being negative, blame your opponent, the media and if necessary your own mother instead of taking responsibility for what you have said and done.

4. Whine a lot about being a victim.

In the end, the politicians have turned the high calling of public service into a high stakes middle school game of smearing each other. I, for one, am tired of it, and I said so yesterday during Politics Live, our new 10-minute a week live-streaming show on Tallahassee.com. The show is available on this link.

This week, we featured an interview with Cliff Thaell and Nick Maddox. If you missed it, it opened with me telling them both pointedly that I might not vote for either one of them.

Afterwards, Thaell said he was disappointed with the tone and questions of the interview, that he had come prepared to talk about budget and other issues.

Hell, I said, why start now?

So far, neither of them has talked about anything much except the other guy’s flaws – and make no mistake, that’s what their advisors are telling them to do. They care more about winning than they do democracy or public service. They simply cannot help themselves.

Go out and talk about some of the “issues” in the campaign and I’ll ask questions about them. But right now, it’s hard to get passed what Thaell called “the most negative campaign we’ve ever seen at the local level.” But, of course, he takes no responsibility for that, blaming Maddox.

Good grief. Just listen to yourself talk.

Take the issue of a member of the Democratic Party, Jon Ausman, making fliers that appeared to suggest the party endorsed Maddox and other African-American candidates over white Democrats. The fliers were distributed Sunday at black churches.

Thaell suggested after our show that Maddox might have paid Ausman to distribute the fliers. Then added, “I don’t know.”

So why did you say it, I asked?

Well, he said, he has to defend himself from such tactics. Later, Thaell told a reporter he’s been the victim of “dirty tricks.”

What I told Thaell is this: If I were in the business of giving political advice it would start like this: Run on your record. You’ve got 16 years of things you should be proud to talk about. Why are you talking so much about the other guy?

You’ve had 16 years to accomplish something and to make decisions that have upset some people. That is either your great strength or your weakness.

Former NFL Coach Bill Parcells didn’t want to make excuses for his team of superstars not performing up to expectations.

“You are what your record says you are,” Parcells said.

Let me add this to the whole bunch running for office: Quit whining and run on your record. Then go fire the political advisers telling you anything different. You’ll feel better about yourself in the end.

You can send your comments by clicking the button below, e-mailing me at bgabordi@tallahassee.com, sending a private message on Tallahassee.com, Twitter @bgabordi, LinkedIn or Blogger.com. You can also find links to my blogs on Facebook but you have to request to be my friend.

Live today at 10 a.m.: It's Bob and Jeff with Nick and Cliff

Posted 10/5/2010 8:32 AM EDT on tallahassee.com

Live from Tallahassee, it's Politics Live at 10 a.m. today with me and Jeff Burlew interviewing Cliff Thaell and Nick Maddox. We joke in this video promoting the show. We're not thinking they are really best buds.

But if you've got questions for the commission candidates, post them here or on our Tallahassee.com Facebook page.

PS: I wore the wire glasses to try to not look quite as goofy this week. Elections are serious business and I want to show the proper respect.

Hope to see you at 10 -- well, I hope you see me. If you cannot make it, look for the recorded version later on demand.

You can send your comments by clicking the button below, e-mailing me at bgabordi@tallahassee.com, sending a private message on Tallahassee.com, Twitter @bgabordi, LinkedIn or Blogger.com. You can also find links to my blogs on Facebook but you have to request to be my friend.