Late last Friday afternoon we posted a story on St. Petersburg District 8 City Council candidate Steve Galvin, who told CL that with the exception of a certain blogger, he's thoroughly enjoyed the give and take of his first political campaign so far.
But that was before the Tampa Bay Times Anna Phillips reported hours later that Galvin had lied on a questionnaire that he filled out for the paper last week. Galvin wrote that he did not have a child, nor had he ever been sued. In fact, Galvin does have a young son from an apparent one-night stand nine years ago, and was taken to court to ultimately end up paying child support for that son.
Galvin says that the incident has nothing to do with his fitness for office, and frankly, you could definitely make an argument that that is the case. You could also argue that when Galvin decided to run for public office, he forfeited keeping those parts of his life that he'd prefer to keep private. Certainly it's up to the voters in District 8 to make that decision, but he wasn't helped in his contain the fallout when his campaign manager- Johnny Bardine — bailed out on Galvin shortly after he was informed about the story.
In other news … Is Congress as a body finally going to do something about Americans privacy a decade after they approved the Patriot Act? A vote in the House came close to stopping some parts of NSA surveillance last week, and even though Kathy Castor's vote helped prevent that from happening, she did sign on to a letter authored by Nancy Pelosi that informs President Obama that changes to Section 215 of the Patriot Act are probably going to happen …
While Edward Snowden remains stuck in that Moscow airport, another U.S. whistleblower, Bradley Manning, is back in court today. The former US Army private who gave classified information to WikiLeaks has become a cause for civil libertarians, and on Saturday activists with Occupy Tampa held a "flashmob" calling for him to be released in two Tampa malls.
And we're a couple of months away from the exchanges for the Affordable Care Act going online. On Saturday, organizers began canvassing neighborhoods in Tampa to find people who don't have health care benefits and let them know that "Obamacare" is on the way.
