The Space Coast Rocket @CoastRocket

MELBOURNE ROAD RAGE CAUGHT ON VIDEO ENDS IN BURGLARY, BATTERY CHARGES A Melbourne woman is facing three felony charges, including burglary with battery, after police say she rammed a pickup truck and then reached inside and punched the driver in the face during a road rage confrontation at Wickham Road and Sarno Road on Tuesday afternoon. Michelle Lee Lovejoy, 57, was arrested by the Melbourne Police Department and booked into the Brevard County Jail Tuesday evening. According to the arrest affidavit, the driver of a white Ford F-150 told police he had just left Walmart and turned south onto Wickham Road when Lovejoy's red Jeep came up very close to his driver's side door as traffic began moving. He said he slowed down to let her get in front of him in the right lane, and she then slammed on her brakes partially inside the intersection at Sarno Road, forcing him to swerve into the left lane to avoid rear-ending her. Police said a witness video shows Lovejoy then trying to broadside the truck with her Jeep while he was in the left lane. When he merged back into the right lane ahead of her, he told police she accelerated at a high rate of speed and intentionally rammed the rear of his truck. Both vehicles stopped in the road. According to the affidavit, the video shows Lovejoy getting out, walking up to the truck's driver's side door, and as the driver was opening his door, reaching inside and striking him in the face with a closed fist. Lovejoy is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for trying to strike the truck with her vehicle, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon for ramming it, and burglary with battery, a first-degree felony, for reaching into the truck and punching the driver. Under Florida law, reaching into a vehicle to commit a crime can be charged as burglary of a conveyance. She was being held without bond, according to the affidavit. All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. #BrevardCounty #Melbourne #RoadRage

3 weeks ago, President Trump signed the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which calls for tariffs of up to 100% on the buyers of Russian oil and gas. Today he announced a deal with Vladimir Putin to bring Russian diesel to the American market and touted it as a win for fuel prices which appears to violate the very law he just signed. Under the agreement, Russia would supply 300,000 metric tons of diesel immediately, another 500,000 tons in November, and 1 million tons after that. The first 300,000 metric tons works out to roughly 2.2 million barrels. The U.S. uses about 4 million barrels of diesel a day, so the first shipment covers about half a day of American consumption or 2 hours worth, world-wide. Retail diesel prices in the U.S. topped $6 a gallon last month after Russia restricted its own diesel exports following Ukrainian drone strikes on its refineries. Lawmakers from both parties criticized the deal, saying it would help fund Russia’s war in Ukraine. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who co-sponsored the sanctions law, said it “makes us complicit in Putin’s war against Ukraine.” Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, warned that lifting sanctions on Russian oil “will only fund the Kremlin’s war machine.”

Treasury Department @USTreasury

5 days ago

Today, at President Trump’s direction, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is immediately issuing a temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market.

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@ESPNNFL @SamGannon87 He didnt keep that same energy when he asked someone else to go address him on his behalf. Embarrassing.

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WE COUNT THE ENEMIES WE KILL. WE RARELY COUNT THE ONES WE CREATE. Nidal Hasan was a patient on my floor in the surgical trauma ICU at Brooke Army Medical Center. I wasn't there when he arrived. I had just left for my deployment to Mosul, Iraq. But the nurses and doctors who cared for him were my peers and my friends, and I know exactly what that required of them, because every one of us had done some version of it before. Before anyone tells me what strength looks like, understand what that work demands. I have cared for a drunk driver who wiped out an entire family and landed in our ICU himself. I have cared for gang members who shot up a block while children were stepping off a school bus, then ended up on our unit with bullets of their own. I have kept alive people who murdered their own families and failed at taking their own lives. And in Iraq, I saved the lives of the very enemy fighters who had just tried to kill us and miraculously survived our response. Every one of those patients got our best. Not because we felt anything for them, but because of who we were. You set aside anger, grief, prejudice and every personal feeling you have, because a life in front of you is a life in front of you. That's the oath. That's the duty. So when Hasan came through those doors, my colleagues did what we had always done. They preserved the life of a man who murdered thirteen people and would have killed them too, given the chance. He killed those men and women in one of the very same buildings many Soldier's like myself have been in when I was stationed at Fort Hood. He is alive today because they did their jobs. That was not sentiment. It was a hard, tangible expression of the values this country claims to stand for. Our principles had to mean something even when the person benefiting from them had violated everything we believed in. Now the Pentagon plans to livestream his execution by firing squad on Dec. 3, and our leaders apparently believe turning his death into a public spectacle will demonstrate American strength. I think it demonstrates how little they understand the enemy they claim to be fighting. We kept Nidal Hasan alive, now our leaders want to make him a martyr. Hasan walked into Fort Hood expecting to die. He believed his death would be rewarded. At his trial, he called no witnesses and offered no defense, and his own court-appointed lawyers worried he was seeking execution. He failed at martyrdom once. Now we're about to hand it to him, in high definition, for every extremist with an internet connection to replay, manipulate and celebrate. We supply the footage. They supply the meaning. Long after the politicians finish congratulating themselves, that video will still exist. Their moment of bravado becomes somebody else's recruiting material for decades. And this failure to think past the immediate display of power reaches far beyond one execution. We count the enemies we kill. We rarely count the enemies we create. Look at the school in Minab, Iran, where multiple investigations attributed the strike that killed more than 100 children and their teachers to us. You cannot bury people's children beneath the rubble of their classrooms and expect a speech about American intentions to decide how they remember you. No denial brings those children home. No claim of good intentions makes their parents forget whose weapons killed them. If those were our children, we would remember for the rest of our lives. We would demand accountability. Many of us would want vengeance. We would tell their stories to the next generation. We know this because we did exactly that after September 11. Why do we imagine other people love their children less, grieve less deeply, or remember less clearly? We have developed a horrifying talent for creating more terrorists than we will ever stop. We inflict suffering, evade responsibility, and then act as though the anger that follows came out of nowhere. Think back to the first time you saw one of those al Qaeda videos of an American being beheaded. Remember the sickness in your stomach. Remember the rage. Remember thinking that only savages would film a killing and send it out for the world to watch. Now ask yourself what the rest of the world will see when the camera is ours. Terrorist organizations stage executions for the cameras. Authoritarian regimes make death a public spectacle to feed fear and rage. Watching our own leaders reach for those same tools should force us to confront how much of ourselves we are surrendering in the name of defeating them. The line separating us from the people we condemn has to live in our conduct. A flag cannot hold it for us. Neither can a uniform, a title, or a declaration that we are the good guys. On that ICU floor, on a bloody street in Mosul, and in trauma bays across this country, people like my colleagues hold that line every day under circumstances most will never face. They keep monsters alive because their duty and their humanity are bigger than their hatred of what those monsters have done. Execute him if that's the sentence. But do it the way a confident nation does; quietly, lawfully, and without giving him the stage he always wanted. Let him be forgotten. I expect our leaders to show at least as much discipline as the nurses who had to care for him. They keep telling us they are defending what makes America different. Every day, they make that difference harder to see. Robert W. Burns III is the editor and publisher of The Space Coast Rocket, an Army veteran and a retired trauma nurse. The views expressed in this column are his own.

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A Florida appeals court has ordered the Hope Florida grand jury report wiped from the record, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis posted on X Wednesday that the 1st District Court of Appeal ordered the "complete and total expungement" of the Leon County grand jury presentment. The court also ruled that AHCA did not misappropriate funds as a matter of law in the 2024 Centene settlement, he said. The grand jury's report, sealed since January, found that $10 million from a Medicaid settlement with Centene was misappropriated when it went to the Hope Florida Foundation and then moved through two nonprofits to political committees that opposed the 2024 marijuana amendment. The grand jury did not charge anyone. CBS News Miami published a leaked copy of the report in August. Pages of the appellate opinion shared by DeSantis show the court wrote that the $10 million "was never public money." The court said the money went directly from Centene to Hope Florida and never belonged to the state. The court also noted that Florida law does not prohibit settlements that send payments to third parties. Florida attorneys general signed 107 such settlements between 1996 and 2020. The judges wrote that the grand jury could report on public officials and on Hope Florida itself. However, they said it went beyond its legal authority when it labeled private recipients as part of a "sophisticated scheme." The opinion says Frank Walker, who is named in the report, was never charged and the grand jury made no finding against him. DeSantis called the ruling the end of what he has called the "Hope Florida Hoax." #HopeFlorida #FloridaPolitics #Tallahassee

Lobbyist turned congressman @mikeharidopolos spent more than a decade being paid to influence government, earning millions according to his own financial disclosures. You won't find the word "lobbyist" anywhere on his campaign website. Now he's one of President Trump's most reliable votes. As Republicans across the country quietly distance themselves from the president, Haridopolos voted against ending the Iran war, defended Trump on national TV as gas prices climbed, and hasn't said a word about the $5,000 checks. But there's a pattern when Trump's policies hit home. When Trump's tariffs threatened jobs at Piper Aircraft, he sought an exemption for them. When the Trump's policies included cutting NASA by 24%, he opposed it. Now he's taking credit for saving NASA's budget, even though Congress overrode the White House and the extra $10 billion came from Sen. Ted Cruz. He's also taking credit for ousting @CoryMillsFL even though Trump himself said he was pushing him out. But months earlier, he voted to keep Mills's censure from the House floor. And when he endorsed Mills's opponent, he never mentioned the allegations. Does Haridopolos support President Trump? Absolutely. Does he support his policies? It appears so, as long as they don't apply to his district. Read the full breakdown, with the votes, the quotes and the records in the article below. Do you think Haridopolos is doing a good job representing Brevard and Orange counties? Tell us in the comments. thespacecoastrocket.com/mike-haridopol…

Today interviewed with U.S. Senate candidate @AngieNixon following her appearance at a disability event in Melbourne. @SenAshleyMoody did not attend. We asked her to respond to Vice President J.D. Vance's remarks at a rally in Lakeland yesterday, where he said that when Nixon calls herself a socialist, "the right response is to say, 'Then get the hell out of here. You don't belong in America.'" We also asked how she plans to win over voters in Republican strongholds like Brevard County as a Democrat. Watch her full responses in the video. #BrevardCounty #SpaceCoast

@abbydphillip @WoodwardWoodw11 Just tried it and got this

Vice President Vance contradicts President Trump. Vance: "He's not banning media outlets." Trump "It's a very simple ban. I will say the ban will go as far as you can."

Today we asked Governor Ron DeSantis to respond to criticism of Amendment 3, the property tax measure, from the president of the Florida Sheriffs Association and firefighter unions, who warn that public safety agencies could lose up to 20% of their budgets if it passes. He gave us a lengthy answer, saying municipalities are going to have to make cuts and adjustments. Tonight, along those same lines, the Palm Bay City Council votes on whether to move the city's 911 call center and dispatchers under the Brevard County Sheriff's Office. The city says the change would save more than $13 million over four years. Listen to his response and tell us: Do you agree with him? Do you still support Amendment 3? And should Palm Bay make moves like the 911 consolidation now to get ahead of potential funding cuts? #Amendment3 #PalmBay #BrevardCounty

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The Space Force had a Gene Trent campaign photo removed over a perceived military endorsement. Months later, BPS warned opponent Kyle Savage, then privately sent Trent its legal analysis 94 minutes later. Read the records and laws at issue. thespacecoastrocket.com/space-force-ge…

The Florida Commission on Ethics has found probable cause that Randy Fine took $20,000 in prohibited gifts. The money came from his own political committee, Friends of Randy Fine. It went to a Melbourne attorney hired to keep him out of two depositions he did not want to sit for. One of those is the deposition he was dodging when he called the Sheriff's Office on a process server and hid under his desk. He never reported a dollar of it as a gift. The investigation was finished in December 2024. The Commission's own advocate recommended probable cause on January 6, 2025. The vote did not happen for another 599 days. For two and a half years his attorney told the Commission he could not appear. Congress was in session. Congress was not in session but he had a travel day. He was in South America. He was in Israel. He was at a conference in Denver. The Commission finally offered to move the whole thing to the August 2026 congressional recess and asked which Friday would be convenient for him. He picked August 28. Ten days after the primary he was running in. Then on August 12 he tried to move that one too, and offered to waive his right to attend in person only if the case was dismissed. The chair denied it, in part because eight days earlier Fine had asked a federal judge to let his Chief of Staff stand in for him at a mediation, citing the exact same congressional duties. He did not show up on August 28. His lawyer appeared for him, which the rules allowed the entire time. Meanwhile the older case, the one where he called Jennifer Jenkins a whore and put Special Olympics funding on the "veto list," has been sitting since 2022. The Commission found probable cause on that in April 2023. Three years and four months later it still has not been heard, and at the same August meeting half the allegations were thrown out under a law passed while the case sat idle. Since that first finding, Randy Fine has been elected to three different offices...with several findings of probable cause he abused his office and position. He has never once faced a hearing. Based off his latest letter on congressional letterhead, he may now face an ethics hearing from the U.S. House of Representatives. Full story with the records and listen to the hearing at the link. thespacecoastrocket.com/randy-fine-eth…

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@FloridaGOP @AngieNixon The current person in charge of this organization, Evan Power literally has a DUI for drinking “a beer and a beer” (bud light by the way) with a loaded hand gun and couldn’t compete the field sobriety test. Maybe sit out the “behind the wheel” AI posts.