(Advertisement)

Back to John's profile

Stories by John Brummett

RSS

Playing the game

All about match-ups

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Let me tell you about athletic competition. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: at 3:48 a.m.

Judicial restraint

No way to pick judge

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Ido not know Jo Hart, justice-elect to a pinnacle of prominence, the Arkansas Supreme Court. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 27, 2012 at 4:10 a.m.

Everyone to their corners

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Ididn’t think the biggest story of the night was that more than 60,000 people, constituting 42 percent, voted against President Barack Obama in the Democratic primary. I was surprised and relieved it wasn’t more. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 24, 2012 at 3:29 a.m.

At least they’re consistent

John Brummett is a regular columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 23, 2012 at 5 a.m.

The GOP metamorphosis

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Editor’s note: Join John Brummett for live blogging and online chatting about today’s primary returns, beginning at or about 7:30 p.m., at brummett. arkansasonline.com. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 22, 2012 at 2:09 a.m.

The irony abounds

Those protest votes

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — It does not matter in the grand scheme how many votes country-talking lawyer John Wolfe of Chattanooga gets as the only alternative to President Barack Obama in our state’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 20, 2012 at 3:10 a.m.

Mike in the middle

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — U. S. Rep. Mike Ross returned my call Tuesday as he was on his way back to Washington from a day’s rural getaway. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 17, 2012 at 4:32 a.m.

Let’s get ready to rumble

The rest of you can go all right-wing if you want. And you certainly seem to want. Those of us living in the liberal bastions of central Little Rock will occupy ourselves, thank you, with our own little isolated left-wing battle royal. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 16, 2012 at 5 a.m.

Reform for a new generation

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Compelling narratives made Arkansas politics special in the late 1940s and early 1950s and again from the mid-1960 s into the 1970s. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 15, 2012 at 3:44 a.m.

Let’s be civil now

Gay-union politics

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Roby Brock of Talk Business—the television show, the magazine, the website and the radio program—happened to be putting his automated pollster into action Thursday night. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 13, 2012 at 3:36 a.m.

More proof in the pudding

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — What a night it was Tuesday in primaries in Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia. Score three for the ridiculous and zero for the sublime. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 10, 2012 at 4:51 a.m.

Behave better, judge less

It’s not much money. At issue are an $80,000-a-year job and a few hundred dollars in disputed or unpaid taxes. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 9, 2012 at 5 a.m.

Expecting mindless mischief

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — You folks have begun early voting for the primary of May 22, which is unsettling news. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 8, 2012 at 3:43 a.m.

Doomsday, again

The Medicaid morass

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Afrail elderly person lives a long life of dignity, then winds up unable to care for himself and depleted of assets. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 6, 2012 at 2:52 a.m.

The irrationality of ruin

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles gave a speech in New York the other night in which he declared that the nation faces a catastrophe still wholly within its power to fend off, if only its policymakers would act. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 3, 2012 at 4:45 a.m.

No ideas, no momentum

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — The only idea the Arkansas Democratic Party has revealed in years was to run a thin gerrymandered line to Fayetteville to nab new Democratic votes for the 4th Congressional District. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: May 1, 2012 at 3:56 a.m.

Forecast: division

In national politics

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — I blame the Arkansas Municipal League. Without it I’d remain, for the time being, blissfully unaware of the depth—indeed the desperation—of the looming American dilemma. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 29, 2012 at 3:23 a.m.

A movement matures

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — This would be a good time for Occupy Little Rock to pack up, close the camp, grab some petitions and get busy. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 26, 2012 at 4:51 a.m.

Wanted: The invisible running mate

Picking a running mate is the first public revelation of decision-making by a candidate for president. So it’s momentarily huge, if often insignificant in the longer term. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 25, 2012 at 5 a.m.

Money rules

The people don’t

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — The big story in Arkansas legislative politics is whether Republicans will seize control of the House or Senate or both in November and turn the state on its head, perhaps injuriously. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 24, 2012 at 3:45 a.m.

His music lives on

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.” —Bruce Springsteen in the song “Atlantic City,” taken to new heights when recorded with a mandolin intro by Levon Helm and The Band. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 22, 2012 at 3:52 a.m.

Careening over the cliff

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — I must write a correction. My timing was off. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 19, 2012 at 3:57 a.m.

Who deserves it?

Subscriber onlyPETIT JEAN MOUNTAIN — Four of the state’s eminent retired politicians spent 90 minutes Friday afternoon in a panel discussion during which they argued a moot point. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 17, 2012 at 3:50 a.m.

Defanging the fans

Good job, Jeff Long

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — So it was 9 a.m. Wednesday, the morning after. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 15, 2012 at 2:43 a.m.

Disorderly ESPN-watching

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — I wish Joe Thompson didn’t call himself the surgeon general. I wish we didn’t call him that officially. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 12, 2012 at 4:42 a.m.

Going back to Bubba’s

It happens every year or so. A literal outpouring of two readers or more requests that I get back in touch with Bubba McCoy, the retired used car mogul in the Delta. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 11, 2012 at 5 a.m.

Hogaholics off the wagon

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Hogaholism: An addiction afflicting generally insecure citizens of Arkansas that inevitably proves destructive, usually after a period of optimism and success. The addiction is to football and basketball programs that are nominally and peripherally associated with the University of Arkansas and through which the citizens of Arkansas seek validity and self-worth. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 10, 2012 at 3:49 a.m.

Conservatism by default

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — There is a new study showing that people go conservative when they get skunk-drunk. No. No. That’s wrong. Forgive me. That’s the superficial, unthinking way a conservative might assess this new study. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 8, 2012 at 2:06 a.m.

A bridge too inflexible

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — I recall complaining a couple of years ago to Madison Murphy, the Highway Commission chairman. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 5, 2012 at 4:54 a.m.

Heir of legitimacy

A few Republicans got a little irritated a week or so ago that only Democrats were scheduled to appear on a panel this month to discuss the late Winthrop Rockefeller’s reform-oriented political legacy. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 4, 2012 at 5 a.m.

Finding the truth in what’s been heard

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — I might have happened upon a theme to invoke from time to time to seek a certain cohesiveness in these writings. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 3, 2012 at 3:48 a.m.

What do we know?

Misinformation Age

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — The Trayvon Martin affair, with its daily drip of contradictory signals, might have taught us one thing so far. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Apr 1, 2012 at 2:54 a.m.

A broccoli emergency?

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Beware of people who take logical arguments to illogical extremes. With them, it’s always, “What’s next?” Or, “Yeah, but.” All they’re doing is changing the subject. They don’t like their chances in the reasonable and valid argument actually before them. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 29, 2012 at 3:53 a.m.

Prospects for 2014

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Mike Ross was telling me the other day that no one outside a 10-block radius of the state Capitol yet cares about the governor’s race of 2014. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 27, 2012 at 4:03 a.m.

Glimpses of leadership

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — When you see tactical retreat in an insurgent conservative Republican at the state Legislature, where meltdown is conceivable next year from intransigence and zeal, you should thank the heavens. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 25, 2012 at 4:49 a.m.

The game of the name

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — So I wrote on my blog that I would limit to that digital platform my sarcastic diatribes on the newly renamed Clinton National Airport in Little Rock. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 22, 2012 at 4:46 a.m.

Medicaid and consequences

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Medicaid will break the bank of state government if we don’t do something. And it has been interesting to watch the two political parties in Arkansas as they react to that largely undisputed assertion. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 20, 2012 at 4:14 a.m.

Newspapers and race

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Dr. Joel Anderson has been chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for a calm and progressive near-decade. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 18, 2012 at 3:08 a.m.

A little cautious optimism

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions about the Republican presidential race until it gets back to civilization. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 15, 2012 at 4:13 a.m.

Still no ethics reform in the Ledge

My best hopes have been dashed. The advent of a two-party culture in the state Legislature has not brought any detectable spirit of ethical reform. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 14, 2012 at 6:22 a.m.

History in the un-making?

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — These are the times that make history in Arkansas. In fact, history travels so fast in our state that it risks colliding with itself. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 13, 2012 at 4:15 a.m.

Rush to judgment

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Well, it was a big week on the Rush Limbaugh front. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 11, 2012 at 3:43 a.m.

Let the people truly rule

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Paul Spencer has been teaching politics and government at Little Rock Catholic High School for 13 years. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 8, 2012 at 3:43 a.m.

Save money, buy a house

Subscriber onlySome people think there are too many government programs. But I think the problem sometimes is that not enough people know to take advantage of them. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 7, 2012 at 6 a.m.

Limbaugh and the he-man woman-haters’ club

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — A flood of opinion rushes out on the issue of Rush Limbaugh’s misogyny. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 6, 2012 at 5:07 a.m.

Slings and arrows

Feeling fiscally ill

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — Maybe the best way to begin putting the fiscal legislative session behind us is to fire arrows. So without further ado: Gov. Mike Beebe—He got what he wanted, aided by the great convenience that he didn’t seem to want much except back on the golf course. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 4, 2012 at 3:01 a.m.

The best chance for Obama

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — James Carville had it right, I think. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Mar 1, 2012 at 6:07 a.m.

It’s the little things . . . unfortunately

Subscriber onlySomebody the other day decried the new and deep ideological divide at the state Legislature. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Feb 29, 2012 at 6:02 a.m.

A deal’s a deal

Hold truckers to their word

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — It may be that truckers will be allowed to renege on a deal with the people. It is an outrage. And it is not complicated. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Feb 28, 2012 at 4:23 a.m.

A good word

Subscriber onlyLITTLE ROCK — As I observed state Rep. John Burris of Harrison on Thursday morning at the state Capitol, it occurred to me that somebody ought to say a kind word for the beleaguered young man. Continue reading...

By John Brummett Posted: Feb 26, 2012 at 2:53 a.m.

« Previous