Senate GOP candidate George LeMieux fired an e-mail missile at opponent Connie Mack, noting that Mack was judged by the analysis as having the speech of a sixth-grader, the lowest level in all of the 112th Congress. The analysis found that, as a whole, the speech of Congress members had dumbed down over the years, from about the level of an 11th-grader in 2005 to a 10th-grader this year.

Strangely, Mack’s speech level has fallen to its new low from an overall career level of 12th grade.

Take this analysis with a shaker of salt. It’s worth noting that the second lowest level of speech, coming in slightly ahead of Mack, is U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights leader whom you’ll ofter hear described as ”eloquent.”

Sunlight summarizes its analysis this way: “At its core, Flesch-Kincaid equates higher grade levels with longer words and longer sentences.” In other words, windbags are more likely to score high.

It’s instructive that Barack Obama’s State of the Union speeches are given at about an eighth-grade level, well below the speeches of other presidents; Patrick Henry’s “give me liberty…” speech was at a seventh-grade level; “To Kill a Mockingbird” was at a sixth-grade level; and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was just above a ninth-grade level. More fun with comparisons here.

It may be that politicians like Mack are speaking simply and clearly, whether you like what they say or not.

After a recent experience of my own with health care costs in Central Florida, I can believe it. (I’m not going to name the health providers I visited, but there aren’t too many suspects to choose from in this area.)

A few months back, I accidentally cut my left middle finger to the knuckle with a kitchen knife that slipped while I was trying to open something. I went to an urgent care facility, but the doctor there sent me to the hospital, fearing I might have damaged a tendon.

The physcian’s assistant who inspected my finger at the emergency room was satisfied that the tendon was OK. So after two shots of anesthetic on both sides of my finger, she sewed up the wound with five stitches and gave me a tetanus shot, just in case.

A week later, I went back to an urgent care facility and got the stitches removed. The wound has healed nicely.

And the charge for the hospital care? According to the bill, it was $1,075! The hospital “adjusted” the total downward for insurance purposes to “only” $710. My insurer paid $560, leaving me with a co-pay of $150.

The charge for removing the five stitches a week later, a one-minute procedure, was $198. After adjustments, the insurance company paid $130 and I paid $25.

Perhaps I’m out of touch (sorry, couldn’t resist), but this kind of expense to treat a cut finger, even a badly cut one, strikes me as crazy. I don’t take any comfort from the fact that my insurance company covered the bulk of the charges. Insurers who absorb costs like $840 for a minor injury just pass them on to policy holders like me in higher premiums and co-pays.

Just imagine the costs for a serious medical procedure, like a heart bypass or a joint replacement, and Osceola’s approach starts to make sense.

The blogger believes the Sentinel, and other publications that have called for Ammons to step down, aren’t holding other university presidents similarly accountable. Specifically, it cites the Sentinel’s failure to call for John Hitt’s resignation after the death of football player Ereck Plancher following a workout.

The blogger is committing a logical disconnect. John Hitt was not warned repeatedly that UCF’s workouts were putting students at risk. Ammons, on the other hand, was made aware time and again of the FAMU band’s culture of hazing, yet he failed to address it. At least, not enough to save Robert Champion. More recently it was revealed that 100 of the FAMU band members weren’t even enrolled at the school, another key distinction between the administrations of Hitt and Ammons. We’ve not always been crazy about John Hitt’s handling of the Plancher death and have said so in editorials. But what’s happened at FAMU under Ammons’ watch is a much different critter.

Back in December we disagreed with Gov. Rick Scott that Ammons should temporarily step aside while the school’s hazing investigation was under way. Revelations since then suggest the governor’s instincts were right.

Farmers’ cash income hit a record $109 billion in 2011.

The value of farm land has been soaring; the price for an average acre of Iowa farmland has doubled since 2006.

Corn prices, once $2 to $3 a bushel, now hover around $6.

Hardly a portrait of an industry in need of government handouts.

As Samuelson notes, and a recent Sentinel editorial also pointed out,  farm subsidies are holdovers from the Great Depression. Farming has undergone a technological and biological revolution since then, with huge increases in productivity. U.S. farmers also can find buyers for their harvests around the world.

And how many other businesses consider taxpayer subsidies part of their birthright?  As Samuelson points out, farming is hardly the only U.S. industry to face uncertainty from ”new technologies, global markets and erratic business cycles.”

Maybe there’s a compelling argument out there for keeping subsidies, though I haven’t heard it. But as Ross Perot once said, “I’m all ears.”

I am very proud of President Obama. This is one of the most defining issues of our generation, one that people feel very strongly about on both sides. President Obama was brave enough to become the first President of the United States to support same-sex marriage.

This comes at a time of great need for LGBT Support at the federal level. All over the country, there have been many aggressive moves to take away the civil rights of the LGBT Community. Currently, thirty states have banned same-sex marriage. The most recent of these declarations came from North Carolina last Tuesday, which stated loud and clear that marriage is to be defined as “between one man and one woman.”

Before this announcement, President Obama had already begun to pave the path for LGBT Equality. He had declared the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), unconstitutional. He advocated replacing the DOMA with the Respect for Marriage Act, which would have provided benefits to same-sex couples.

Obama said that his decision has evolved because of the views of his own family, saying that his two daughters, Sasha and Malia, have friends with same-sex parents in committed relationships, and didn’t see why they would be treated differently than their own parents.

It takes one step to lead the way on the path of progress. Not only is this a huge victory for the LGBT Community, but this is a moment that will define history. President Obama, and hopefully others that follow, will work to ensure the equality of all Americans.

However, President Obama cannot do this alone. All of us—those in the LGBT Community, Allies, family members and friends—we all need to stand up for LGBT Equality in the United States. This is only the first step, and we need to ensure that LGBT Equality makes it to the finish line.

Written by College Democrat Aubrey Marks

Wednesday’s League of Women Voters debate featured four men competing to become the state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties.

Or did it? What seemed to emerge from the debate is heightened suspicion that Republican Joerg Jaeger is in the race to help incumbent Lawson Lamar in his primary race against two other Democrats, Jeff Ashton of Casey Anthony notoriety and former prosecutor Ryan Williams.

During the debate defense attorney Jaeger repeatedly went on the attack against Democrat Ashton, calling him out in particular for his role in the Casey Anthony prosecution. Meanwhile, Jaeger offered praise for Lamar’s administration, lauding it for having the “guts” to prosecute Osceola Clerk of Courts Malcom Thompson (Lamar’s office lost both cases against Thompson). Like Lamar, Jaeger waved off the 9th circuit’s low conviction rate as statistical blathering.

And then, this morning’s Sentinel story revealed that Jaeger until recently was a donor and fundraiser for Lamar. It makes sense that Lamar would be better off having someone else criticize Ashton. After all, Ashton worked for Lamar as a prosecutor. If Lamar thought Ashton wasn’t highly qualified he should have fired or demoted him instead of entrusting Ashton with the highest-profile case to come along in decades.

By the way, Jaeger also had a decidedly un-Republican point of view in advocating civil service protections for prosecutors to shield them from political retribution. You know, like the civil service protections that federal employees enjoy. Lamar could be seen nodding his head vigorously as Jaeger promoted civil service protections.

Lugar is old, at 80, and he didn’t do himself any favors by taking up residence in Washington, D.C., instead of his home state. But the rap on him from groups backing primary opponent Richard Mourdock, including the Club for Growth, was that Lugar was a “liberal.”

Really? Lugar had a 68 percent conservative composite score last year from the National Journal. He got a 77 percent lifetime score with the American Conservative Union in 2010.

But Lugar also was part of the shrinking group in Congress willing to work across the aisle. After his defeat, he said of Mourdock, “He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate.” Results — what a concept in today’s Congress.

Lugar’s defeat continues a trend among both parties in purging their more moderate members. Two House Democrats in Pennsylvania who voted against Obamacare lost their seats last month in that state’s primary.

In 2010, Delaware Republican Mike Castle, a former governor and longtime House member known for his bipartisanship, lost in his party’s Senate primary to Christine “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell. So how’d that work out for the GOP?

Other senators who have had a habit of working across the aisle, such as Maine’s Republican Olympia Snowe this year and Indiana’s Democrat Evan Bayh in 2010, decided to leave without a push from primary voters.

For Americans frustrated with gridlock in Congress — one recent poll showed its public approval at 8 percent — Lugar’s defeat is another setback.

Fortunately, not balancing the deficit on the backs of students seems to be one of the few things both sides of the political spectrum can agree on; both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have expressed support for leaving the interest rate at 3.4%.  There are also two proposals in Congress, one in the House and one in the Senate, to maintain the current rate.  While they both agree to keep the rate as it is, they differ on how they plan to pay for it.

The Senate proposal aims to pay for this initiative by having professional firms that make more than $250,000 a year and have three or fewer shareholders pay a withhold tax, while the House proposal aims to pay for it by abolishing a public-health fund that has paid for cancer screenings as well as prenatal screenings for birth defects.

Of these two proposals, I believe it is clear that the Senate proposal has the middle class in mind, and that it is the superior option.  It is important that our legislators on both sides of the aisle work to make sure that rates don’t double, but not at the expense of the people who have been struggling the most.

College Democrat Justin Karpf