MacNamara draws ethics complaint; rumor mill says Hollingsworth to replace him

A state ethics complaint filed this week against Gov. Rick Scott's chief of staff Steve MacNamara alleges he used state employees to help him seek a college president's job in Montana.

The complaint comes at a time when MacNamara has drawn media scrutiny for steering contracts to friends or associates and getting involved in personnel matters. He and Scott are scheduled to meet over the weekend to talk about MacNamara's future.

"We'll see what happens,'' said MacNamara."I'm going to do what the governor wants me to do."

Scott hired MacNamara in July 2011 to the $189,000-a-year job after a blistering first six months of low poll ratings and icy relationships with lawmakers. MacNamara had planned to stay on the job at least a year but this week said the media attention could hasten his departure.

The governor's supporters have discussed a replacement for MacNamara for some time. On Friday, Jacksonville political consultant Adam Hollingsworth's name surfaced as a likely replacement. He was an early supporter of Scott's and a one-time chief of staff of former Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton. He writes an enthusiastic blog, DadsonDefense, about being the father of two small children and he is close to Scott's former campaign manager Susie Wiles.

The Florida Commission on Ethics received the complaint Thursday from Trent Barrett, of Clearwater. He included copies of a series of emails -- all from October 2011 -- that were sent from MacNamara's state email account to a woman heading up the presidential search for Carroll College in Montana.

Flip-flop-flip-flop. Obama’s gay-marriage stance isn’t an evolution.

Barack Obama couldn’t have been clearer.

“I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” he said.

But he didn’t say this in the now-famous ABC White House interview Wednesday that has the national news media in a tizzy as they parrot his buzzword about his “evolution.”

Obama said it about 16 years ago, in writing, on a gay-publication questionnaire. At the time, in 1996, he was running for a state Senate seat in Chicago. The district was liberal. It was an easy stance to take.

But two years later, as he gazed at higher office, Obama began backing off that stance, the Washington Post notes in a good story today. By 2004, the then-U.S. Senate candidate abandoned using the word “marriage” but said he favored “civil unions.”

By the time he began running for president in 2008, Obama was against it.

Now he’s for it.

That’s not evolution. That’s a flip-flop-flip-flop. It's a reverse of a reversal.

Mitt Romney camp silent amid grief from pro-lifers about Miami fundraiser with contraception maker

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced a $50,000 yearly fundraiser at the Star Island home of pharmaceutical kingpin Phil Frost, it didn't take long for the liberal Think Progress website to note the glaring irony: Frost's company makes the very type of contraception that Romney falsely bashed as an "abortive" pill.

Now, the conservative Daily Caller is reporting that abortion opponents aren't too pleased with the fundraiser:

Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, told TheDC that she believe that once the campaign realizes the connection they will not go through with the fundraiser.

"I would be shocked if, after they are aware of the fact that this guy is the chairman of Teva Pharmaceuticals, that they go forward with this fundraiser,” Nance said.. Nance further said that she would strongly urge the campaign to cancel the event “because it is dirty money,” adding that she will be “sorely disappointed” and “question if Gov. Romney has a clear understanding of what it means to be pro-life” if they go through with it.

Romney's campaign response? Silence.

The DC did note, however, that Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote.org, said he understood that Romney would take money from those with whom he doesn't entirely agree: “What matters is whether a President Romney will end all taxpayer support for abortion-inducing drugs, repeal unconstitutional mandates that force private institutions to cover such drugs, and whether he will make progress in building a culture of life. We are confident that Mitt Romney is committed to these goals.”