Time to sling some arrows

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

John Brummett is blogging daily online.

— It’s time to take these concealed arrows into the Church of Unpopular Truth and start firing.

Mike Beebe-He mistimed his retirement, starting a couple of years early.

The latest report that he “probably” will sign the bill permitting guns on college campuses-that coming after his signatures on guns in church and an abortion ban in health-care exchanges-reminds me of an old television commercial.

Adapted for context, it goes like this: Send it to Mikey. He’ll sign anything.

He is more legislator-in-chief than governor.

I know. He is smartly picking his fights. So when do you reckon he might pick one?

I know. These legislative extremists could override a veto by the same vote by which they passed the bill.

So let them. Making zealots vote twice for bad laws might consume enough time to reduce the number of bad laws they could make altogether.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel-Two years ago he had his people testify openly to Democrat controlled legislative committees that anti-abortion bills were unconstitutional, helping to kill them.

This time he clams up publicly because he knows these unconstitutional bills are going to pass and he’s going to have to come up with some kind of defense in federal court.

Being the state’s lawyer means having a bad client.

Guns and fetuses-These are the stars of the state Capitol. We ought to designate them the official state concealments. By the time this session ends, they’ll be the only things women in Arkansas are allowed to carry.

Women in Arkansas-They ought to be designated the official state receptacles.

Arkansas-Oh, you mean Oklabama? Or Duggarville? Or Kochville? New motto: We combine the worst of our hideous region.

A national poll the other day identified Arkansas as the nation’s fifth-most-religious state according to the percentage of respondents (52) who declared themselves deeply religious.

But calling yourself deeply religious doesn’t make you so. It’s often quite the contrary.

Anyway, most of those people probably were talking about being deeply religious in their worship of the Razorbacks. Or guns. Or zygotes.

Conway-Two words: Jason Rapert. It’s a three-college, one-demagogue town.

Tom Cotton-Back when Bill Clinton was youthfully holding Arkansas public office and possessed of a high national political profile, people in Arkansas resented him as too big for his britches. So the youthful Cotton gets a rural Arkansas congressional seat purchased outright for him by national right-wing groups that then place him on Fox News before he even takes office.

And nobody seems to mind.

Asa Hutchinson-Mark Darr, a passing Tea Party fad of 2010, says he won’t run for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2014. That leaves Asa precisely where he was before Darr’s announcement. Unopposed.

They tell me there’s another guy running, named Curtis Coleman. I thought that was the football coach at UAPB.

Asa is not merely a gun protector. He is with the National Rifle Association and he is here to help you.

Bill Halter-He jumps in on the Democratic side to give Asa hope of remaining unopposed all the way to November 2014.

Mike Ross-He would give the Democrats a credible general election opponent for Hutchinson, except that he has gone missing. I can’t find him anywhere. Pleadings to his new corporate voice mail are futile. Calling Mike Ross . . . Calling Mike Ross . . .

Davy Carter-One of the columnists-the name escapes-predicted that this speaker of the House would prove moderate and lead the evenly divided House of Representatives from the center outward. But it’s been a Tea Party orgy under his . . . well, let’s not say leadership. It looks to me like he’s doing all the following.

Maybe it’s all a grand bargain: Go crazy now and work something out sanely later on Medicaid expansion.

University of Arkansas in Fayetteville-Yes, up. That fundraising division’s mismanagement is bad, yes. But every day is a good day for the state’s land-grant institution if Debra Hale-Shelton stays in Conway to cover UCA instead of moving to Fayetteville.

Associate Justice Courtney Hudson Goodson-Yes, up. Her vacations on Johnny Tyson’s yacht in the Mediterranean are so much more relaxing than, say, a Carnival cruise of the Caribbean.

If publicity gets too hard on her, surely someone will give her a nice present.

Bret Bielema-What’s with wearing flip-flops all the time? This is Arkansas. Go completely barefoot.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial, Pages 15 on 02/19/2013