By TODD TRAUB Leader sports editor A final match victory lifted the Beebe Badgers past Little Rock Christian in the 5A state wrestling tournament at UALR’s Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock on Saturday. Heavyweight Jason Ferguson (8-3) pinned Riverview’s Paul Diarcos in the second period to take fifth in the 285-pound class and give the Badgers the points to […]

By TODD TRAUB Leader sports editor Cabot’s girls finished sixth and the boys wound up 16th at the Arkansas high school state swimming and diving championship at UALR’s Donaghey Natatorium on Saturday and Sunday. Bentonville’s girls and boys tallied a respective 380 and 330 points to win the state championship in both divisions. Cabot’s girls finished with 128 points and […]

By JASON KING Leader sportswriter There were no big surprises at Jacksonville as the Red Devils ground out a 56-38 victory over Mountain Home and secured the 6A-East Conference championship at the Devils Den on Friday. The Red Devils (22-3, 11-3) finished as co-champions with Little Rock Parkview, but Jacksonville earned the higher seed thanks to its edge in the […]

By JASON KING Leader sportswriter The Jacksonville Lady Red Devils started strong thanks to Jessica Jackson and finished strong thanks to Tiffany Smith. But the players were just bookends to an otherwise inconsistent Lady Red Devils performance as Mountain Home took a 46-40 victory at the Devils Den on Friday. The loss ended a winless run through the 6A-East Conference […]

By TODD TRAUB Leader sports editor For every Archie Goodwin, Jacksonville has Raheem Appleby. For every Aaron Ross or Jamal Jones, the Red Devils counter with Raheem Appleby. Appleby, Jacksonville’s senior guard, has gone up against the best college basketball prospects in the state, holding his own against some, outshining others, as he has helped lead Jacksonville into the 6A […]

Mike Huckabee made the rounds of the national media venues last week reassuring people that he would probably run for president in 2012 although he would not do it officially for a long time so that he can keep his lucrative job at Fox News. We would not discourage our former governor from running again, for despite his handicaps we […]

He can’t stop. No sooner had the type been set than this comes: Mike Huckabee lies about his tax record on the Fox News show hosted by his colleague Chris Wallace.  It came about this way. Wallace was interviewing the former governor about his expected race for president in 2012. He observed that Huckabee would have to deal with “gotcha […]

By PEG KENYON Special to The Leader As a member of Task Force 134 in Iraq during the mid-2000s, Maj. Timothy McCarty, who is stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base, oversaw the transfer and retraining of suspected terrorists at detainee camps in hopes of stopping acts of violence against military personnel and civilians. McCarty is commander of the 19th […]

The Leader, which published its first issue on March 4, 1987, is starting its 25th year. Desktop computers were just starting to become popular, and the new weekly was first produced on sheets of paper that were pasted up on pages and printed out of town. Now the production is all digital and printed here. The Leader soon moved from […]

By JOAN McCOY Leader staff writer Some people call a problem so big that no one wants to talk about an elephant in the middle of the room, but Larry Odom, a longtime member of the Lonoke County Quorum Court and chairman of the jail committee that has worked for many years on a solution to overcrowding, talks about alligators […]