Columns, Arkansas Times

Listen, UA

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Any public-university trustees considering merger of their tax-supported teaching hospital with a Catholic hospital should ponder these wise words from Americans United for Separation of Church and State: "Public health policy should serve the public interest, not conform to the dictates of sectarian lobbies. The U.S. Constitution mandates the separation of church and state. It is wrong to let any religious group impose its doctrines on others through government action. Millions of Americans rely on safe, affordable birth control. The overwhelming majority of American women use contraceptives at some point in their lives. Many women use birth control pills for medicinal purposes. No one should be denied access to medication because of another person's religious beliefs."

And these from an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Louisville, after the UL hospital was merged with a Catholic hospital, over loud objections: "While the concept of a 'hospital within a hospital' may provide the necessary doctrinal camouflage to allow the enterprise to slip under the radar or be winked at by critical bishops, it is a medical absurdity and intellectually dishonest to pretend that the sexual and reproductive organs of men and women can be detached from the rest of their bodies for the comprehensive practice of modern medicine on any floor of a hospital.

"The statement that the medical professionals in the hospital are being asked to respect the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church, and the statement that policies on reproductive and end-of-life care will remain the same at University Hospital are mutually incompatible! Either that, or the Roman Catholic Church has taken a bold step out of people's bedrooms and into the 21st century; that it will now give us control over our own deathbeds, including allowing the withdrawal of artificial hydration and nutrition if so directed by a living will, medical surrogate, or humane medical practice. A [merged-system] Vice President for Mission would no longer be needed to make sure that religious doctrine is enforced."

"Attorney-general hopeful promises to stand up to U.S." Why do they hate America? What is it particularly that sets them off? Truth? Justice? What's wrong with the American Way? You'd think people would at least stay out of the American political process if they despise the country so. But no, yet another anti-American politician announced his candidacy last week, this one seeking the Republican nomination for attorney general of Arkansas. Maybe he believes that as attorney general, he could file a writ or such and block the enforcement of American law. He can't. It's been tried before, in 1861 and 1957, and proud, freedom-loving Americans wouldn't allow it. Every time we read about one of these America-hating yahoos we wonder why they don't go someplace where America-haters rule — Iran, North Korea, South Carolina — and run for office there. Maybe it's because most of those places don't have elections, at least not honest ones. In any case, we patriots would like to see them leave before they do more harm here. The Boston bombers stood up to the U.S.

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Forlorn GOP turns to Benghazi

Ernest Dumas — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

If you are a beltway Republican, no antidote for the blues matches extended congressional hearings on a real or imagined national horror — that is, if it might heap dishonor on a Democratic administration. If Hillary Clinton will be the dishonoree, so much the better. by Ernest Dumas

The news lately could hardly be more disheartening: Barack Obama's easy re-election, Democratic congressional gains, stratospheric polling for Hillary Clinton in 2016, more horrible polls for congressional Republicans, a rapidly shrinking budget deficit, a 15,000 Dow and improving economic numbers across the board.

So what to do but revive the Benghazi hearings. Congressional inquiries last fall on the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, which killed the U.S. ambassador and three others, did not seem to faze Obama or Secretary Clinton, who soon left the State Department to a chorus of hosannas. The only thing to do is rake the embers and memories of the tragedy once more and perhaps bare a bureaucratic misstep that could silence the Hillary choir or cripple the president in the coming new budget war.

It worked once to perfection, for a while. Some will remember the cascade of hearings on the little Whitewater development in Marion County, undertaken after Republicans won Congress in the 1994 elections. The committees held the nation's attention for more than three years with shocking hints of misdeeds by Arkansans. The country got to know and eventually to despise the overbearing Sen. Alfonse D'Amato of New York, chairman of the Banking Committee, and Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who made Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn look seemly.

But the Benghazi hearings represent a different kind of low, the exploitation of a national tragedy for political advantage. Both parties have usually, though not always, avoided that ghoulish business.

Every tragedy, whether cataclysmic ones like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 or the thousands of smaller deadly events in the theaters of war or foreign relations, involves human failure, misjudgment or some overlooked opportunity that might have saved the day. Until Benghazi, there were no attempted political crucifixions.

Ronald Reagan's worst saga occurred across 12 months in his first term. Under the protection of the Israeli military, a right-wing Lebanese militia entered two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut and for three days raped, killed and dismembered 800 Palestinian men, women and children, all civilians. Israeli flares illuminated the camps for the murderers. Ariel Sharon hornswoggled Reagan's emissary, who tried lamely to persuade him not to do it, so America absorbed part of the blame in the eyes of a shocked civilization and an inflamed Arab world. The event has tortured relationships in the region ever since.

As part of an agreement to protect the Palestinians in the Beirut camps from more murders, Reagan deployed Marines to Lebanon to supervise the departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization for other countries. On Oct. 23, 1983, in retaliation for the perceived U.S. role in the slaughter of the refugees, a suicide terrorist rolled a TNT-laden truck into the Marine headquarters at the Beirut airport and blew it up, killing 241 servicemen. Reagan declared that the U.S. would not be driven out. But the bungling was not over. Six weeks later, Reagan ordered a badly planned retaliatory attack on Syrian antiaircraft batteries around Beirut. Syria suffered little damage but the U.S. lost aircraft, men and prestige. A deeply disillusioned Reagan withdrew the Marines.

Then there were the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, which killed not four but nearly 3,000. The Republican-controlled Congress conducted gentle hearings, long delayed, to discover how it could have happened. There was none of the ferocity of the Benghazi hearings. Congress handed the heavy lifting to a bipartisan commission, which got the administration to give it only one of the president's daily security briefings, the Aug. 6 memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." We would learn a dozen years later that there were other briefs warning Bush of attacks and the use of airplanes. But the neocons who had taken over, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, insisted that the warnings about Al Qaeda attacks on America were a ruse to divert attention from the real enemy, Iraq.

So George Bush screwed up — or maybe he screwed up. The Congress, and certainly not his party, did not want to place the terrible burden of that holocaust on the shoulders of even an inept president. Times have changed.

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Partisan justice

Max Brantley — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

I had a nice visit with Arkansas Court of Appeals Judge Rhonda Wood last week. by Max Brantley

I had a nice visit with Arkansas Court of Appeals Judge Rhonda Wood last week.

She and I had engaged earlier in a little Twitter jousting over some of her political activities.

Wood had mentioned on both Twitter and Facebook her enthusiastic attendance at two Republican Party fund-raising events, including a speech by gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson, as well as a speech at the University of Arkansas by Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker.

I was interested for several reasons.

For one thing, Wood was just elected to the Court of Appeals, but the public appearances lent credence to the reports that she was planning a race for an open seat on the Arkansas Supreme Court. Judges can't formally begin campaigns until one year before the May 21, 2014 election, but they can certainly begin pressing the flesh.

For another thing, there was the matter of her attendance at Republican-flavored events. In her first race for Court of Appeals in 2010, Wood relied on robocalling by former Gov. Mike Huckabee to target voters. His message noted she'd been recommended for the bench by a Republican Party committee. Arkansas judicial elections switched from partisan to nonpartisan in 2000. Judicial ethics rules prohibit judicial candidates from claiming a connection to a political party (which Wood didn't explicitly do).

Wood, a former staff member for Huckabee, would be the last to claim anyone brings perfect neutrality to the bench. And, much as I have come to believe "merit selection" is the best course for filling judgeships, I also know that an appointment process inevitably will have political overtones, too.

Wood insists her record in Faulkner County illustrates fairness in handling cases involving political party figures. She says her recent attendance at Republican activities was mostly happenstance — that she'd be happy to attend Democratic Party events, too. (Noted in passing: She spoke of the "Democrat" Party, a subtle Republican putdown long used by GOP partisans.) She agrees that judicial engagement in social media can be problematic, but that she avoids statements on issues or beliefs. She defended her attendance at the Scott Walker event on the ground that she's a native of Wisconsin.

Wood lamented — as did several of her Republican legislative admirers, such as Sen. Michael Lamoureux — that the first round of judicial elections are held the same day as political party primaries, when partisan coloration is rampant. Better to have the election in November, they think.

Maybe it's all innocent. But a partisan-seasoned dog whistle can be a plus, particularly if you believe Arkansas is strongly trending Republican. It is the same sort of dog whistle heard in Wood's pronouncement that she is a "conservative" judge. Voters inevitably read that label as politically conservative, as opposed to, say, judicially conservative. A real judicial conservative is respectful of precedent (Roe v. Wade, for example; or the decades-long precedent, overturned not long ago by nominal "conservatives," that the 2nd Amendment should be read in context of the need for a militia).

I agree with Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, a Democratic partisan who speaks more than a judge should on matters of public controversy, that he, Wood and any judge enjoy nearly unbridled 1st Amendment protection from government punishment for speaking their minds, even exhibiting friendliness toward a political party. But just because you can speak freely, doesn't mean you should.

Republicans who lobbied in 2000 for nonpartisan judges (to deprive the Democratic Party of the filing fees that then flowed overwhelming in that direction), plus nonpartisan prosecutors (passed this session) and even nonpartisan sheriffs (failed this year) in the name of a pure justice system, should shut their hypocritical pieholes if they also approve of partisan-tinged politicking by one of their own.

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Where or when

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

"Two women were arrested and charged in a robbery where one of the suspects is accused of carrying pepper spray as well as her 10-month-old child."

For a commonplace word, where gets misused a lot. Those women above were really arrested and charged "in a robbery in which one of the suspects is accused of carrying pepper spray ... "

Sometimes where appears erroneously in place of when. "Nineteen sixty-eight was a year where assassination was in vogue."

TMQ (Too Much Qualification) is still with us. Michael Klossner saw a reference to "alleged Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev."

"He was an alleged bomber and a bombing suspect," Klossner writes. "He was not an alleged suspect because he really was a suspect."

They thought something might be wrong:

John Wesley Hall was bemused by the headline "Family Raises Suspicions After Police Find Two People Dead Inside Home." Well, duh.

Something of a connoisseur of crime-related headlines, Hall also took issue with this one: "Officers find several drugs, make arrests while attempting to issue warrant."

"Judges issue warrants; cops execute or serve warrants," Hall says.

Jesse was brothers with Frank James:

"Shorter, who has been laser-timed at 10.63 seconds in the 100, is cousins with Arkansas cornerback signee D.J. Dean." Well, he's a cousin of the cornerback signee. Cousins with is a usage unfamiliar to me. Sounds kind of like they're going steady, cousins until one of them breaks it off. You can be friends with someone for just a period of time ("I was friends with Shirley until she set fire to the barn"), but cousins are for life.

"For the first time since it was erected, the government body that oversees Stonehenge is offering a very unique opportunity." Garner's Modern American Usage says: "Strictly speaking, unique means 'being one of a kind,' not 'unusual.' Hence the phrases very unique, quite unique, how unique and the like are slovenly." And nobody wants to be a sloven.

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Nixes on Exes

Doug Smith — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

"I went to the George Strait concert and heard him sing 'All My Exes Live In Texas.' I knew that was wrong, but I didn't say anything. by Doug Smith

Munthlee Parker writes:

"I went to the George Strait concert and heard him sing 'All My Exes Live In Texas.' I knew that was wrong, but I didn't say anything. Then I read in the daily paper about a ceremony at the Airport: 'Political figures from the present and the past sprinkled the crowd. They included two former governors – ex-Sen. Dale Bumpers and Jim Guy Tucker.' I can't remain silent any longer. When will American schools start teaching the proper use of ex- ? Or are we just going to let the Chinese be the only ones who use ex- correctly? Then I guess we'll start eating with chopsticks too."

Mr. Parker may be a little too ex-cited, and I certainly hope he's wrong about the chopsticks. But strictly speaking, he's identified two errors, at least under the old rules. The usage manual "Success With Words" says "When the prefix ex- is attached to a title (as in ex-president) or a word (as in ex-husband), the resulting term designates the person who held the position immediately before the current holder. The term former should be used to refer to any previous holders of the position." The rule holds true even if the position is now vacant. Only the last person to hold it is ex-. So George Strait should have sung "My Ex Lives in Texas, And So Do All My Formers," and Bumpers should have been identified as "former Sen. Dale Bumpers." After him came Blanche Lincoln. Not there's John Boozman.

Not all the contemporary authorities are so picky about ex-. The Associated Press Stylebook says only that "usually former is better."

Remember the great pitcher Dizzing Dean?

"The financial success of the paperback became its cultural downfall. Media conglomerates bought the upstart pocket-book firms and began chasing after quick-money best-sellers ... And while paperbacks remain commonplace, they're no longer dizzingly cheaper than hardcovers."

Not highly educated, Ol' Diz probably wouldn't have noticed the misspelling here. But you'd expect more from the editors of Smithsonian magazine. The word they wanted is dizzyingly.

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The gold still rules in the Arkansas legislature

Max Brantley — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

I try to get excited about the 2014 constitutional amendment proposal forged by the Regnat Populist ethics reform group and the legislature. It's hard. by Max Brantley

I try to get excited about the 2014 constitutional amendment proposal forged by the Regnat Populist ethics reform group and the legislature. It's hard.

The proposal won legislative approval because 1) it creates a mechanism for legislative pay raises protected from political blowback; 2) it allows legislators to serve longer, and 3) it gives constitutional protection to free meals for legislative groups and for junkets. The positives?

Individual gifts by lobbyists will be prohibited, if not group wining and dining. Legislators must wait two years, rather than a year, to be a lobbyist. But there's nothing to prevent them from being special interest-paid governmental relations experts as long as they don't directly work on legislation.

Finally, the amendment does prohibit direct corporate contributions to political campaigns. A reduction in corporate contributions — if the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately doesn't nullify such laws — isn't a bad thing. But contributions to PACs and by PACs are untouched and that's a pretty big exception.

The Democrat-Gazette, for example, pored over contribution records recently and found 13 lawmakers had taken contributions during the supposed contribution blackout period 30 days before a legislative session. There were varying excuses.

Forget the blackout rule and look at simple political decency. These are politicians who were at least 18 months away from an election when contributions were made. None had a demonstrable need for the money. And there it came. It was mostly corporate money, but a big chunk of it came from PACs, which won't be a bit restricted by the amendment.

Consider Republican Sen. Ron Caldwell of Wynne. He raked in more than $30,000 on Dec. 20, including some $10,000 from the PACs of Southwestern Energy, the Arkansas Health Care Association, the Go Eddie Joe PAC (a vehicle by which Sen. Eddie Joe Williams rounds up corporate money to pass out to needy colleagues), the Arkansas Dental PAC, the Hospital Association and the Community Health Centers PAC. All this special interest money and Caldwell doesn't have to run for re-election until 2016. If the "ethics" amendment passes, looks like he can still count on plenty of corporate money, laundered through PACs, presuming they like his voting record. I'm betting they will.

Generally speaking, you don't find a lot of corporate money in a vast number of legislative races, though a little can go a long way. But, you might argue, the removal of corporate money could be very important in statewide races for governor and other powerful positions, such as attorney general and treasurer.

True. But this new restriction, some believe, will only encourage a worse form of corporate influence peddling — independent expenditures. Increasingly, the independent money is coming through 501c4 organizations that enjoy special tax status, but can spend unlimited amounts on "education" and even some direct advocacy without ever disclosing where the money is coming from. By shutting off the flow of transparent direct corporate contributions, some critics say, the state will only encourage a redirection of unaccounted money to "dark money" expenditures.

I expect huge sums of independent money to be spent in 2014 to elect corporate-friendly Supreme Court justices. Look for it also to be spent to defeat Republican Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson. He derailed the business lobby's tort reform amendment in support of his financial benefactor John Goodson, a wildly successful Texarkana trial lawyer. Rep. Ann Clemmer will be a collateral beneficiary in running against Hutchinson. She'll get corporate money, too, by PACs or otherwise.

Money, like water, always finds an outlet. That's the chief reason it's hard for me to become too enthusiastic about the so-called ethics amendment.

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Semi-tough

Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The 2013 legislature was protective of gun-carriers and red-light runners, but it came down hard on voters. The first two groups might kill a few people, (or a lot). The third might remove from office a few Republican legislators. This was seen as the greater danger by Republican legislators. Their priorities are different from normal people's.

Every mass murder by gunshot, such as the recent incident in Connecticut, stirs the hearts of Arkansas legislators, though not in the way that outsiders might expect. The lawmakers rush to shield guns and gun owners from any proposed restriction, and, if possible, to increase the number of pistol-packers in the state, thus pleasing the NRA. This year, the legislators responded to the slaughter of schoolchildren by passing a law that would allow the faculty and staff of state universities to carry guns on campus, unless the governing bodies of the universities opt out. We're hoping that the institutions of higher education will be more level-headed than the General Assembly, and it seems likely that they will. The legislature also voted to exempt concealed-carry permits from the state Freedom of Information law, so that you can't learn whether your neighbor is packing until he tells you or shoots you.

Those who work in downtown Little Rock know that red-light running here is only a little less common than breathing. Nonetheless, a bill to let Arkansas cities use cameras to catch the offenders, as is done successfully in other American cities, was rejected overwhelmingly. Legislators evidently felt it would take the fun out of intersections.

Inclined to vote Democratic, the elderly, the poor, and minorities are those most likely to be harmed by a bill that requires photo identification of all voters, so the Republican majority shouted the bill through. The only kind of voter fraud it would prevent is already non-existent, as Governor Beebe noted when he vetoed the bill. The legislators still could return to the Capitol and override the veto, which is just the sort of meanness that many of them enjoy, and which would advance the Republican belief that only rich white men deserve a voice in government.

Which reminds us of another group the legislative majority cracked down on. The black flag of "no quarter" waved in the legislators' war on women. It was hard to keep track of all the bills that were intended to deprive women of control of their own bodies, so the Republicans didn't try; they just passed all of them. They know what they don't like, this bunch, if not much else.

Congress didn't pass any gun-control legislation, either, but at least the Senate tried, and the bill would have cleared the Senate except that Republicans and renegade Democrats like Mark Pryor now use the filibuster freely to prevent majority rule. The filibuster was used rarely in the past. During Franklin D. Roosevelt's 12-year tenure as president, the Senate used the filibuster six times. In the last six years, the Republican minority in the Senate has used the filibuster to block or stall legislation or presidential nominees more than 170 times. This is not your father's Republican Party, or your father's Pryor either.

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It's not just geography that matters in Arkansas GOP primary

Jay Barth — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

In a blog post last week, I made the case that geography no longer creates a clear barrier to the Republican nomination for a candidate from outside of Northwest Arkansas like House Speaker Davy Carter. The dramatic spread of Republicanism across the state in the Obama era means that Northwest Arkansas (while still the source of a significant share of Republican primary votes) has now essentially been matched by the Little Rock metropolitan area. While it would require a candidate who could run up large margins in these counties outside the 479 area code to beat a strong Northwest Arkansas candidate like GOP frontrunner Asa Hutchinson, it's achievable in a way that wasn't feasible just a couple of cycles ago.

Geography matters enormously in a state that practices "friends and neighbors" politics like few others in the nation. However, that variable is only the start of any analysis of Arkansas electoral politics. Campaign resources, ideology and personality are the other three key variables that determine the winners and losers of GOP primaries in contemporary Arkansas. Bringing these forces into the equation, Hutchinson remains advantaged in a possible primary against Speaker Carter no matter the geographical shifts in the state's electoral patterns.

In terms of campaign resources, Carter and Hutchinson appear quite evenly matched. The most important of these resources, of course, is campaign funding. Carter would likely do quite well among in-state business interests who will benefit from the tax cuts that the Speaker orchestrated during the recently completed session and who also see the economic benefits of the expansion of health care access that Carter helped bring about. On the other hand, Hutchinson has long-standing support among establishment Republicans and, probably underestimated to date, Hutchinson's leadership of the National Rifle Association's school safety initiative gives him access to a national fundraising network that is larger and more active than at any time in recent history. (Neither candidate will have natural access to the energy of activists that can overwhelm monetary support in a primary electorate that, while expanding, remains relatively small; indeed, the more fringe candidate Curtis Coleman may well be best-positioned to make inroads with the Tea Party portion of the GOP electorate.)

The recent high-profile gun advocacy by Hutchinson also reemphasizes his conservative bona fides for a primary electorate that historically has rewarded ideological purity. Hutchinson's consistently conservative voting record while in the U.S. House is also evidence of his core beliefs as is his lukewarm response to the "private option." Conversely, Carter not only shepherded Arkansas-style Obamacare, but went out of his way to emphasize his relative moderation by chiding his legislative colleagues for placing too much emphasis on social issues like guns and abortion. Carter regularly has described Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe as the most outstanding governor in the state's history. It's also important to recognize that Carter's final mission as House Speaker will be to oversee another key vote to appropriate money for the first full year of the "private option" plan; it will take place after the filing period has opened and will provide a potential target for any Carter opponent wanting to make inroads with GOP rank-and-file conservatives. In short, on the ideological front, a Carter/Hutchinson race would have parallels to the primary between Win Rockefeller and Hutchinson in 2006 that was cut short by the lieutenant governor's sudden health crisis.

Speaker Carter, affable and energetic, would seem to be advantaged over the more staid Hutchinson on the personal front, the final key variable. However, Hutchinson also ultimately ends up advantaged here. While the Hutchinson family name is a flawed one with general election voters, GOP voters recognize that the Hutchinsons were the soul of the party when few others were willing and able to represent it; indeed, Asa Hutchinson was a masterful party chair in the 1990s. Finally, there is the lingering resentment over how Carter became speaker. There was some evidence that those most loyal to Rep. Terry Rice, whom Carter booted from the post, resisted giving Carter a win on the private option out of lingering resentment. That group of influential Republicans will likely continue to actively oppose a Carter gubernatorial candidacy.

Thus, for reasons both ideological and personal, an advantage in a prospective Carter/Hutchinson primary battle goes to the veteran. That said, it is right for political observers from inside and outside the GOP to salivate at the prospects of a primary battle for the soul of the party that would approximate that which never came to pass in 2006.

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'42,' '54 and since

Ernest Dumas — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The feel-good movie of the season, unless you are of a certain turn of mind, is "42," the story of Jackie Robinson, whose number is the only one retired by major-league baseball. by Ernest Dumas

The feel-good movie of the season, unless you are of a certain turn of mind, is "42," the story of Jackie Robinson, whose number is the only one retired by major-league baseball.

You get to see what repugnant racists we once were but, mercifully, are no more. Not quite, anyway.

Jackie Robinson's is one of the great American narratives: a poised black man, chosen for the mission of breaking the color barrier in professional sports owing not only to his marvelous athletic skills but to the temperament to absorb unceasing abuse without fighting back and risking the cause. He cleared the path for black youngsters to perform and excel in the citadel of American culture, sports, as well as the arts, entertainment and elsewhere.

The other half of the feel-good story of "42" is all of us — how we supposedly have overcome our fears and loathing — although the theme is muted in the movie, merely understood. All that horrible stuff — the threats, the humiliation, his own Brooklyn teammates refusing to take the field with him, the ugly slurs screamed from the field and the stands, the fast balls aimed at his head, the denial of public accommodations that his teammates enjoyed — was so long ago, 66 years.

Everyone now winces when Ben Chapman, who managed the Phillies in the City of Brotherly Love, stands in front of his dugout taunting the black man at the plate — "Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger ..." — and signals the pitcher to go for the brain.

We overcame all that, didn't we?

It must be lost on no one that most of the ugliness in "42" occurs in northern cities, Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Boston, not Memphis, New Orleans, Dallas or Atlanta, but only because they didn't have major-league ball.

It also must be said that when Jackie Robinson redeemed major-league baseball, as his patron, Branch Rickey, claimed, it carried no weight at all in the South.

Seven years later, we faced the problem in South Arkansas. Hot Springs passed for a liberal precinct in 1954. The people who ran the Hot Springs Bathers in the Cotton States League, including a Republican lawyer and politician named Hank Britt, hired two black pitchers, Jim "Schoolboy" Tugerson and his brother Leander. The other Arkansas and Mississippi cities in the league announced they wouldn't play the Bathers if they fielded a Negro. The attorney general, J. P. Coleman, declared it illegal in Mississippi for a black man to play baseball on the same field as whites.

My beloved Oilers at El Dorado and the other teams voted to expel the Bathers until their management agreed not to play a Tugerson. When Schoolboy went to the mound anyway against the Jackson Senators, before he could deliver a pitch the umpire forfeited the game to Jackson.

The Tugersons picked up and went to Knoxville, Tenn., where the unhittable Schoolboy won 33 games that season. Before the season was out, Britt managed to put a black Langston High School lad, Uvoyd Reynolds, and another player from the Negro American League on the field for a few games at Hot Springs, and attendance jumped. But other cities — El Dorado, Helena, Pine Bluff — were not ready to see black athletes. I went to town one August night that year to see the Oilers pound the Greenville Buckshots. Jim Johnson from nearby Crossett, who was running for attorney general to fight integration, stood at the plate with his wife and sang "On Mockingbird Hill" at the seventh-inning stretch. The Cotton States League, facing integration and other issues, folded the next season, and for some of us summers were never the same.

Little Rock integrated baseball in 1963, when its parent club, the Phillies, signed Dick Allen, a future major-league slugger, and sent him to the Travelers. Fearing the torment that would ensue, he begged not to be sent to Little Rock and always hated the Phillies for it. My paper, the Gazette, and the Democrat instructed their writers not to identify this Dick Allen as the first black player, but the word got out. The White Citizens Council picketed the park the first night with signs that said "Nigger go home" and "Don't Negro-ize baseball." As the national anthem played at the outset, Allen stood frozen in right field reciting the 23rd Psalm to himself. When he left the ballpark that night he found a note on his windshield: "Don't come back again nigger." An outcast on the team and in town, he could not stay in public accommodations or eat out, so he lived with a black family.

We aren't so callous anymore, not openly anyway — not in Philadelphia, Penn., or even in Philadelphia, Miss. In fact, we have elected a black man president and re-elected him in what was supposed to be the "post-racial society."

But, make no mistake. Race still makes a difference everywhere, even in the sporting arenas, and it governs national life in subtle ways and big. A huge national consensus about guns, so relatively easy to translate into law when a Southern white boy was president, flounders when the black man makes it his cause.

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Brantley: Nuts about guns

Max Brantley — Thu, 02 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

by Max Brantley

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said on Fox News Sunday that he wanted to try again to get Senate approval of the modest legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases.

Not good news for U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, if Manchin is successful. He's already painted himself into a political corner.

Pryor was one of four Democrats who prevented a vote on the majority-supported legislation.

Was he lauded for his action by those who oppose all gun regulation? No. The Republican Party said Pryor's record was rife with contradictions on guns; that he's not to be trusted. The gun control campaign led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was reported to be considering unloading a bucket of money to defeat Pryor in 2014 so as to make him an example.

David Letterman made Pryor his "Stooge of the Night" for his vote. He noted that in Pryor's days as a state representative he'd voted for some legislation that amounted to gun control, at least by the very narrow definition that now applies.

"I don't take gun advice from the mayor of New York City," Pryor jabbed back.

But is Pryor doing what Arkansas voters demand?

A poll conducted for a bipartisan mayors' group found that 84 percent of Arkansas residents want every gun buyer to pass a criminal background check.

The gun enthusiasts scoff at the numbers. They may be right at least as far as enthusiasm is concerned. The last time the Arkansas Poll at the University of Arkansas sampled sentiment — in 2010 before several infamous gun massacres — 51 percent said they were satisfied with gun laws as they were, 28 percent wanted them stricter and only 15 percent wanted them less strict.

Given the lack of hunger for loosening gun laws, how do you explain the recent Arkansas legislative session at which 15 bills were passed to do just that, particularly at a time when legislators in many other states were moving in the opposite direction? It certainly isn't that guns have made Arkansas safer and more will make us safer still. The suicide by firearm rate is much higher in Arkansas than in other states. So, too, is the rate at which women are slain by intimate partners with a gun. Gun trafficking is also lower in states that require background checks. More guns mean more gunshot wounds, the statistics show, whether by crime or accident.

I'd like to think the Arkansas legislature's votes reflect the ardor of a minority, the gun lobby, and the timidity of legislators. I'd like to think the Arkansas Poll is more reflective of middle-of-the-road Arkansas attitudes.

So what's so bad with Mark Pryor emulating the Arkansas legislature? It discourages his moderate and liberal base. It wins no friends on the fringe. He becomes uncomfortably reminiscent of Blanche Lincoln, leaping toward Republican positions just in time for election.

Mark Pryor could have made a principled and brave case for expanded background checks — and still voted against assault weapon and large ammo magazine bans. He didn't and he isn't likely to flipflop should Manchin give him a do-over.

As I wrote earlier on the Arkansas Blog, Pryor's decision was wrong as a matter of policy, wrong as a matter of courage and, worst of all for him, wrong as a matter of politics. He will lose votes. Lots of them — to the Green Party, to non-votes and even to some gun owners who find the NRA position too extreme. The power of the bullies will increase.

The Bloomberg group may spend its money against Pryor and claim a scalp, but it will be a self-inflicted haircut. If he is defeated, his successor will be someone even worse — and not just on guns.

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Race doesn't fit in a checkbox

Gene Lyons — Thu, 02 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Lamentably, the Boston Marathon bombing re-opened some of the most poisonous arguments in American life. Specifically, are the Tsarnaev brothers "white"? It's a meaningless question. by Gene Lyons

Lamentably, the Boston Marathon bombing re-opened some of the most poisonous arguments in American life. Specifically, are the Tsarnaev brothers "white"? It's a meaningless question.

Some hotheads couldn't wait to declare all Muslims suspect. Certain thinkers on the left (David Sirota, Salon) argued against collective guilt while oddly lamenting that "white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated" for the crimes of Caucasian psycho killers.

Should they be?

Anyway, I'd previously treated the theme of ethnicity as destiny in a column about which racial ID boxes President Obama should have checked on his 2010 census form.

Everybody knows Obama's mother was a white woman from Kansas, his father an exchange student from Kenya. But there's no box labeled "African-American." So the president checked "black." He could also have checked "white," but chose not to.

This decision disappointed a unique student group at the University of Maryland, although most understood it. Recently profiled in the New York Times, the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association could with equal accuracy be called "Students Whose Mothers Were Asked Insulting Questions by Busybodies at the Supermarket."

Questions like the one my sainted mother put to my wife's mother at our wedding: "What nationality are you people, anyway?"

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The Maryland group strikes me as entirely benign. Asked which boxes she checks, vice-president Michelle Lopez-Mullins, age 20, says "It depends on the day, and it depends on the options."

Lopez-Mullins, the Times reports, is a one-woman U.N., "Chinese and Peruvian on one side, and white and American Indian on the other." As a child, she says even friends asked hurtful questions, such as "What are you?" and "Where are you from?"

To lessen the sting, she and her friends play a "who's what?" guessing game among themselves. "Now when people ask what I am, I say, 'How much time do you have?'" Lopez-Mullins said. "Race will not automatically tell you my story."

My view is that race alone never tells you anybody's story. But then I once got summoned into the registrar's office for identifying my race as "1500 meter freestyle" on an official form.

They explained that Civil Rights laws made an accurate response necessary. In other contexts I might have joked, "I only look white. Actually, I'm Irish." Reading 18th and 19th century accounts taught me that every racist slur against black slaves in America, was also made by the English about Irish Catholic peasants.

The native Irish, their overseers thought, were physically powerful, gifted at singing and dancing, but also dumb, lazy, insolent, sexually promiscuous and smelly. These shortcomings, as Swift made clear in his immortal satire "A Modest Proposal," recommending fattening Irish children like piglets for slaughter, made their virtual enslavement inevitable.

But that was long ago and far away.

Anyway, back to President Obama, who's written books about his mixed inheritance. It appears to me that along with his great intelligence, Obama's mixed background helped make him an intellectual counterpuncher — watchful, laconic, and leery of zealotry, a born mediator.

Like a man behind a mask, Obama watches people watch him.

Checking the "black" box on the census form, however, was the politically canny choice. Americans aren't far from the days when absurd categories like "mulatto," "quadroon," and "octoroon" could determine people's fate. Sadly, had he checked the "white" box too, many voters would have resented it.

My own choices were simpler. Raised to think of myself as Irish before American — all eight of my great-grandparents emigrated during the late 19th century, hunkering down in ethnic enclaves within walking distance of salt water — I was taught that there was a proper "Irish" opinion on every imaginable topic.

To dissent was to be labeled inauthentic, a traitor to one's heritage. Over time, however, I decided that if there's one single, overriding "Irish" trait, it's yelling at the dinner table. My kinfolk disagreed passionately about damn near everything. Meanwhile, back in the Old Country, people kept killing each other over 17th century religious issues.

I once asked a (Catholic) friend in Belfast how the antagonists told each other apart, as they all resembled my cousins. It's the shoes, she said, and the accents. The shoes! Sorry granddad, it's a foreign country. (People in the Irish Republic often find their American cousins' pugnacity alarming.)

But here's the thing: People don't know these things unless I tell them. With regard to President Obama, black's an ethnicity people make it harder to resign from. Even so, all demands for racial and ethnic groupthink are inherently crippling. All racial arguments are reactionary — signs not of strength, but weakness.

It's not merely possible to honor one's heritage without denigrating anybody else's; to me, it's the essence of Americanism. Those Maryland kids with their Heinz-57 genes aren't in any way victims.

Their thinking is way ahead of most of us.

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Dumas: The perils of accommodation for Pryor and Ross

Ernest Dumas — Thu, 02 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

"The hardest thing about any political campaign," Adlai Stevenson said at the end of his last race, "is how to win without proving yourself unworthy of winning." by Ernest Dumas

"The hardest thing about any political campaign," Adlai Stevenson said at the end of his last race, "is how to win without proving yourself unworthy of winning."

That dilemma faces every politician, and few confront it perfectly, but the challenge is especially hard for the professional centrist in times, like now, when extremism carries the day.

So with the hardest battles of their 22-year political careers in the offing, Sen. Mark Pryor and former Congressman Mike Ross are turning themselves inside out adjusting to what they imagine are the hard realities of the season.

It is not going so well for Pryor, and it is too early to tell for Ross.

Pryor and Ross define centrism. In remarkably similar careers since 1990, when both were elected to the legislature, they have toiled to be seen as hewing to the middle and even to the Republican right on occasion but still, like good Democrats, generally voting for working folks and the middle class on economic and social matters. They arrive at the straddle, more often than not, by voting or siding vocally with the Republicans on agitable issues like guns, abortion and gays.

Now, Ross is running for governor and must win a Democratic primary next May to face a right-wing Republican in the general election, probably the GOP's three-time retread, Asa Hutchinson. With little to worry about in a Democratic primary, Pryor sees himself in a battle with a far-right Republican, probably Tom Cotton, the freshman congressman who is Americans for Prosperity's cat's paw for Arkansas.

The danger for the centrist is for voters to see him or her as a politician without a core, who will toss principle aside for the support of an interest group. It happened to Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who tried to make herself indistinguishable from her Republican foe. She voted for the Affordable Care Act, which she helped write, but refused to defend it to Arkansas voters and then cast a meaningless vote against it on reconciliation to make people believe she really opposed it. She was rewarded with fewer than 37 percent of the votes.

The role of centrist actually looked natural for Mark Pryor, who never seemed to be on a mission. He exhibited no burning desire to fix social and economic injustice as a state legislator, attorney general or U.S. senator and instead was a guy who wanted first to get along and work things out peaceably. He foiled his party again and again by joining a handful of soft Republicans and conservative Democrats looking for a third way.

Then came the mass murder of children and teachers at Sandy Hook, which seemed briefly to be a national catharsis. People were ready to take small steps to stop the carnage in schools, streets and workplaces wrought by new generations of high-capacity weapons.

But back in Arkansas, the legislature was whooping through bill after bill on guns, a dozen in all, and not one to regulate them as the Second Amendment mandates but to make them more prevalent. So Pryor announced that he was unequivocally opposed to banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. When the legislation in the Senate came down chiefly to universal mandatory background checks on people buying guns, Pryor voted with three Democrats and most Republicans to prevent even a vote on it.

All hell broke loose. Criticism rained upon him, from the president by inference, and from Democratic leaders, organizations that had sprung up to advocate new gun rules and constituents in Arkansas. His Senate colleague, John Boozman, had voted the same way and all four Republican congressmen from Arkansas opposed gun legislation, too, but they escaped direct criticism. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on ads making an example of Pryor. No one expected a different vote from the Republicans.

Was Pryor voting the wishes of most Arkansans, in spite of the lopsided national polls? Who knows? But it hardly matters. The overwhelming sense is that he did it not out of conviction but to oblige the National Rifle Association and its cadre of true believers in Arkansas, who probably were not going to vote for him anyway. It is hard to see how he helped himself.

Huffington Post did not help by reporting that as a state representative he had sponsored bills that tried to keep weapons out of the hands of children and imposed criminal sanctions. When his father ran for U.S. senator in 1972 he withstood spurious attacks that he had been a foe of guns as a state representative.

Ross has a different problem, proving to the progressive constituency in the Democratic primary next spring that he is a real Democrat on women's and social issues, in spite of his voting record in Congress. He reassures private conclaves of Democrats that he would veto the bills foisted on him by the reactionary legislators just like Governor Beebe sometimes does. Yes, he voted against the Medicare prescription drug program because it was a Republican give-away to the insurance and drug companies and against Obamacare because voters in his district were strongly opposed (it was associated with that awful colored man) and he couldn't persuade them that it was good for them.

Ross led the congressional gun caucus but switched after the Sandy Hook massacre and said it was time to ban assault weapons and high-capacity clips. What will he say now that he is a politician again and his opponent, if he wins the Democratic nomination, will be a bigger darling of the NRA?

How do you win without proving yourself unworthy?

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Which one?

Thu, 02 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The city of Beebe or Mike Beebe? It's not an easy question. They're both from White County, both have their merits, and their advocates. The town has gained fame for its dead birds; the man as a competent and moderate governor, perhaps the last of his kind. If you were playing a football game, against the Bald Knob Bulldogs, say, the city and its Beebe (High School) Badgers would be the better choice; Mike Beebe alone would have little chance of defeating 11 much younger athletes. But if you're planning a statue on the Capitol grounds, we'd give the edge to the governor. We've spoken before of his good work in guiding an affordable health-care bill safely through a Republican-infested legislature. Since then, he's added another star to his crown — three stars, actually — by vetoing bills that would have distorted state election processes so as to favor the Republican Party. One bill would give frighteningly broad powers to the hotly partisan Secretary of State Mark Martin, so that he could "investigate" alleged violations of election laws. Martin is the most Republican Republican in Arkansas except for Sen. Bryan King of Green Forest, the sponsor of the bills that Beebe vetoed. To expect nonpartisanship from either of them is like expecting table manners from a hog. The concept is foreign.

But some Republicans do understand, and election officials from both parties urged Beebe to veto King's "election reform" package, just as the governor earlier vetoed King's bill to discourage voting by minorities, the elderly and the poor, groups that are inclined to vote Democratic. The legislature overrode that veto — only a simple majority is required — and it's possible the legislators will return from recess and override these latest vetoes too. But the governor has done what he could; the history books and any statues will note it. As for the other Beebe, it will still be "Home of the Badgers," and deceased birds. There should be a festival in there someplace.

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Queens and usurpers

Doug Smith — Thu, 02 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

"Despite the help, Mustain couldn't usurp Barkley, and when Carroll left for the Seattle Seahawks, new coach Lane Kiffin stuck with the incumbent." by Doug Smith

Usurp, mesurp:

"Despite the help, Mustain couldn't usurp Barkley, and when Carroll left for the Seattle Seahawks, new coach Lane Kiffin stuck with the incumbent." To usurp is "To seize and hold (a position, office, power, etc.) by power or without legal right." One usurps things — thrones, for example — not people.

Our boys will outshine tonight:

"Jean Segura produced a memorable piece of baserunning that outshined Ryan Braun's three-run home run."

"We were particularly smitten by the grilled pork chop plate ($23). The pork loin itself was remarkable — tender and flavorful. But it was the bed of pillowy goat-cheese grits that really took our breath away. ... Rarely is pork so completely outshined on a single plate."

I would have used outshone in both of the examples above, but according to the Random House, either outshone or outshined is acceptable.

Don't bother to curtsy:

Last week, while discussing the "loaded" language of political debate, we mentioned that it was Ronald Reagan who popularized the word entitlements as a derisive term for the benefits that Americans receive from programs like Social Security and Medicare. I've since been reminded by an article in Harper's magazine that Reagan also "coined the phrase 'welfare queen' in his 1976 presidential bid." The man had a talent for saying mean things without seeming mean himself.

When do you use ohsure?

The headline said, "UA System lets insured go to former counselors," and the lead sentence said "The University of Arkansas System will ensure its employees remain covered for counseling appointments while it continues investigating whether a new third-party administrator is offering enough mental health-care providers as well as accurate provider listings, a UA official said Monday."

Did the headline writer and the reporter disagree on the spelling of insure/ensure? No, they followed the Associated Press Stylebook, which says:

"Use ensure to mean guarantee: Steps were taken to ensure accuracy.

"Use insure for references to insurance: The policy insures his life."

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Strange Cotton

Thu, 02 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

There's an old and morbid joke whose punch line is, "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" It came to mind after U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton of Dardanelle recklessly compared President Obama's record for holding off terrorists with that of Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush. Bush's record was practically impeccable, Cotton said, except for 9/11. Exceptions don't come any taller than 9/11. Three thousand Americans died in the greatest terrorist attack that ever occurred on American soil, and it happened on George Bush's watch. Still, right-wingers like Cotton try to turn Bush into a peacekeeper. One of the most chowder-headed of the Washington pundits wrote a couple of days ago that Bush's legacy was "He kept us safe," the pundit overlooking both 9/11 and the thousands who've died in the bloody warfare that Bush led, or lied, America into afterward. Such revisionists are shameless. Except for that one night, John Wilkes Booth didn't shoot any presidents, but his is not a legacy to boast of.

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Better thing

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

One can easily sympathize with the members of the state House of Representatives who'd like to eject Nate Bell from the chamber.

One can easily sympathize with the members of the state House of Representatives who'd like to eject Nate Bell from the chamber. Indeed, it would be hard for fair-minded people to do otherwise, so atrocious were Bell's comments about the murders in Boston, and so harmful to his fellow Arkansans, held accountable for the sins of one of their legislators. "Bell must go!" is the cry heard across Arkansas today.

And yet, is expulsion really the best way? We'd prefer to see Bell resign from the House voluntarily, to be given and to accept the opportunity to do something far, far better than he has ever done before. (As one veteran legislative observer says, "He was a p..s-poor rep even before this Boston business.") He could show by his action that even the worst of Arkansans are capable of repentance. The example would be especially striking if he then devotes the rest of his life to making up for the evil he's done. There are no monasteries around Mena that we know of, but he could build a cabin in the woods, and retire there to reflect and read (he might need assistance), emerging only to sweep the streets and perform other civic chores. Not immediately, but within a few years, we'll bet, his former constituents would stop spitting on him.

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Illegal motion

Doug Smith — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

"Opponents complained that most of the critical testimony was silenced when a member of the committee motioned for immediate consideration, a nondebatable procedural maneuver that brought public input on the bill to a halt." by Doug Smith

"State Rep. Mac Adamia, R-Loontown, motions for the House of Representatives to adjourn Monday ... "

This use of motion is new to me, but I've seen it a couple of times in reports on the recent legislative session. In standard legislative usage, motion is a noun ("a proposal formally made to a deliberative assembly"), not a verb. A legislator can move to adjourn, or move for immediate consideration, or he can make a motion to do such things, but he doesn't motion for them like he was trying to hitch a ride. Informally, I suppose, a majority leader wanting to break for a three-martini lunch could point to the clock and then simulate drinking. That sort of motion might explain some of the late-afternoon actions of this year's assembly.

Political speech:

Opposing factions try to control the terminology of their debates. Pro-life v. pro-choice is pretty much a standoff now, both terms misleading and avoided by all but the most partisan. And although right-wingers have worked very hard, they haven't been entirely successful in selling death tax. Most people understand that it's really an inheritance tax. As such, it's paid by very few, unlike a death tax, which would be paid by everybody.

But the right-wingers have done better with entitlements. Even people who don't share the Republican opposition to Social Security and Medicare sometimes use the word to describe the benefits of social-welfare programs, apparently not recognizing that the sneering use of "entitlements" is intended to inflame. Writing in The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg says that "entitlements" was made popular during the Reagan Administration by the Great Communicator himself, who pined for the end of Social Security. "A so-called entitlement is a benefit extended to those who meet the lawful requirements, without the need for a specific appropriation," Hertzberg writes. "But 'acting entitled' or having 'a sense of entitlement' is something no one yearns to be accused of." People who recognize the need for Social Security and Medicare shouldn't go along with the use of "entitlements," he says.

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Against all odds, Obamacare prevailed in Arkansas

Ernest Dumas — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

So backward-looking was the Arkansas legislature all winter that you wanted to search the rest of the paper every day for the latest news on the hookworm epidemic and yesterday's lynchings, but then it did something truly progressive. by Ernest Dumas

Implementing Obamacare, which Republicans had sworn oaths to fight, must go down as one of the great modern achievements of the General Assembly. Never mind that it would have been done without the legislature, and more cheaply, if the U.S. Supreme Court had not given states a veto of health insurance for the poorest working people. Virtually alone among Southern and other solidly red states, the Arkansas legislature voted overwhelmingly to subsidize health insurance for everyone in the state whose incomes fall below 138 percent of the poverty line, which may be as many as 250,000 people.

Does that mean the liberal democratic tradition is alive and well in Arkansas? Did it take the Arkansas legislature to finally fulfill the dreams of Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman?

Lest we carry this too far, let it be noted that for 100 days, in one of the longest and most fruitless sessions of modern times, the newly minted Republican legislature did nothing to make a lasting improvement in the lives of Arkansans. Historians were beginning to debate whether the 2013 session was worse than the 1958 legislature, which empowered the governor to close schools to prevent black children from going to white schools and to punish teachers and government workers if they did not vow support for discrimination against blacks.

Or did it even eclipse the legislatures of the 1880s and early 1890s, which set out to nullify the 13th and 14th amendments and restore apartheid in Arkansas society? This legislature, after all, did pass a law to erect hurdles to voting for minorities, the aged and the disabled because they voted for Democrats more often than for Republicans.

In lame defense of the 2013 assembly, much of the backward law will be struck down by the courts because the acts patently violate either the U.S. or Arkansas Constitution: acts to outlaw abortions before 24 weeks, the vote-suppression law, and myriad others. Two years from now, those will be merely bad memories, but the great Medicaid expansion will be doing good works.

So, on the record of the Obamacare alone, has it not been a modernistic lawmaking body? (OK, you still have to account for all the new acts undermining the tax structure and making it even more unjust.)

Over the course of history, no state has a more abysmal history of scorning the health and welfare of its people than Arkansas. Historian Tom Dillard's column Sunday in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette gave a good account of that history. Such efforts as the state made were the county poor farms where destitute women and children and blind and severely disabled men were sent to harvest crops for contractors. Even with this legislature, making a profit for a businessman is still a prerequisite for helping the poor.

When the governor and the legislature slashed taxes and spending in the Depression so that the federal government would keep sending commodities to keep the populace alive and pay teachers so that the state would have a few schools, Washington got fed up with Arkansas and stopped all the aid. Fearing mobs, the governor summoned the legislature, created a welfare office and imposed a sales tax and a few liquor taxes to show that the government had some compassion.

Carrying out Obamacare's mandate to insure the health of the working poor must also be viewed against its impossible odds. Republicans throughout the state in the last two elections ran against the "socialized medicine" being imposed by the hated black man in the White House. They blocked the establishment of a state insurance market, where people could buy affordable insurance, forcing Washington to establish the Arkansas exchange.

As people learned what Obamacare really did, it became clear that it was an unalloyed good thing. Not only would it improve the health of a quarter-million people, it would be a bonanza for doctors, hospitals and other providers, infuse hundreds of millions of dollars into the business economy, reduce state spending for a few years and leave room for Republicans to lighten the yoke of taxes on corporations and millionaires. But they had to scramble for a way to justify voting to implement Obamacare. They suggested requiring all poor workers to buy plans from insurance companies through the Obamacare market, with 100 percent government assistance, rather than insure their care through regular Medicaid.

Of course, that was an option under Obamacare, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had published rules in January for states to do exactly that. When Governor Beebe approached Washington about doing it "the Republican way," the reply was "of course." But Republicans could claim to have fixed Obamacare.

That is just good politics. Republicans still had to appease the tea-party flank, which tends to control GOP primaries. More than half the Republicans in both houses had to vote for Obamacare in spite of withering attacks from Americans for Prosperity and other groups that had helped finance their elections.

Governor Beebe brokered a hallway pact between Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson and Rep. Ann Clemmer, opponents in next year's GOP primary in Little Rock, both of whom feared that the other would switch and vote against Obamacare and cinch all the votes of angry tea partiers.

In the northwest corner, a few voted to help the poor although the Republican newsletter in Benton County carried thinly veiled threats that under the cover of the Second Amendment they could rightfully, though perhaps not legally, be shot for their apostasy.

We didn't expect such profiles in courage from that quarter.

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Room in the middle for Arkansas politicians?

Max Brantley — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Recent events recommend former U.S. Rep. Mike Ross' plan to emulate Gov. Mike Beebe as a middle-of-the-road Democrat. Moderation is appealing. by Max Brantley

Recent events recommend former U.S. Rep. Mike Ross' plan to emulate Gov. Mike Beebe as a middle-of-the-road Democrat. Moderation is appealing.

Examples of why:

• Republican Rep. Nate Bell of Mena made an ill-advised attempt to capitalize politically on the Boston manhunt for marathon bombing suspects. "I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine," Bell, a notorious gun nut, wrote on Twitter. A furious national backlash against Bell earned a non-apology from Bell, not for the content of his remark but for its timing.

• Chris Nogy, a member of the Benton County Republican Committee, set off another furor with his published letter in the county GOP's newsletter expressing outrage at Republican legislators who'd voted to implement Obamacare in Arkansas. Excerpt: "The 2nd amendment means nothing unless those in power believe you would have no problem simply walking up and shooting them if they got too far out of line and stopped responding as representatives." He and his wife, secretary of the county committee, did much more explaining, but little by way of pure apology. He "most likely" wouldn't shoot anyone, Nogy said in one clarification. His wife blamed the press for taking things out of context.

• You could write these incidents off as social media misjudgments by misfits. But one is a state legislator of some effectiveness. Another is a party official. They follow the well-publicized ranting last year of two then-Republican legislators, Rep. Jon Hubbard and Rep. Loy Mauch, and a former legislator, Charlie Fuqua. All barely lost races for the legislature after exposure for angry, extremist rhetoric.

The real news is the Republican Party's reluctance to blast such extremists. Typical was Rep. Charlie Collins who said that while he disagreed with Chris Nogy, he defended his First Amendment right to say what was on his mind. This sort of attitude takes you straight to a First Amendment defense for Hitler, Stalin and any number of other dangerous blowhards. Some things demand unalloyed repudiation.

The reason for timidity by party leaders is simple. Extremists are a significant part of the Republican base. Anger them and you might jeopardize your new legislative majority.

The Republican majority legislature has reflected that extremism. Implementation of Obamacare — even in a very Republican-friendly fashion — was an exception, though it cloaked a plan to decimate traditional Medicaid.

In everything else of substance, the political fringe ruled.

Republicans moved to make it harder for people to vote. They made it harder to circulate petitions to address government. While such essential constitutional rights were being abridged, the gun was being elevated to holiness. Failure of an open-carry bill was a rare defeat for the gun lobby.

Taxes were cut for the very richest of Arkansans. Poor working people got barely a sop, plus they face new indignities such as drug testing if they find themselves in need of unemployment insurance or government medical help. Women lost medical rights. Sexual minorities were trashed. Environmental and land use regulation was under constant assault.

Arkansas law already tilted heavily in favor of these conservative preferences. Maintaining the status quo — which Gov. Mike Beebe clearly would have preferred if he only had the votes — would hardly have been liberal.

Mike Ross' promise to take a similar outlook — and to try to elect some Democratic representatives who agree with him — is hopeful.

Is Ross' political antenna well-tuned to the electorate's presumed moderation? What if Republican leaders reluctant to repudiate the most unhinged in their ranks are right? What if the fringe is actually Arkansas mainstream? A lot of us might need bullet-proof vests.

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Lyons: Nate Bell doesn't know Boston

Gene Lyons — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

For what it's worth, almost everybody in Arkansas who can find Massachusetts on a road map was appalled by state Rep. Nate Bell's grotesquely inappropriate Twitter post. by Gene Lyons

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

—Woody Guthrie, 1944

For what it's worth, almost everybody in Arkansas who can find Massachusetts on a road map was appalled by state Rep. Nate Bell's grotesquely inappropriate Twitter post. (Of course not everybody can, but that's a different issue.) At the height of the manhunt for the Boston marathon bombers, the Mena Republican informed the world that "I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine?"

Reaction from New England was swift, often witty and rarely polite. "Go put on a pair of shoes and fry me up some squirrel, Gomer," my pal Charles Pierce wrote on his Esquire blog. In a post entitled "Bite Me," he urged readers to remind Bell "that God loves him as he loves all mouthy hicks." Joe Koehane, the Boston-bred columnist, was less circumspect: "Might want to take a flight up north and try saying that in person, you waterheaded, little-d**k hillbilly a**hole."

Note to Nate: Anybody who thinks Boston's a city of Perrier-sipping pantywaists has clearly spent no time there. It didn't help that in photos Bell looks less like a Navy Seal than a guy who's never personally assaulted anything more lethal than the buffet table down at the Squat n' Gobble Barbecue Shack. Many Bostonians speculated that his fondness for big guns originated in less than robust manliness. Southerners are sometimes surprised to learn that when provoked, New Englanders remember the Civil War too — particularly the Irish.

Back home, Arkansans long sensitive to being caricatured as ignorant hayseeds urged Bell to resign. My sainted wife, a lifelong Arkansan (apart from our three long ago years in Massachusetts), summed things up wearily. "Oh my God," she said. "He's just pathetic."

It's merely ironic that "redneck" remains the last socially acceptable ethnic slur in American life. Fools like Rep. Bell help make it so. It's a wonder the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce or the Parks and Tourism people didn't have him kidnapped and transported to Mississippi.

Then after the big dope said he was sorry for the unfortunate "timing" of his remarks, Davy Carter, the Speaker of the Arkansas House, and also a Republican, had the decency to post a proper apology:

"On behalf of the Arkansas House of Representatives and the state of Arkansas, I want to extend my deepest apologies to the people of the City of Boston and the state of Massachusetts for the inappropriate and insensitive comment made this morning by an Arkansas House member. I can assure the people of Boston and the people of Massachusetts that Arkansans have them in their thoughts and prayers during this tragic time."

Of course they do.

Indeed, if there's any good to come from evil acts like the Boston Marathon bombing, it's to remind Americans that the things binding us together as a people far outweigh our differences. In all the rage and sorrow, the words that rang truest to me came from the bombers' immigrant uncle Ruslan Tsarni and a baseball player from the Dominican Republic.

Uncle Ruslan spoke with rare passion. He urged his surviving nephew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to turn himself in and beg forgiveness. Maybe he needn't have said that his brother's sons had shamed and embarrassed all Chechen immigrants, because we don't do — or we're not supposed to do — collective racial and ethnic guilt here in America. But anybody who grew up with first- and second-generation immigrant families knows exactly where he was coming from. Better to hear it raw than listen to mealy-mouthed apologetics on MSNBC.

Uncle Ruslan allowed his nephews no excuses. He found their alleged religious motives fraudulent and contemptible. More than that, he spoke in terms of bedrock Americanism common to Boston, Little Rock and his Maryland home. He said he teaches his own children that the United States is the best country in the world. "I love this country which gives (everybody) a chance to be treated as a human being."

And then came Big Papi, David Ortiz, a beloved black bear of a man who briefly addressed a Fenway Park crowd after a pre-game memorial service. Gesturing to his chest, Ortiz pointed out in Spanish-accented English that on that day his uniform shirt didn't say Red Sox.

"It say Boston," he said. ""This is our f*****g city, and nobody is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong."

Expletive and all, it said what everybody felt. The crowd erupted in a spontaneous roar.

Sitting halfway across the country in front of a TV set at my home on a gravel road in darkest Arkansas, I have to tell you, I damn near cried.

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Legislative power grab

Jay Barth — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

While most of the headlines about the recently concluded Arkansas General Assembly have focused on expansion of access to health care, new limits on abortion and a flurry of tax cuts, perhaps the most dominant theme of the recently recessed legislative session was the legislature's efforts to limit the power of the executive and judicial branches of government in Arkansas and to expand its own power. by Jay Barth

Across the weeks of the legislative session, proposed legislation threatened the state's executive and judicial powers as well as the voters' ability to use the initiative process (a practice that ratchets up the checks and balances of the federal model by giving voters this paramount power). The forces pushing these changes were complex — with interest groups in the lead on the most important ones. No matter, if ultimately successful, these forces threaten to fundamentally alter Arkansas's state government by shifting power to the legislative branch.

Most troubling was the effort to usurp rulemaking authority of the state Supreme Court in the name of "tort reform." SJR5, which surprisingly failed on a tie vote in committee, would have granted the General Assembly the ongoing power to supersede judicial rules regarding the operation of all courts in the state, a fundamental power of the judicial branch under the concept of separation of powers. Despite its failure in committee, the pro-tort reform advocates appear primed for another push to weaken the courts' self-regulation in favor of the legislature through an initiated constitutional amendment.

Several efforts were made to limit one of the governor's most important formal powers — to appoint members of state boards and commissions. While these efforts also failed, the legislature did accept as one its three proposed constitutional amendments a measure that would require the approval of any executive branch regulation by a legislative committee. While the legislature currently has de facto power over such rules through pre-implementation review and has the ultimate power to trump rules through legislation, this amendment would intrude into the "execution" of the laws by the branch given that responsibility by the Arkansas Constitution.

The legislature successfully limited the power of the people to create laws through the passage of SB821 that will complicate the petition process by sharply heightened scrutiny of signature gathering at all stages of the process. But this legislation is less of a threat to direct Arkansas democracy than a proposed constitutional amendment making it harder for citizens to secure sufficient time to gather signatures, a tool that has been essential to most recent initiative efforts.

As the General Assembly worked to limit the powers of other branches of government and the people, it was taking steps to expand its own relative power through extending term limits to 16 years and through a pay increase plan (in a constitutional amendment including this and other power-enhancing reforms under the umbrella of "ethics"). While the term limits and pay measures are justified as a means of professionalizing the General Assembly, they appear less healthy to state governance in the context of a general effort to shift the governmental balance of power.

In the late 1700s, advocates for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution emphatically promoted separation of powers as a unique, stabilizing force in the American experiment of governance. "If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary," James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51. But "[i]n framing a government which is to be administered by men over men," Madison wrote, "the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."

The General Assembly got only partway in its efforts to tilt the balance of power toward itself and away from the executive and judicial branches and the people themselves. But the Arkansas electorate could still accomplish much of what the legislature did not if it passes an array of constitutional amendments before them in the fall of 2014. We have yet to see how far Arkansas may wander from the core principles of separation of powers passed down by the country's founders, and how much it may limit the power left to the people themselves.

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Mayday

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

At one point in the legislative session, it appeared that the lawmakers would not only reject federal money to provide health care to the poor, they might fine the poor for getting sick. Better judgment prevailed at last and the legislature approved a plan for accepting federal dollars to extend health care to the underprivileged. It's complicated, but some complications were needed to overcome the opposition of those legislators whose hatred for President Obama and "Obamacare" far exceeds their concern for low-income Arkansans. The Beebe administration deserves much credit for getting the legislation through.

Except for the health-care bill, the session was a disaster, much as we expected from the first majority-Republican General Assembly since the 19th century. The lawmakers waged war on women, competing among themselves for sponsorship of the cruelest anti-abortion bill. They approved a bundle of tax cuts for corporations and the very richest individuals, while rejecting cuts that would be of more benefit to low- and middle-income Arkansans. Although history has proved them wrong repeatedly, Republicans at the state and national levels continue to argue that pampering the rich somehow creates jobs for the poor. A few may actually believe this to be true.

Also approved were bills intended to discourage voting by the elderly, the poor and minorities — groups likely to vote Democratic if allowed in the booth — and to increase Republican influence over the election process.

The legislators showed their customary allegiance to the NRA and their new-found allegiance to the Koch brothers, possibly even more pernicious than the gun group because of their wider interests.

The lights have just about gone out in Arkansas government. Add a Republican governor, and another Republican U.S. senator in Washington and total darkness will descend. Soul-trying times, indeed.

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Obama negotiates with himself again

Gene Lyons — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The great mystery of Barack Obama remains the extent to which he has ever believed his own rhetoric about a transformative, post-partisan presidency. by Gene Lyons

The great mystery of Barack Obama remains the extent to which he has ever believed his own rhetoric about a transformative, post-partisan presidency. Was it really possible, I asked early last year, "that Obama had mistaken the U.S. government for the Harvard Law Review, where the emollient balm of his personality persuaded rival factions to reason together?"

No Chicago politician, I decided, could possibly be that naive. And yet here we go again. With Mitt Romney in the rear-view mirror and congressional Republicans more intransigent than ever, Obama has been taking GOP senators out to dinner, while the White House has supposedly made party hardliners the proverbial budgetary offer they can't refuse.

Obama's willingness to swap "reforms" in the way cost-of-living increases to Social Security benefits are calculated — the so-called "chained CPI" — in return for higher revenues from closing tax loopholes, has many liberals howling mad.

And yet Republicans will almost certainly refuse it.

But hold that thought.

"You cannot be a good Democrat and cut Social Security," Arshad Hasan, the executive director of Democracy for America, told the New York Times. The group staged a protest outside the White House. Newly-elected Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) dispatched an e-mail to her supporters arguing that "Our Social Security system is critical to protecting middle-class families, and we cannot allow it to be dismantled inch by inch."

Realistically, "inch by inch" is more apt than "dismantled." According to economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who strenuously opposes "chained-CPI," "President Obama's proposal would reduce benefits by 0.3 percent for each year after a worker retires. After ten years benefits would be cut by 3.0 percent, after twenty years 6.0 percent, and after 30 years 9.0 percent. Over a twenty year retirement, the average cut would be 3.0 percent."

That's about $36 on the average $1200 Social Security check — noticeable, but hardly crippling. Obama's proposal also comes with complicated formulas for protecting the poorest recipients.

The kind of Washington wise men who wear expensively tailored suits on TV talk shows pronounced themselves well-pleased. On the PBS NewsHour, the lefty/righty team of Mark Shields and David Brooks called Obama "gutsy" and "brave," respectively, for sticking it to greedy geezers.

And yet, as I say, none of this is likely to happen. No sooner had the Obama budget been released than partisans on both sides began showing something less than earnest good faith. The initial GOP response came from the head of the Republicans' House campaign committee, Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, who denounced what he called the president's "shocking attack on seniors."

Speaker John Boehner sang a different tune. No revenue increases, no how, no way was his answer. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took the same line. Never mind that both men had been urging the White House to adopt "chained CPI" for a couple of years. The GOP commitment to preserving preferential tax rates for the Mitt Romneys and Koch brothers of the nation has achieved the status of an absolute.

It probably didn't matter, but it certainly didn't help that the White House sent out various emissaries hinting that it was all a big head fake anyway.

"Administration officials spent most of Wednesday insisting that chained CPI was the Republicans' idea, not Obama's," POLITICO reported "and that he'd only agree to it if it had these protections and was included in a broader deficit reduction package. 'The offer that is there for Speaker [John Boehner] is not an a la carte menu,' National Economic Council director Gene Sperling told reporters."

Writing in his Washington Post "Wonkblog," boy pundit Ezra Klein explained that the purpose of the White House budget was to expose GOP hypocrisy. "As the White House sees it, there are two possible outcomes to this budget. One is that it actually leads to a grand bargain, either now or in a couple of months. Another is that it proves to the press and the public that Republican intransigence is what's standing in the way of a grand bargain."

That similar mixed motives have been part of every legislative proposal since the dawn of democracy might have made this unnecessary to say. But like a child riding a unicycle, this White House can't seem to quit advertising its own cleverness. Besides, anybody who doesn't get it by now probably can't.

Most Democrats I know tend to agree with former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich. "The only thing the President has accomplished by putting Social Security on the chopping block is to make it more vulnerable to future cuts, and to dampen the enthusiasm of Democrats and many independents for the midterm elections of 2014."

Once again, President Obama appears to be negotiating with himself — like a guy playing a game of seven-card stud in which his hole cards, but nobody else's, are revealed.

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Let sleeping dogs ...

Doug Smith — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

New York may never sleep, as the song says, but some writers and editors there do. Bick Satterfield submits evidence from The New Yorker: "Laying there on the ground, next to the sheet, was a banana peel." No, the banana peel was lying there on the ground. Satterfield says that many people, too many actually, still don't understand the uses of lie and lay. He's right. by Doug Smith

About the same time I received Satterfield's letter — yes, it was a letter, not an e-mail — I saw in The Week magazine a blurb about a movie: "The American — George Clooney plays a brooding assassin trying to lay low in Italy in this atmospheric suspense thriller." Really, George was trying to lie low. I believe the home office of The Week is in London; you'd expect journalists there to know the Queen's English too. This kind of malfeasance is enough to make an assassin brood. (Though I have to admit that between brooding assassins and shooting assassins, I much prefer the former.)

The verbs lie and lay are not interchangeable. Lay means "to cause something to lie; put," as in "Lay that pistol down, Babe, lay that pistol down." To lie is "to be in, or move into, a reclining position, or on or onto a flat surface," as in, "Just lie there and brood, why don't you?" The past tense of lie is lay — "He lay down" — which may help confuse matters. The past participle of lie is lain — "The banana peel has lain there for days." The past tense and past participle of lay are both laid. "She laid her pistol down" and "she has laid her pistol down."

(Speaking of "the city that never sleeps," I wish somebody would take up her pistol and shoot those responsible for the Belmont's discarding "The Sidewalks of New York" and adopting "New York, New York" as the race's official song. Class replaced by cheese. Is there no taste left, Honey Boo Boo?)

Congressball:

"Mills demonstrated his legislative acumen when lining up support for the proposed Beaver Dam and Lake ... Mills advised Congressman Jim Trimble not to talk to the House Public Works Committee chairman, Clifford Davis of Memphis, when Davis was drinking. Trimble waited for weeks on end, then finally tried his luck. Just as Mills expected, Davis balled out Trimble and threw him out of his office."

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Obamacare rules

Max Brantley — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

At press time, a Senate vote was still up in the air, but the thinking was that senators would join the House in its momentous approval Tuesday of Medicaid expansion by a 77-23 vote. by Max Brantley

At press time, a Senate vote was still up in the air, but the thinking was that senators would join the House in its momentous approval Tuesday of Medicaid expansion by a 77-23 vote.

The vote passed a $5 billion appropriation bill for the Department of Human Services, a good billion of it in the form of extra money provided by the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act for states willing to expand the pool of people covered by Medicaid. Obamacare, in other words.

What's that I say? The new Republican legislative majority, most of them elected on a platform of revulsion toward the president and Obamacare, voted to accept Obamacare? Yes they did, as many in the holdout group of 23 Republican opponents took pains to point out.

Some pragmatic Republicans took the lead in shaping a Medicaid expansion pitched as a far superior "private option." Arkansas will privatize Medicaid expansion, using federal money to buy health insurance from private insurance companies. The remnant core Medicaid program for the elderly and disabled will be cut back. Various bits of complementary legislation will advance the (largely unsupported) Republican belief that the medical program for the poor is wastefully run and rife with fraud.

If the federal government can't sustain the money to continue its support of this state expansion, Arkansas can drop out. It will be left with a residual Medicaid program even less sufficient for the needs of the working poor than it already was. Thus this legislation is a win/win for Republicans, except to those principled teabagger holdouts who simply don't want to expand government programs, whether the feds are paying or not, whether it's good for people or not.

The political fallout is all good for Republicans. They get all the federal money with none of the guilt because they can claim they made a bad proposition better. The money will free hundreds of millions in Arkansas revenue for other state purposes, first among them a tax cut mostly of benefit to rich people.

Though the measure couldn't pass without the 49 Democrat/Green votes, it looks for all the world like a Republican victory. Which it was. Democrats (and liberal columnists) were instructed to shut up, lest their enthusiasm discourage Republican votes. Gov. Mike Beebe agreed to anything that Republicans like Rep. John Burris and Speaker Davy Carter wanted.

Davy Carter? It was a huge victory for the speaker, who used all the Democrats, Burris and a handful of Republicans to be elected speaker over the expected coronation of Rep. Terry Rice. His effective, determined leadership makes his rumored plans to run for governor all the more real. Use Obamacare against him? With 28 of 51 House Republicans on his side? They also happened to be the most intelligent and effective of the Republican caucus. Conservative to a lamentable fault, yes, but generally not the type searching the sky for black helicopters to potshot with their openly carried shooting irons.

Carter can run as a guy who gets things done. He'll face some grumbling from the hard right in a Republican primary against Asa Hutchinson. But Hutchinson, three times a loser in statewide races, is old news. Also, he is often confused with a brother who lost a U.S. Senate race amid a messy personal life, not to mention a nephew with a recent girlfriend problem. He is the NRA poster boy for more guns in schools. But will the Republican primary really be about guns? This legislature, under Carter's leadership, has passed just about every gun-friendly piece of legislation imaginable.

Who'd have thought Davy Carter, and several other Republicans, would go into an election cycle claiming credit for an unprecedented expansion of a government entitlement program? I bet they won't call it Obamacare.

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