How to tax natural gas
Five years have lapsed since the beginning of the great rush to develop the vast reserves of shale gas in the hills north of us and two years since the state levied a little tax to reserve some of the vast profits from the gas for the people of Arkansas and repair the environmental and infrastructure damage the drilling rampage was causing and was sure to cause in magnifying volumes in the future. [FULL TEXT]

Our pupils are learning
Arkansas had had no shortage of good news about its schools since it began implementing the federal No Child Left Behind Act eight years ago. Like those in the other 49 states Arkansas’ children made roaring progress on the end-of-year exams that were supposed to measure how much kids learned of what they were supposed to learn. [FULL TEXT]

Keet blames wife, others
Champagnolle’s Fourth Rule of Politics is that you never raise an issue that might expose your own liability. Jim Keet should have learned the wisdom of the rule last week. . [FULL TEXT]

Boozman’s national tax
Rep. John Boozman’s campaign for the U.S. Senate rests on three giant advantages. He is not Blanche Lincoln. He is a Republican in a year when people everywhere have shifted blame for the nation’s ills from George W. Bush and 10 years of Republican domination of Congress to the Democrats. [FULL TEXT]

Lighthouse plans to build middle and high schools
The headline in Saturday’s Leader: “Cabot schools about to hit 10,000.”  The headline in last Wednesday’s Leader: “Charter school growing,” referring to the Lighthouse Academy in Jacksonville, which has added a seventh grade and has nearly 400 students enrolled in its second year.[FULL TEXT]

J’Accuse: Smearing
of general
Air Force Gen. John D. Lavelle, who died more than 30 years ago, after he was falsely accused of insubordination, is a four-star general again. [FULL TEXT]

Petraeus salutes
camp liberators
It was 65 years ago Monday that Beryl Wolfson helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in southeastern Germany.
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Marker recalls fire at Twist
There's finally a marker honoring B.B. King in Twist in Cross County, where the great blues singer escaped from a fire at nightclub with his guitar and named it Lucille.
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Justice Jim fought tough final battle
Arkansas bloggers were the first with the news of Justice Jim Johnson’s suicide over the weekend. The local TV news on Sunday ignored his passing, probably because no one in the newsroom knew who he was. [FULL TEXT]

Cabot man in raid
on POW camp in 1970
Mst. Sgt. Paul Poole, who helped to liberate Americans from a Vietnamese prison camp, died last week. [FULL TEXT]

Trial could get Muhammad
his death wish
Last June, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad killed a soldier from Conway and injured another soldier from Jacksonville in front of a recruiting station in Little Rock.
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What a little girl asked
from Santa
When my friend Jack Sallee was with the Jaycees in Fayetteville, they'd put an ad in the paper at Christmastime, saying that for $2 you could have Santa come to your place.
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Tuskegee legend
at holiday reception
A tall elderly man stood in a far corner in a large banquet room at Little Rock Air Force Base on Sunday afternoon during the holiday reception hosted by the wing commanders.
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Gas shut off
as hospital bills pile up
A couple in Beebe have been without heat for several months after the natural-gas company took out their meter because they were not paying their bills.
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Huckabee our worst governor?
Who is Arkansas’ worst governor? Is it Orval Faubus, who defied federal authorities i in 1957, when he wouldn’t allow nine black students to attend Central High School in Little Rock? He brought shame and ridicule on the whole state, but at least no one was killed. Or is Mike Huckabee our worst governor ever?
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