Lots happening:
* This could be big news. A buy-in to Medicare for people 55 to 65 is being discussed in the Senate. Just don't call it a public option and it might get some traction.
* Tiger Woods' wife moves out as the roster of his gal pals grows. This [...]
I've been ignoring this all day, but no more. Mike Huckabee has placed his Fox column blaming others for alleged cop killer Maurice Clemmons in the Washington Post, the New York Daily News and other places.
It's more of the same. Yes, he commuted Clemmon's sentence in Arkansas, but others' [...]
Thanks to Chris Spencer at Ozarks Unbound for this tip to uatrav.com
A number of reptiles, including an alligator, a diamondback rattlesnake and six pythons, were confiscated by the UA Police Department from a room in Maple Hill West residence hall Thursday, resulting in a fine for two students from [...]
U.S. Rep. John Boozman has a dog-and-pony show scheduled Sunday evening at Har-Ber High School in Springdale. Republican Sens. John McCain and John Barrasso will talk about health care.
Should be a short discussion. How long does it take to say, "No!"
[...]The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday will complete its determination that greenhouse gases pose a danger to human health and the environment, paving the way for regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, power plants, factories refineries and other major sources.
The agency finding also will allow Mr. [...]
A new poll finds the Tea Party movement is more popular than the Republican Party on a generic congressional ballot question.
Such polling helps explain the exuberance of 'bagger Tom Cox, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Arkansas, who pronounced himself satisfied with the 4 percent he got in' [...]
A compilation of the Top 10 Magazines of the decades put Arkansas-based Oxford American at No. 6, ahead of Atlantic and The Economist and in the company of the New Yorker, Wired, etc. Not too shabby.
The popular music issue, the current OA, looks (and sounds) like another winner. It [...]
City Director Doris Wright sends a plea for the Little Rock City Board to reconsider its refusal to continue funding for a park program for mostly minority kids in her ward while continuing to funnel money to a golf course. Her pitch is on the jump.
Wright injected a strong note of [...]
Wendell Griffen has more, lots more, to say about Gov. Mike Beebe's "cultural incompetence" in failing with two opportunities to appoint a person of color to the state Supreme Court.
[...]
Sen. Blanche Lincoln's amendment to cut tax subsidies of insurance executive pay above $400,000 failed in the Senate today. Needing 60 votes, the amendment failed 56-42.
Three senators who caucus with Democrats -- Carper, Conrad and Lieberman -- joined Republicans in supporting the insurance executives. Byrd didn't vote. Lincoln got' [...]
Much reminiscing this weekend about the Big Shootout, Hogs v. Longhorns in Fayetteville before God, Richard Nixon and everybody else 40 years ago. I was a college freshman in Virginia. I had a date from a nearby women's college. She was from El Dorado. She brought along' [...]
Friends report that former state legislator Jodie Mahony of El Dorado died last night of complications from his long bout with cancer. He was 70.
The family's obituary notice, on the jump, reports that a visitation will be held from 4 to 6 Tuesday at Young's Funeral Directors in [...]
Heard of McSweeny's, the Dave Eggers journal? Next week, it will roll out a one-time 312-page newspaper, Panorama, for the San Francisco area, where print hasn't been doing so hot. Eggers got his start in newspapers and still has a soft spot for them.
I'm happy to learn that Jeremy' [...]
A precious few defenders (here are two, courtesy of The Huckster) are repeating Mike Huckabee's line that the parole board was somehow to blame for Maurice Clemmons' freedom to kill four Washington cops. It was the board that recommended a commutation. It was the board that paroled him after [...]
The straw poll in Hot Springs today for the Republican primary U.S. Senate race (some notable potential candidates -- Stanley Reed and Jim Holt -- were absent) has been completed.
Sen. Gilbert Baker by a hair.
Twitterers report the vote breakdown: Sen. Gilbert Baker, 35 percent; Curtis Coleman, 33%; Conrad Reynolds, 23%; Tom Cox [...]
The Arkansas Times obtained some preliminary engineering plans for the Rock Island Bridge which, according to former president Bill Clinton, will be renovated in 2010. Here, you can see high resolution images of the plans including the overall elevation of the entire bridge and the plans for what [...]
Washington newspaper reports the arrest of an Arkansas parolee wanted on a burglary charge in Arkansas. I suspect we'll be asking for him back.
SPEAKING OF ARKANSAS THUGS: Backgrounding of accused cop killer Maurice Clemmons continues. It would appear he wasn't out of jail long in Arkansas (after a [...]
Sen. Max Baucus, the leading Democrat in the Senate health debate, now has a new headache to deal with:
He apparently proposed his girlfriend for appointment as a U.S. attorney in Montana. Didn't happen for a variety of reasons, lots of cover offered, etc. Doesn't look good.
Speaking of girlfriend troubles [...]
John Brummett reassures his 79-year-old mother that Democrats aren't out to cut her Medicare. That she'd ask -- and that Democrats have utterly failed at communicating what they are about -- is the story of the moment in the health care debate. Probably the permanent story.
Obama’s message seems only [...]
When you've become a sitting duck for national cartoonists ...
MEANWHILE: Garrick Feldman writes that Huck is the worst Ark. governor ever. Why? Six people wouldn't be dead if Wayne Dumond and Maurice Clemmons hadn't been freed in response to his actions.
' [...]Scott Miller notes that, unless he resigns or something, Alderman Sam Baggett is scheduled to be acting mayor at the next meeting of the NLR City Council. The real mayor will be gallivanting in Denmark. Baggett would preside 15 hours before his arraignment on federal felony charge for peddling [...]
I think former Sen. George Hopkins is doing a good job trying to clean up the mess at the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, where corruption and old boyism held sway for so many years and hundreds of millions of dollars were at issue.
Among the improvements he's made' [...]
What? Has Sen. Blanche Lincoln begun to run for re-election?
She'll have a news conference today to announce an amendment to limit the deductibility of insurance executive salaries as a business expense to $400,000 each, down from $1 million. She claims this will save government $65 million a year.
Earlier today, she' [...]
This was strongly rumored during the last round of job cuts at the Hawker Beechcraft aircraft completion facility at Little Rock National Airport.
Roby Brock at Talk Business says a statement is coming this evening from Dassault Falcon, another major aircraft facility at the airport, and he expects it to [...]
President Obama has nominated Arkansas Appeals Court Judge Price Marshall for a federal district court judgeship. Judge Bill Wilson is taking senior status.
News release from Sens. Lincoln and Pryor on the jump. Chip Welch and Mariam Hopkins also had been suggested as potential nominees.
Marshall was considered a lock for this [...]
Tim Pawlenty cheesily took advantage of Mike Huckabee's clemency decision in the cop-killer case by suggesting he'd never do such a thing.
Mitt Romney inserted the knife in Huck much more effectively, without seeming to do so. Why, Romney told an interviewer, he has great empathy for Huckabee. He thinks the [...]
Yes, I'd rather fly to Copenhagen than attend a North Little Rock City Council meeting at which next year's difficult budget will be discussed.
But, I'm not the mayor of North Little Rock.
Argenta News says maximum boss Pat Hays will be chomping danishes on an 11-day Copenhagen junket when an indictment-depleted [...]
No word if white smoke rose from the chimney of the Marianna farmhouse at which former Farm Bureau president Stanley Reed was supposed to reach a family Thanksgiving decision on running for U.S. Senate as a Republican.
But an associate of the people who'd be his main money men -- real' [...]
A clean water advocate writes to say the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission has removed from its agenda today a proposed rule to limit surface discharge of wastewater in the Lake Maumelle watershed, a proposed rule developed in a watershed management plan aimed at preserving the major water [...]
I'm not going to explain this much, because I know school issues have a limited audience.
But I want to post here Chris Heller's brief for the Little Rock School District to the Arkansas Board of Education on why unlimited open enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County are a contravention of [...]
The state Supreme Court today upheld, on a 4-3 vote, a Pulaski County robbery conviction of Hutson Burks despite unanimous agreement that the prosecutor's office used testimony obtained improperly by promise of reduction of a sentence already in effect for the critical witness. It sharply criticized the prosecuting attorney's office, which struck the deal, and [...]
The House today voted 225-200 (all Republicans were nays) to prevent the federal estate tax from expiring next month and crippling the budget. This will keep in place a maximum 45 percent estate tax on estates valued (after deductions for debt, etc.) at $3.5 million, or $7 million for [...]
Daily Kos has polled a potential Blanche Lincoln-Bill Halter matchup. (Kos is a progressive blogger, but his polling operation is straightforward and has a good track record.)
It's 42-26 Lincoln with 32 percent undecided. Up for grabs in other words, and that's with near universal name recognition for Lincoln. Halter [...]
Sen. Blanche Lincoln is hard at work trying to improve health legislation with amendments. Such as one to gut state insurance regulation, as per the desire of the health insurance industry.
Maybe there's a method to her madness. If you believe the polls, which say the Arkansas public sides with insurance [...]
Three people have been put on leave on account of the White House gate crashers.
Am I wrong to not be as worked up about this as the rest of the media world seems to be?
Someday, perhaps, I'll relate an incident of which I have knowledge of a person entering a' [...]
David Mitchell, writing in the Arkansas Law Review, argues that a circuit judge used too narrow a standard for considering post-conviction relief based on new evidence in the West Memphis Three murder case. Mitchell concludes that a new trial was warranted. Let's hope the state Supreme Court reads the [...]
The Arkansas Realtors Association's monthly housing report for October is the best since the boom days of 2005, says ARA's Ethan Nobles. Credit the first-time home buyer tax credit for the excitement, but it has been expanded and extended, so perhaps some more better times are ahead.
The number of houses sold [...]
Our Damsel in Distress, Norma Bates, has opened voting on five finalists in her Huckabee Haiku contest.
The full background is at Norma's place.
But if you want to go straight to voting, here's the link.
[...]Another Rasmussen poll, another round of bad numbers for Sen. Blanche Lincoln against any Republican. Arkies don't like the health care legislation either (not that many of them could define it except as defined by interest group advertising.)
Lincoln better start campaigning. And somebody better start effectively pitching the truth' [...]
