Ouachita County judge indicted
Ouachita County Judge James Michael Hesterly has been charged in a federal indictment with awarding a federally financed disaster relief contract to a Bearden man in return for a campaign finance...
View ArticleLawyer vows lawsuit on unemployment drug testing bill
Defense lawyer John Wesley Hall writes a blog on 4th Amendment (protection against unreasonable search and seizure) issues and here he threatens a lawsuit if the Arkansas legislature passes the...
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Little Rock School District closes down discussion on school guards
Interesting. A reader told me last night about a new discussion on the Little Rock School District Facebook page about Superintendent Morris Holmes' proposal to put an armed security guard (not police...
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McDaniel throws in with gun nuts
Brian ChilsonGUN TALK: Dustin McDaniel fires blanks.It's not too surprising, but disheartening just the same that the state's top legal officer, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, has thrown in with the...
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Saturday To-Do: Rally for Reproductive Justice
RALLY FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE1 p.m. Arkansas State Capitol.To be certain, there are enormous challenges facing progressive folks in 2013 and beyond. But I really do believe that overall, things are...
View ArticleRepublicans move to strangle government
You know about the frog in the pot of slowly heating water?I'm reminded of the metaphor by House Republican Leader Bruce Westerman'sbill, filed yesterday and with a herd of Republican co-sponsors, to...
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Saturday: Sarah Hughes, Music of the Movement and more
Music of the Movement is a musical tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with performances and a panel discussion with local artists Ramona Smith, Gerald Johnson, Butterfly, Quincy Watson and Warren...
View ArticleWhat, exactly, is wrong with the state Board of Education?
The mention of charter schools in the last item reminded me:I mentioned before that the Billionaire Boys Club bill to strip the state Board of Education of its power to approve and regulate charter...
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Taking the temperature of the Medicaid expansion debate
Today’s chances of passing expansion: 51%Will the legislature approve Medicaid expansion? Introducing the Expand-o-meter, our guesstimate of the state of the debate, which we’ll update frequently as...
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Saturday To-Do: Eliot Lipp
ELIOT LIPP9 p.m. Discovery Night Club. $10.Eliot Lipp has spent the last decade-plus hopping around the country, honing his craft in some of the happening-est cities for electronic dance music. Over...
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CBM sends Tait, AAC sends Rivera abroad
The Musee du Louvre in Paris and the Complesso del Vittoriano in Rome will complete upcoming exhibitions with works from two Arkansas museums, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville and...
View ArticleRepublican rule: The beginning of history
Hot tweet of the morning is Republican interest in doing away with, or at least easing, term limits.Republicans led the charge for term limits years ago.What's different now?Simple.Republican majority...
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Food Feedback Friday
Welcome back to the most sizzling weekly forum in the entire state of Arkansas, Food Feedback Friday! If you've been tuned into this blog for some time now, you probably already know the drill by now....
View ArticleHighway Department announces route for Fayetteville-Rogers corridor
The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department has announced a route for a new north-south highway corridor linking Fayetteville and Rogers along the eastern edges of the cities.Release:The...
View ArticleMore on Mark Darr for U.S. Senate
No, the headline is not a joke.I mentioned Wednesday the talk I'd heard about a potential race for U.S. Senate in 2014 by Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Darr, still trying to dig out of debt from his last...
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Delta Grand Prize winner: Mark Lewis
The Arkansas Arts Center announced its"Delta Exhibition"prizes winners last night, and the Grand Award went to Tulsa artist Mark Lewis for his graphite and paper collage "Peoria Avenue No. 7" (2011)....
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Roger Ebert: Four stars for 'West of Memphis'
Roger Ebert gives a strong review to 'West of Memphis,' on the West Memphis Three murder case. The opening:Three young men spent 18 years in prison, one under a death sentence, for a horrifying triple...
View ArticleIndicted judge allegedly made threats
The feds asked today that indicted Ouachita County Judge Mike Hesterly remain in jail pending a bond hearing because he threatened witnesses and an FBI agent, the blog of the El Dorado News-Times...
View ArticleUnemployment rate rises in Arkansas in December
The pool of jobless in Arkansas grew slightly in December, with the unemployment rate rising to 7.1 percent in December from 7 percent the month before.Full state report here.[ Subscribe to the...
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HHS: partial Medicaid expansion still not on the table
Republican lawmakers continue to hold out hope that “partial expansion” might be an avenue to get the generous federal match rates authorized by the Affordable Care Act without having to offer the full...
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