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August 5, 2004

Vol 2 • No 29

Aiming higher

Unopposed and awash in campaign money, Congressman Mike Ross has the luxury to contemplate a run for governor in 2006.

The last smoke-filled room

Because there was a chance that Congressman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas might have been nominated for president or vice president, the newspaper I was working for in 1972, the Arkansas Democrat, sent me to the Democratic Convention in Miami. Let me tell you that it was very different from the Boston Democratic convention that we watched on TV last week.

Huck flip-flops

Gov. Mike Huckabee flip-flopped on executive clemency last week. Good for him.

A gold shipment for LR

A recent $15 million deal between the U.S. government and Arkansas Capital Corporation, the Little Rock-based finance and venture capital firm, may be a catalyst for downtown Little Rock development and lead to a mechanism for paying for a new baseball stadium.

Night thoughts

One thing that happens as you get older, sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night with some small issue or happenstance nagging at you -- something mysterious or perplexing that somebody said -- and you can't resolve it, and you can't go back to sleep, and you finally just get up, between 3:30 and 5 a.m. usually, and put some coffee on, and find something to read until the morning paper comes.

Middle march

In modern American politics, optimism, stability, and moderation usually win. Their opposing counterparts - negativity, recklessness, and extremism - almost always constitute a recipe for defeat.

The church and politics

Judge Wendell Griffen of the Arkansas Court of Appeals is a politician, an ordained minister and former pastor, and, as Arkansans have come to know, an ardent practitioner of free speech. But he does not believe that pastors and churches should be taking sides in partisan political contests - unless they're prepared to give up the federal tax exemption that churches enjoy.

The war debate

American voters have rarely had an appetite for much argument about foreign policy and war in presidential campaigns, but it is clearly different this year. People of every persuasion want those issues illuminated and they deserve a frank and full debate between President Bush and Senator Kerry.

Preschool culture reveals new world

Keep this little secret between us, but we're taking our 2-year-old to the biggest concert of the year Monday. Well, it's the biggest concert of the year for 2-year-olds, and anyone else between 1 and 6.

Let's kill all the cormorants

In mid-July, wildlife officers went to Millwood Lake in southwest Arkansas and blasted out of their nests 80 baby double-crested cormorants and their parents. They then turned their guns on the cypress trees to destroy 95 nests. In all, the take was 193 birds and six eggs.

Reagan puts Bush on the fringe

Bill Clinton was pretty good, but conceivably the most effective speech at the Democratic National Convention last week was delivered by Ronald Reagan.
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