The Republican who’s challenging state Rep. Jamie Grant for his House District 64 seat lives in a $500,000 home but applied for food stamps, according to recent tweets.

We previously reported that Power owes nearly $88,000 in alimony.

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) - An argument on Facebook over politics led to the shooting of a man in Tampa on Monday.
According to police, Alex Stephens, 46, and Brian Sebring, 44, became involved in an argument over politics on the social media platform.
After receiving several explicit messages and threats, Sebring went to Stephens’ home to confront him.
Sebring, anticipating the confrontation would escalate, brought his Glock semi-automatic pistol.
When he arrived to Stephens’ home, Sebring honked his horn and waited by his truck for the victim to leave his home.
Stephens left the home and immediately sprinted towards Sebring, who drew his pistol and fired two shots at Stephens, striking him in the right thigh and buttocks.

This week marks the beginning of Paul Manafort’s trial on charges of various financial improprieties, with FBI agents working for special counsel Robert Mueller opening their prosecution of the former Trump campaign manager in a Virginia courthouse. As a result, Manafort’s longstanding relationships with Eastern European tycoons like the Russian aluminum baron Oleg Deripaska—who gave the career lobbyist a mysterious $10 million loan, and to whom Manafort allegedly offered to provide “private briefings” on the presidential race in 2016—are once again in the news.

Russian oligarchs are colorful people, and those who have minted their fortunes in natural resources (aluminum, gas, etc.) and other industries connected to the Russian state often have substantial ties to the art world. It’s no surprise that such magnates are involved in patronage, and several in fact participate in the higher echelons of the art market, buying celebrated artworks and even building their own museums. If you’re lucky, you just might spot one at the auctions, art fairs, and events like the Venice Biennale that attract the international art community.

So who are these tycoons, how did they make their money, and what role are they playing in the art world?

Yes, this really is Rick Scott, Adam Putnam and Pam Bondi’s fault

As horrified people watch dead manatees, marine mammals, fish and hundreds of sea turtles wash up on Florida’s southwest coast, politicians are tripping over one another to express concern.

But a look back eight years ago shows that three key state leaders – Gov. Rick Scott, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, and Attorney General Pam Bondi – fought bitterly against stricter limits for the very pollution now sliming South Florida. And they started with a letter written just 10 days after they were elected.

Their opposition was ideological; In the November 2010 letter of objection to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, they complained that setting pollution limits for sewage, manure and fertilizer runoff would be an “onerous regulation” by an “overbearing federal government.”

It would also, they argued, interfere with the ability to squeeze every last dollar out of the cash cow that is the Sunshine State.

Arsenault recalled that Butina was on the panel because she claimed to run a gun-rights organization in Russia, and was the only participant with a pro-gun stance. Organizers liked that she had a different take on the issue and could offer an international perspective, Arsenault said.

The group she's said to have founded is called Right to Bear Arms.

"I don't know to this day if it was real, or a paper cover for her infiltration into the NRA," the professor said.

Arsenault recalled that Butina didn't come off as "professional" during her participation on the panel.

"She was not a scholar," he said. "She was just, as you might imagine. She was pretty. And kind of coquettish. She smiled a lot."

At the same time, after the FBI informed Maryland just days ago that its entire election system was being hosted on a private commercial server said to be owned by a Russian oligarch tied to Putin (as discussed in detail on yesterday's BradCast), we learn this week that the top U.S. election system vendor, ES&S, has been lying about remote access software and modems installed, for many years, on systems still used by a majority of U.S. voters.

The new revelations may help explain an exclusive special report published by The BRAD BLOG back in 2011, with an officially-commissioned independent analysis finding that, among other concerns, Venango County, Pennsylvania's ES&S election management system had been accessed by an unknown and unauthorized computer for "several hours" from a remote location. As we reported at the time, ES&S and the County's Board of Commissioners went to considerable lengths, after those revelations, to block a further, independent forensic analysis of the system.

And now, perhaps, we may know why. Kim Zetter reports this week at Vice's Motherboard that the company lied to her and New York Times' fact-checkers earlier this year in advance of her February article at the paper on the inclusion of modems and pcAnywhere remote access software included with the election management systems sold to customers from 2000 to 2006. After previously insisting the company had no "knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software", ES&S reversed itself in a letter to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, she reports. But they have refused to respond to the Senator's subsequent follow-up queries or to appear at recent Senate hearings on U.S. election system vulnerabilities.

The new indictment of Russian military officials who hacked Democrats during the 2016 presidential elections has Florida written all over it.
Two Florida Republicans and possibly a third — Rep. Brian Mast — play starring roles in the indictment, although none is named.

Almost as soon as the indictment was released Friday, Florida Republicans, Democrats and even allies of Mast speculated that the congressman’s campaign was likely implicated — in great part because a former campaign consultant for Mast admitted last year to The Wall Street Journal and then to POLITICO that he used some of the hacked information in 2016.

“There was data for our campaign available, so I used it,” Bustamante told POLITICO last year after The Wall Street Journal first reported his involvement. He told the Journal that “I did adjust some voting targets based on some data I saw from the leaks.”

Nevins, another Republican consultant and blogger, separately became involved with Guccifer 2.0 when he saw news reports of its information and an invitation for reporters to get the hacked information. Under his @HelloFLAnews account, he direct-messaged Guccifer 2.0 on Twitter and on Aug. 22 received “approximately 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC,” according to the indictment. “The stolen data included donor records and personal identifying information for more than 2,000 Democratic donors.”