Open to you. Final notes:
* WE HAVE A DREAM: It is that Arkansas legislators, particularly Jim Hendren, will give a listen to Zessna Garcia Rios of Bentonville in the YouTube above from Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. Do we really want to discourage people like her from going to college in the state where they grew up? Let's pass the DREAM Act and give children who came to the U.S. without papers but went to high school here and succeeded the same in-state tuition rate to college we charge to their classmates.
* QUICK CASH: The Arkansas Lottery said Linda Newsom of Mayflower won $2 million on a $20 “Lucky Lottery Ticket” purchased at the Mayflower Quick Mart.
* THANK YOU MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Somebody asked whether New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might actually be doing a favor to Sen. Mark Pryor by running TV ads making it appear Pryor is resisting gun control legislation. He sure set up Pryor for a punch line on response to the ads. His full news release:
Statement by Senator Mark Pryor
On Bloomberg Gun AdI don’t take gun advice from the Mayor of New York City. I listen to Arkansans.
* SUPPORT GROWING FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY: Yet another national poll, this one by CNN, registers a sharp upswing in support of same-sex marriage, a 53 percent approval rate, compared with 40 percent in 2007. I don't think it's coincidental that the poll shows an increase by 12 percentage points in the same time frame (to 57 percent) of the number of people who say they have a family member or close friend who is gay or lesbian. Coming out, with all its peril and heartache, has made all the difference. OK, not at the Arkansas legislature.
* THE MEAN 16: Playing off NCAA basketball tourney talk, Mother Jones comes up with the Mean 16, a competition among the states to see which is the worst on women's medical rights. Arkansas is in the running, but pitted against top-seeded Louisiana.
Plucky underdog Arkansas passed a new law banning all abortions after 20 weeks earlier this month, shooting over the veto of the state's Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe. But that wasn't enough for legislators, who followed with a 12-week ban days later, also over Beebe's veto.