JOHN BRUMMETT: Absence authorized
Gov. Asa Hutchinson made it official Friday afternoon, releasing yet another executive order under his emergency power.
This issue is approximately as important as schools. It's about your voting con...
August 9, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: The arrow's arc
A reader request has poured in for a column of conventional wisdom's ever-fickle arrows. The reader contended the time was right. After all, we're within 100 days of the biggest presidential election ...
August 6, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Take me out, Coach
It's a story conjoining the issues of the year, meaning the pandemic and black lives deserving to matter more.
Thirteen mostly black college football players from 10 football-factory universities in ...
August 5, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Civil War, Act II
We could uproot the massive Confederate soldier monument on the prominent northeast corner of the state Capitol lawn. Then we could give it to those neo-Confederates who proclaimed their allegiance to...
August 4, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: American angst
On a recent driving shortcut through the neighborhood, I saw Joe Biden signs that had popped up on lawns in our liberal nook.
At one point I beheld a panorama of three Biden signs and two Black Lives...
August 2, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: We still need roads, so ...
Experts say that the post-virus world, if we can get to it, will be lived with the application of one of the pandemic's revelations.
A lot more of our work can be
done online from home--as producti...
July 30, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Hill stands alone
We have now identified the left wing of the state's Trump-genuflected congressional delegation.
Thanks for that might go to state Sen. Joyce Elliott of Little Rock. Her Democratic challenge to U.S. R...
July 29, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Help for the irony-deficient
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton may find this harsh, but he seems no better than The New York Times.
The legendary newspaper dumped its editorial page editor for the sin of publishing a recent essay by Cotton o...
July 28, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Passion and vision in Little Rock
Mayor Frank Scott passionately expresses a vision for the city and a determination to lead boldly.
He was envisioning with passion and boldness on the phone just the other day.
An element of that bo...
July 26, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Dear reader ...
Today I make the rare choice to respond to a letter to the editor.
I like to do that once every several years, if only to attempt what an editor told me once a columnist should seek from time to time...
July 23, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Naked disregard
Arkansas has some of the most onerous clothing-requirement laws in the country. You just try going naked around here.
Show your personal parts to someone other than your spouse or doctor--let's say a...
July 22, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Biden or the beagle
"Do you think Biden would be any better?"
"I think my beagle Roscoe would be better. And I think Biden would be a little better than Roscoe."
That was a conversation I had the other day with a conse...
July 21, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Bubba, unmasked
I called Bubba McCoy to make sure he knew there was an executive order from the governor that everyone wear a mask starting Monday.
"I'm glad you called," he said. "I need somebody to tell me where A...
July 19, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Myopia in the press
Politico reported Tuesday that the CDC had concluded formally that Arkansas failed in dealing with virus hot spots among Hispanics and the Marshallese in northwest Arkansas a couple of weeks ago.
The...
July 16, 2020
JOHN BRUMMETT: Missed opportunities
Gov. Asa Hutchinson missed both his cues, badly, in his daily briefing Monday.
He began the briefing with the distressing news that former U.S. Sen. David Pryor, the most beloved man of our time in A...
July 15, 2020