Stories by John Brummett
RSSPlaying the game
All about match-ups
LITTLE ROCK — Let me tell you about athletic competition. Continue reading...
Judicial restraint
No way to pick judge
LITTLE ROCK — Ido not know Jo Hart, justice-elect to a pinnacle of prominence, the Arkansas Supreme Court. Continue reading...
Everyone to their corners
LITTLE 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...
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...
The GOP metamorphosis
LITTLE 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...
The irony abounds
Those protest votes
LITTLE 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...
Mike in the middle
LITTLE 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...
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...
Reform for a new generation
LITTLE 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...
Let’s be civil now
Gay-union politics
LITTLE 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...
More proof in the pudding
LITTLE 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...
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...
Expecting mindless mischief
LITTLE ROCK — You folks have begun early voting for the primary of May 22, which is unsettling news. Continue reading...
Doomsday, again
The Medicaid morass
LITTLE ROCK — Afrail elderly person lives a long life of dignity, then winds up unable to care for himself and depleted of assets. Continue reading...
The irrationality of ruin
LITTLE 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...
No ideas, no momentum
LITTLE 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...
Forecast: division
In national politics
LITTLE 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...
A movement matures
LITTLE 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...
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...
Money rules
The people don’t
LITTLE 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...
His music lives on
LITTLE 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...
Careening over the cliff
LITTLE ROCK — I must write a correction. My timing was off. Continue reading...
Who deserves it?
PETIT 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...
Defanging the fans
Good job, Jeff Long
LITTLE ROCK — So it was 9 a.m. Wednesday, the morning after. Continue reading...
Disorderly ESPN-watching
LITTLE ROCK — I wish Joe Thompson didn’t call himself the surgeon general. I wish we didn’t call him that officially. Continue reading...
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...
Hogaholics off the wagon
LITTLE 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...
Conservatism by default
LITTLE 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...
A bridge too inflexible
LITTLE ROCK — I recall complaining a couple of years ago to Madison Murphy, the Highway Commission chairman. Continue reading...
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...
Finding the truth in what’s been heard
LITTLE ROCK — I might have happened upon a theme to invoke from time to time to seek a certain cohesiveness in these writings. Continue reading...
What do we know?
Misinformation Age
LITTLE ROCK — The Trayvon Martin affair, with its daily drip of contradictory signals, might have taught us one thing so far. Continue reading...
A broccoli emergency?
LITTLE 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...
Prospects for 2014
LITTLE 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...
Glimpses of leadership
LITTLE 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...
The game of the name
LITTLE 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...
Medicaid and consequences
LITTLE 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...
Newspapers and race
LITTLE ROCK — Dr. Joel Anderson has been chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for a calm and progressive near-decade. Continue reading...
A little cautious optimism
LITTLE ROCK — I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions about the Republican presidential race until it gets back to civilization. Continue reading...
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...
History in the un-making?
LITTLE 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...
Rush to judgment
LITTLE ROCK — Well, it was a big week on the Rush Limbaugh front. Continue reading...
Let the people truly rule
LITTLE ROCK — Paul Spencer has been teaching politics and government at Little Rock Catholic High School for 13 years. Continue reading...
Save money, buy a house
Some 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...
Limbaugh and the he-man woman-haters’ club
LITTLE ROCK — A flood of opinion rushes out on the issue of Rush Limbaugh’s misogyny. Continue reading...
Slings and arrows
Feeling fiscally ill
LITTLE 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...
The best chance for Obama
LITTLE ROCK — James Carville had it right, I think. Continue reading...
It’s the little things . . . unfortunately
Somebody the other day decried the new and deep ideological divide at the state Legislature. Continue reading...
A deal’s a deal
Hold truckers to their word
LITTLE 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...
A good word
LITTLE 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...
