Columns

Governor Hutchinson issued an executive order protecting employers from suits by employees who believe they contracted COVID-19 at work.

There are a number of reasons Hutchinson and Arkansas Secretary of Health Dr. Nate Smith use to rationalize their lack of action, but their reasoning seems too skewed toward economic health instead of public health.

Biden and coronavirus attack.

Hope for Democrats.

More fake scandals.

What's Arkansas got to do with Donald Trump's Russian intrigues? Ask Bud Cummins.

A veteran journalist reflects on the life of civil rights champion John Walker.

The rivers of history tend to flow parallel and from time to time they intersect with calamitous effect, as the government this fall taught us in Arkansas once again.

A new Facebook page caught my attention earlier this year. The page, titled "Shame of Bentonville," lists its purpose as a place to share facts, documents and solutions related to removing the Confederate statue from the Bentonville Square. The recent vandalism of the monument has it back in the news.

People have to look for solace and hope wherever they can find them in these scary Trumpist times, and I view my job to be helping their search for peace of mind. 

In addition to Bikes, Blues and BBQ's ever-present Confederate flag souvenirs and, this year, a gun tent in the Walton Arts Center parking lot, there are vendors on Dickson Street selling swastika and SS patches, along with items that say "This is the USA, We Speak English," "Virginity Can Be Cured" and other phrases referencing sexual harassment and body parts too demeaning to women to include here.

It has been a good couple of weeks for Democrats and progressives in Arkansas.

Dr. Lisa Corrigan and Laura Weiderhaft bring their "Lean Back: Critical Feminist Conversations" podcast home to Fayetteville 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 28, for a live recording. If you are unfamiliar with the series Paste Magazine called, along with "Chapo Trap House" and NPR’s "On the Money," a top podcast of 2017, you are missing out.

That old bogeyman Ulysses S. Socialism has arrived again on the usual signal — an approaching election where medical care and social welfare are big issues with voters and politicians. It has been so for more than a century, although memories, as always, are in short supply.

Word reaches me of a fund-raiser Thursday at the Capital Hotel for Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota senator.

If you are among the many Arkansans who weep over the occasionally stern treatment of white-collar crooks, July 29 had to be a heartwarming day.

2022 might well be the most energized election year in the state since 1978.

Wednesday morning, days after a Baxter County School Resource Officer was arrested after admitting to sexually assaulting a minor student and a Benton County Jail Lieutenant was fired after an internal investigation uncovered years of sexual harassment committed upon fellow officers, Governor Hutchinson tweeted, "I never feel more safe than when I am in a room full of police officers as I was today when I spoke to the Arkansas Municipal Police Association Convention in Hot Springs." I get that politicians love to glad-hand, but Hutchinson's words seem especially poorly chosen.

Three years ago, on July 27, 2016, my daughter, who was 6-years-old at the time, and I stayed up to watch Hillary Clinton accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Friends and acquaintances alike texted me or posted pictures of their own daughters watching Clinton’s acceptance speech. Some of those folks were die-hard Clinton supporters. Others had long kept their politics to themselves. Some I knew leaned conservative, but they were not so partisan that they couldn’t appreciate the historic moment of it all.

In all the talk about who can win in 2020, what is missing from too many of the discussions is who will do the work on the ground and at the phones.