Stories by John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Hitch up the mules The Marion School District ventured first into the Delta- variant frontier and is now sending back what would be valuable dispatches if heeded. Marion is showing other school districts how it's likel... August 5, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Non-scientific arguments We received a vivid preview Monday of legislative resistance to repealing the ban on mask mandates and letting local schools decide. We heard that conservatives care only about protecting the childre... August 4, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Paving a sustainable path Gov. Asa Hutchinson and state Sen. Jonathan Dismang of Beebe once worried me as right-wing menaces. It turned out I worried too much--then, if not now. Those judgments of Hutchinson and Dismang refl... August 3, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Between rock and ... rock The American voters could not have been clearer in 2020. They gave 7.1 million more votes to Joe Biden than Donald Trump while they were trimming Nancy Pelosi's Democratic majority in the House of Re... August 1, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Poisoning the well I've heard of going down swinging, or even kicking and screaming, but Leslie Rutledge is going down sabotaging. The salty state attorney general had been confident she could dispose of Lt. Gov. Tim G... July 29, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: The grace to stand Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the state's epidemiologist got shouted at Monday at a covid town-hall meeting in Mountain Home. The rudeness came from strong-lunged adherents of a school of paranoia that our... July 28, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: All praise to Trump! Sarah Huckabee Sanders explained to Fox News the other day that more people would get vaccinated against covid if the Democrats would kneel before her cult leader. In Sarah's world, everything is abo... July 27, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Gasket-blowing in progress Separate federal judges in Little Rock enjoined last week what until recently were the two very worst pieces of legislation enacted by the Legislature this year. It's become necessary now to call tho... July 25, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Friday night lights dim Are you ready for some football? So, get vaccinated, then. If that form of encouragement won't work, then nothing short of Donald Trump touring the state with a vaccine van, giving autographs for sho... July 22, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Asa Biden needed As Arkansas draws national attention as a backwater where a virus thrives among irresponsibly unvaccinated people, the state needs a leader falling somewhere between Asa Hutchinson and Joe Biden. Ala... July 21, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: So much for censoring ... The most popular post on Facebook on Friday and Saturday came from a woman whose name I decline to mention. I invoke her only because of the distressing relevance to today's topic--social-media irres... July 20, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Honest education to suffer In Oklahoma, a public school teacher could now get fired and a school could face a loss of accreditation if a white child went home after history class feeling bad about the nation's plainly racist pa... July 18, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: On the edge of the cliff If you venture so far to the right that you get past U.S. Sen. John Boozman, a Donald Trump cultist except for that one time, you'll find a narrow opening teetering on the dark cliffs of insanity. Yo... July 15, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Is there fight in old Hog? We woke up Monday morning to news that a former Razorback had announced his Republican candidacy for the U.S. Senate on Fox News. There was a time, back in the ancient 20-teens, when an Arkansas poli... July 14, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A worthy debate Twitter is in part a toxic wasteland and in part a forum of valuable discussion. It might help if more people could tell the difference. In the valuable category, Dr. Cam Patterson, chancellor of th... July 13, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Urgency? Meh ... Suddenly we're an epicenter in Arkansas, where politics is making thousands of people sick, putting scores in the hospital, and killing several. Illnesses are occurring in increasing numbers locally ... July 11, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Pointless proclamations The big move on the red-state right is for chest-bumping free community expression, not merely free individual expression. It's for an official tit-for-tat attitude toward the liberal population cente... July 8, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: If that's the future ... Speaking of gloom, a little item showed up last week on the Associated Press wire about Asa Hutchinson supposedly being a relic and Donald Trump the future. It seemed to pit the Ronald Reagan conserv... July 7, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Bubba's bright light I called over and asked Bubba McCoy last Wednesday what he was doing for the Fourth. "Oh, we're supposed to go to Memphis to see the daughter," he said. "And the granddaughter is supposed to be there... July 6, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Political? Nah! With his usual soft-shoe, Gov. Asa Hutchinson talks as if it's not that big a deal that he's sending 40 members of the Arkansas National Guard to Texas for 90 days to help deal with border insecurity.... July 4, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: American freedom Pierre de Coubertin, a French historian and aristocrat credited as the founder of the modern-day Olympic Games, once said the entire point of the games is for athletes to obey in rote ritual the manda... July 1, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: In the backwards South Gov. Asa Hutchinson truly faced the nation Sunday morning on a television news show that CBS aptly calls "Face the Nation." The host, John Dickerson, introduced Hutchinson by noting that the covid De... June 30, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: The fleeting joy of the deal There was bipartisan joy in Washington last week. It lasted several minutes. Twenty-one senators as evenly split as 21 could be--11 Republicans and 10 Democrats counting one independent who caucuses ... June 29, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Turning on the military The Republican revulsion to education in pursuit of greater understanding--an odd new right-wing theme this year--revved up last week. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and... June 27, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Manchin in the middle Rather than demonizing him as a Republican in poor disguise who ought to go ahead and join the Republicans--which would deliver the U.S. Senate to Mitch McConnell--Democrats ought to be thankful for J... June 24, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Some keeping hope alive It was a bit of a dream May 13. I began a column on that date by writing that what the country needed was the signing of "an imperfect infrastructure bill at a White House ceremony attended by smiling... June 23, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A sigh of relief for GOP Once again the U.S. Supreme Court, even this Trump-soiled one, saved Obamacare. In the process it spared the Republican Party. You might have been thinking that Republicans oppose the Affordable Care... June 22, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: The electability of merit There is no single savior for all that ails Arkansas Democrats or our state's politics. But all Dr. Chris Jones Jr. seems to be saying is to give merit a chance. Politics has seldom been strictly a m... June 20, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Beware the scary liberals It's a 30-second ad posted only on Facebook by a new super-PAC. It looks like a cookie-cutter ad. It invokes the events of Jan. 6 and warns of Trumpists seeking offices around the country. Then it pl... June 17, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: In need of a healer Mike Huckabee always liked to say that you didn't know politics until you'd tangled in the church version. I suspect there's truth in that. The great scourges of our politics are zealotry and hypocri... June 16, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Heartening evidence I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the fine people of the great state of Arkansas. About half of them, anyway. There is evidence from statistical science that the Trump insurrection is... June 15, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: At least an inroad They can't seem to find any in Washington. Those who seek it tend to get ridiculed and demonized. They get called unprincipled sellouts to the dark side. You don't encounter much of it on social medi... June 13, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Parsing the madness Perhaps Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has no idea what she's talking about. Or maybe she is all strung-out trying to out-Trump Sarah Huckabee Sanders, an impossible challenge with Sanders seamless... June 10, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Lessons in a flower Maybe today's change of pace will connect more broadly than politics. Maybe the late-winter arctic blast in Arkansas performed a hit-and-run on your gardenia bushes too. This is the parable of the fr... June 9, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Surplus cynicism When a news release appeared last week from the governor's office reporting a record $980 million surplus, my knee jerked and I challenged the news. Didn't Mike Huckabee leave Mike Beebe a billion-do... June 8, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Such a wicked game The United States requires a major new investment in infrastructure. Deferred maintenance doesn't get better on its own. Making that investment would create jobs and improve lives. On that a high perc... June 6, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Ideals good, but honesty's better Republican legislators in Arkansas and several other states are riled that a new emphasis percolates by which American schools would teach that slavery was a foundational sin of our nation and that ra... June 3, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Partisanship spoils stew Today's story demonstrates the frustration and likely futility of efforts for a bipartisan solution on a big issue in the U.S. Senate. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine touts herself as the likeliest ... June 2, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: In the balance There was an error in a news article the other day. It was this sentence: Supreme Court elections are nonpartisan. They're so nonpartisan in Arkansas that the state Republican Party is threatening to... June 1, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: The fickle arrows fly A reader sends a message that he hasn't seen the arrows of conventional wisdom in quite some time. It could have been an observation, complaint, request or celebration. Let's take it as a request, an... May 30, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Where Trumpism's fate lies On Monday The New York Times put Arkansas politics where it belonged. We were on the front page. We had national implications. A national political correspondent named Jonathan Martin had parachuted ... May 27, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Cracks in infrastructure A dangerous crack in the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River between Arkansas and Tennessee has nothing to do with failing congressional negotiations on an infrastructure bill, unfortunate... May 26, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: The work, not the person This newspaper boasts properly of a wall of separation between news and opinion. I speak as one of the few ever to crash into that wall and survive. I'd returned from Washington in 1994 to write as a... May 25, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMETT: An Arkansas saga My mom died last Sunday at 90 after years of Alzheimer's relentless mind-eroding cruelty. To cope, I immediately did what I do. I wrote. In a half-hour of keyboard flurry, I knocked out a stream-of-... May 23, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Whataboutism on parade Former President Donald Trump claimed he had been cheated out of his rightful re-election victory in November. More than 60 courts, some run by judges he nominated, ruled against his arguments. The E... May 20, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Working out the kinks It's generational. It's a matter of power and turf. There may be mild personal grudges and pettiness in the mix. But it's not so much racial. And it is not fatal. It can be worked out. Mayor Frank S... May 18, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Bubba plays the boos This time Bubba McCoy called me, rather than the usual other way around. It was a recent Sunday morning, sometime between 9:30 and 10 a.m. "Hey," he said, talking in a near-whisper. "I'm over here a... May 16, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A needed prescription What this country needs is the signing of an imperfect infrastructure bill at a White House ceremony attended by smiling members of Congress representing--imagine this--both parties. Rebuilding vital... May 13, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Wrong side of history, again This is a situation in which Sarah Sanders, as governor, presumably would stand in the medical clinic door keeping out the transgender children and telling federal marshals where to insert their feder... May 12, 2021

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Blaming the poor Arkansas barrels on with an uncommonly high percentage of poor people and an uncommon resentment of them. We lead the nation in trying to break federal law and require people to work to get health in... May 11, 2021