OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Ballyhoo and brouhaha
They opened a state-of-the-art specialty hospital on the rarefied upper east side of Manhattan. Its specialty was gynecology and obstetrics. They called it a w…
They opened a state-of-the-art specialty hospital on the rarefied upper east side of Manhattan. Its specialty was gynecology and obstetrics. They called it a w…
Searching last week for "muscular moderation," my new and futile obsession, I found instead French Hill and other mushiness.
For as long as he was city manager of Little Rock--a long time, 21 years--Bruce Moore heard with the rest of us that the city manager form of government was pa…
People wonder if Sarah Sanders is in political trouble owing to her attacks on freedom of information and growing public curiosities about the price and procur…
The vaunted LEARNS program is doing little more thus far than sending unneeded lifelines to vibrant and robust parents living in vibrant and robust areas.
The Arkansas purges of nearly a half-million Medicaid recipients over the last six months are not as draconian as they sound. Or at least we can certainly hope…
There is a grandstand-preening and arch-conservative former state senator whose name I seek to forget. And he never got it even though I tried diligently to ex…
"Absolutely. I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates."--Ronna McDaniel, national Republican chairwoman, when asked Saturday on Fox News to elabo…
Warning: This commentary comes from one who has come to abhor the two major American political parties--the Republicans more, of course, but the Democrats aple…
Gov. Sarah Sanders was talking at last about the lectern. A phrase kept coming to mind. It was "modified limited hangout."
It cannot happen. It would require today's politicians to vote with and for some in the opposing party in the interest of country over party.
So, I will tell you a story.
State Sen. Jimmy Hickey of Texarkana was hesitant in the recent special session to vote even for Gov. Sarah Sanders' final watered-down bill on weakening the F…
It sounds almost subversive in the context of the raging race-retro contemporary Arkansas political culture.
It's been a convulsive few days in Arkansas in matters of media and civility, or incivility. Let's run through it.
Asa Hutchinson hasn't lost the sense of humor I never really knew he had.
The Washington Post came out Sunday with a headline essentially saying it didn't believe its own poll that was conducted in partnership with ABC.
Arkansas politics has always been about rural working-class distrust and resistance of government that seemed tone-deaf and full of itself.
It's partly about whether you instinctively want to throw people off Medicaid because you think they ought to get up and go to work. I get that.
The moderate movement in America, an oxymoronic if not laughable phrase, reached its height in a single photograph taken in the early afternoon of June 24, 202…
Maybe you'd simply call it "An Amendment to the State Constitution to Guarantee Freedom of Information."
What a week it was. First Arkansas Republicans turned against their vaunted leader, Gov. Sarah Sanders. Then some of the several still-existent Democrats took …
It's huge for royalty to get rebuffed by a legislative body of commoners. And make no mistake. Queen Sarah lost.
The queen got the non-royal treatment.
An editorial in this newspaper Sunday considered disapprovingly Gov. Sarah Sanders' announcement of her intended evisceration of the state's Freedom of Informa…
We know old age isn't for sissies, but the issue now raging is whether it's suitable for political office and public service.
It looks like you're going to get your top state income-tax rate dropped a tad next week. You might thank the Blue Hog blogger and his Blue Hog Report.
Jimmy Buffett was a Redneck Riviera vacation walking. That's what made him especially popular in Arkansas.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution may be the best after the First.
With a long holiday weekend ahead requiring an additional column by week's end to free Monday for celebration of the union man, I placed the traditional call t…
A reader suggested I watch a recording of last week's "Arkansas Week" program on Arkansas PBS to get the proper perspective on Asa Hutchinson's campaign.
What's interesting about the lopsided race for the Republican presidential nomination is that democracy may be at stake in it.
A group calling itself Braver Angels and dedicated to civility in politics had me as a guest last week for a recorded podcast that will be available at some po…
A lot of people probably want their dollar back. They paid to put Asa Hutchinson on the debate stage for the opportunity to break through.
It's like this. You get in your car and prepare to start it and a police officer pulls in behind you and blocks your driveway. He walks up to the driver's side…
Arkansas Supreme Court Associate Justice Shawn Womack, a combative partisan Republican as a young state legislator decades ago and now the wannabe Antonin Scal…
"I'm going down to sing in Texas where anybody can carry a gun. But we will all be so much safer there, the biggest lie under the sun. Go ahead and shoot me if…
Donald Trump was indicted Monday night in Georgia. The next day, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton was issuing a derisive statement that the indictment represented just ano…
Let's begin with the definition of a key word: indoctrination.
We now have four indictments of Donald Trump, which ought to be about it unless he did something else while I was typing.
It reminded me of 1986 when I wrote that Asa Hutchinson would lose the U.S. Senate race to Dale Bumpers but would always be able to say that he had out-debated…
Last week's voting in red-state Ohio, coming after public-initiative votes in red-state Kansas and red-state Kentucky, provides strong evidence that there is a…
The United States is always a great country, but not always a good country.
Asa Hutchinson isn't yet qualified for the Republican presidential debate stage, but there he was Sunday morning zoomed in for a remote interview by Talk Busin…
Public-school defenders might be learning not to get their hopes up in this season of John Birch's revenge.
I hear from the irrational right, to use a phrase becoming redundant in American politics.
Much hinges, as always, on how you ask the question. But some Arkansas Democrats say they're encouraged that the Republican Legislature's attack on libraries m…
There it was, an encounter with conscience and democracy, on the drive back from the veterinary clinic with the beagle Roscoe and his bottle of antibiotics on …
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is defending his state's new school standards and curriculum guidelines. Those call for instructing children that slave…
This weekend provides the perfect occasion to say a kind word for the loyal opposition, which represents a vital cog in our system by raising resistance to pow…