Opinion
COLUMNISTS : Beware global cooling
BY DEROY MURDOCK SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
Australia, the land down under, has alerted Americans that we see Earth’s climate upside down: We’re not warming. We’re cooling. “Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously,” Dr. Phil Chapman wrote in the Australian on April 23. “All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.” Chapman neither can be caricatured as a greedy oil-company lobbyist nor dismissed as a flat-Earther. He was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology staff physicist, NASA’s first Australian-born astronaut, and Apollo 14’s Mission Scientist. - Friday, May 9, 2008
EDITORIALS : Solar systems
HELLO ? Arizona? - Friday, May 9, 2008
Don’t ban horse racing, reform it
BY JAY AMBROSE SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
Ahorse was injured and immediately euthanized in this year’s running of the Kentucky Derby, and the cry went out that horse racing is cruel and should be outlawed, scuttled, sent to the barn. - Friday, May 9, 2008
For Linda Bisbee
BISBEE. The name is familiar to voters in Benton County. But this time the candidate for the Legislature isn’t the long-time state representative and senator by the name of Dave Bisbee. His wife, Linda Bisbee, is running for an open seat in House District 95. - Friday, May 9, 2008
Keep those tentacles in plain view, pal
Concerned Citizen in Denver, Col., by the name of Jeff Peckman, 54, has proposed a city commission that would devise a strategy for “dealing with issues related to the presence of extra-terrestrial beings on Earth. . . .” Isn’t that taking this business about illegal aliens a bit far? Like light years? - Friday, May 9, 2008
LETTERS
Tragedy greater than one horse’s death - Friday, May 9, 2008
Lesson from Lanieve
Dana D. Kelley
In the bend where U.S. 63 passes Paul’s Switch between Bono and Walnut Ridge, there’s a gravel road that peels off northwesterly toward a small white church. - Friday, May 9, 2008
Good week in news
Meredith Oakley
The Constitution of the United States has had a pretty good week if headlines are any indication. - Friday, May 9, 2008
EDITORIALS : Boredom with balloons
YOU CAN almost feel the tedium by now. Even if it is masked by the kind of pointless commotion signifying nothing that only a hopeless political buff would stick around to watch. Normal people tuned out long ago in search of something, anything, more intellectually challenging. Like gin rummy. By now the Democratic presidential campaign has settled in for some us, like arthritis in the joints. This campaign just goes on and on, much like the drone of Fox and CNN. The endless speeches remind us of HEAD-ON, the headache remedy whose pounding commercials are sure to give you what they claim to cure. - Thursday, May 8, 2008
COLUMNISTS : Are we getting two for one?
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS SLATE MAGAZINE
So numbed have I become by the endless replay of the fatuous clerical rantings of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright that it has taken me this long to remember the significant antecedent. In 1995, there appeared a documentary titled “Brother Minister” about the assassination of Malcolm X. It contained a secretly filmed segment showing Louis Farrakhan shouting at the top of his lungs in the Nation of Islam’s temple in Chicago on “Savior’s Day” in 1993. - Thursday, May 8, 2008
A slap at schoolchildren
GEORGE McGOVERN AND BOB DOLE SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON POST
How can the world’s hungriest schoolchildren be denied meals while the farm bill being debated in a House-Senate conference provides millions in subsidies for wealthy farmers? That’s what Congress proposes. In all fairness, it should not become law. - Thursday, May 8, 2008
LETTERS
Antics play to Clinton’s benefit It has been some time since I have written to the Voices page, but recent events have caught my attention; mainly, Jeremiah Wright, who has made hateful remarks that would seem to coincide with the elections in North Carolina and Indiana. - Thursday, May 8, 2008
A month in a mansion
Mike Masterson
It appears that the outgoing chancellor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, the man who removed Houston Nutt’s golden handcuffs and helped raise a billion dollars for the university, will beat his successor into the sparkling new $2.7 million Chancellor’s Mansion by one month. - Thursday, May 8, 2008
We want to hear from you, Northwest Arkansas
The Democrat-Gazette welcomes your opinions, Northwest Arkansas. Unfortunately, not all letters received can be published in the space available. Clarity, brevity and originality are particularly valued. Send letters of preferably no more than 250 words to Voices, Democrat-Gazette, 515 Enterprise Drive, Suite 106, Lowell AR 72745, by FAX at 479-770-8484 or via an e-mail form found at our Web site, www2.arkansasonline.com/contact/voicesform/. - Thursday, May 8, 2008
EDITORIALS : Another blow
THE NEWS from Booneville hasn’t been good in the weeks since Easter Sunday. That was the day a fire destroyed most of the big meat-processing plant in town, putting 800 workers out of a job overnight. - Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The check’s in the mail
LIKE A drunk coming off a bender, the American economy aches all over. All that over-spending, bad borrowing and general high-living is now coming back to us—like a bad hangover. Did we really sign that subprime mortgage on that ugly McMansion? Oh, yeah, the credit cards and all those impulse buys. And what’s that fancy new car doing in the driveway—we bought that, too? It’s time to throw some cold water on the old face, wash up, and cast a red-eyed glare at the bum in the mirror: No more! No more spending, no more borrowing, no more debt. - Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Home-grown ’maters
AFRIEND of ours put out some tomato plants the other day. He’s had some luck growing his own before, but it had been a few years. - Wednesday, May 7, 2008
COLUMNISTS : Flashback
Paul Greenberg
Out of time. All these things are really quite old— —C.P. Cavafy, On the Ship Ihave reached that age where every new person I meet reminds me of someone I once knew. Just as every news event brings to mind something that happened in that dense thicket known as the past. - Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Cuba’s leader tells another whopper
MIAMI HERALD
As a practical matter, it is impossible for this or any other newspaper to set the record straight every time the Cuban government tells a whopper. Orchestrating lies is the specialty of police states. Anyone who has ever listened to Radio Havana or watched a Cuban TV “news” program knows that Cuban leaders lie to their own people and lie to the outside world. They even lie to each other. But sometimes the lie is so blatant, so malign, so far removed from the painful reality of life in Cuba that it must be refuted, for the sake of common decency if nothing else. - Wednesday, May 7, 2008
In horse racing, risk and love both part of sport
Gene Lyons
Every time I witness something like the breakdown of Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby, I tell myself I’ve watched my last horse race. - Wednesday, May 7, 2008
LETTERS
Time to put an end to ‘sport of kings’The 2008 Kentucky Derby has come and gone, and “sporting fans” are witness once again to yet another high-profile horse going down in yet another highprofile race, just as did Barbaro in the Preakness two years ago. - Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Jumping the gun
Meredith Oakley
Afew years back, Fayetteville got itself into a fix over illegal exactions, a fancy term for taxes improperly imposed and/or collected. Now it’s Little Rock’s turn. - Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Tell us what you think, Northwest Arkansas
The Democrat-Gazette welcomes your opinions, Northwest Arkansas. Unfortunately, not all letters received can be published in the space available. Clarity, brevity and originality are particularly valued. Send letters of preferably no more than 250 words to Voices, Democrat-Gazette, 515 Enterprise Drive, Suite 106, Lowell AR 72745, by FAX at 479-770-8484 or via an e-mail form found at our Web site, www2.arkansasonline.com/contact/voicesform/. - Wednesday, May 7, 2008
EDITORIALS : For Rita Gruber
YOU MAY not recognize her name, Gentle Reader and Dear Voter. - Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Rain, rain, go away
Driving to work the other day, we noticed that the water rushing across the roadway was brown. Muddy. Filled with dirt. - Tuesday, May 6, 2008
COLUMNISTS : Keep it together
George Arnold
Idon’t know much Shostakovich. Although I recognize his name and know a few details of his life, I’m not really familiar with the Russian composer’s music. So it was a treat last week for us to sit in the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville and hear the University of Arkansas orchestra perform Shostakovich’s 10th symphony. - Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Drowning in a sea of hypocrisy
BY LEONARD PITTS JR. MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
My cousin thinks Jeremiah Wright walks on water. - Tuesday, May 6, 2008
State’s sports covered
Frank Fellone
Here’s a complaint as old as the hills: The newspaper covers too much sports emanating from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and doesn’t give enough coverage to the sports teams of the rest of the state’s colleges and universities. - Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Pless autopsy reviewed
Mike Masterson
After reviewing last week’s twohour session between Ron and Mona Ward of Marshall, Special Prosecutor Tim Williamson of Mena and his medical expert, Dr. John E. Pless of Indiana, I’ve hatched more definitive opinions about that inconclusive third autopsy performed on the remains of the late Janie Ward. - Tuesday, May 6, 2008
LETTERS
One choice clearly best Re Antone Blansett’s letter per the criteria he listed for determining the proper presidential candidate: There is a candidate who advocates small and limited government who is not a social experimenter. - Tuesday, May 6, 2008