EDITOR'S NOTE: This story updates, expands and clarifies our first report posted April 20.

Seeking higher ground in the investigation of the Republican Party's deepening financial swamp, Gov. Charlie Crist could end up sinking his own U.S. Senate campaign.

Crist's call for a federal probe of party credit-card use "may end up working as well as the rest of his campaign tacks — in other words, it may backfire," Robert Costa of National Review wrote Wednesday.

Gov. Charlie Crist's veto of Senate Bill 6 didn't do Florida any favors scholastically or economically, business leaders say.

"We're very disappointed. It's critical that our students are on the cutting edge. Doing the same thing simply nets the same results," said Nancy Stephens, executive director of the Manufacturers Association of Florida.

"We need to challenge our students and we can't allow teachers to be complacent either."

If you're not a cigarette smoker, chances are you've never heard of Dosal Tobacco Co. Lawmakers in Tallahassee apparently want to keep it that way.

Exempted from the state's Big Tobacco settlement in 1997, the little-known Opa Locka-based cigarette maker has quietly grown to be the third largest seller in Florida. Dosal has thrived as a bargain brand that doesn't have to pay the settlement costs required of its competitors.

By some estimates, that loophole has the state missing out on $200 million a year.

Senate Bill 6 is dead. Long live education reform.

Though the controversial teacher performance-pay bill was vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist, leading Republican lawmakers vow to resurrect the measure during the 2011 session -- when a new governor is in office.

Gov. Charlie Crist assailed fellow Republicans for ramming Senate Bill 6 through the Legislature like Democrats ran health-care reform through Congress.

"Quite frankly it reminds me of what happened with the health-care bill in Washington where members of my party criticized the Democrats for sort of jamming something down their throat, and then here, about a month later after that happened, the very same thing happens here in education," Crist said after vetoing the teacher performance-pay bill.

Mobilizing against chemical and biological threats in Florida, 75 specialists converged on Indian River State College this past week.

A day before unconfirmed reports surfaced that Gov. Charlie Crist will bow out of the U.S. Senate race and let George LeMieux and Marco Rubio duke it out for the Republican nomination, Crist considered one of his defining acts as chief executive of Florida.

Losing his political clout amid sinking polls, a beleaguered Crist did the calculus.

Pledging $40 million to "develop regional economic growth and job creation" on Florida's Space Coast, President Barack Obama on Thursday sought to soothe concerns about impending employment losses related to the phase-out of the shuttle program.

He didn't necessarily sway Florida officials.

When Gov. Charlie Crist signed the Transparency in Private Attorney Contracting Act on Wednesday, it might have been the last time Floridians see him in the glowing company of Republican Party leaders.

Citing a return of his father's lung cancer, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio cut short his campaign bus tour.

Two Medicaid reform bills cleared a key legislative hurdle Monday, and a new research study gave them another push forward.

Building on pilot programs already under way in five Florida counties, the new bills would expand managed-care initiatives to Miami-Dade County next year and implement a statewide program over five years.

"Reform has increased competition among health plans, reduced co-pays and expanded and diversified patient benefits," according to Michael Bond, a senior fellow at the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee.