LITTLE ROCK – The state Board of Corrections voted on Tuesday to make up to 642 prisoners eligible for early parole hearings.The decision was made after the board invoked the Emergency Powers Act, which allows the board to move parole hearings up 90 days for state inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes because of jail overcrowding.Prison [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – Promise Keepers national spokesman Steve Chavis praised the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville on Tuesday for allowing the men’s organization to hold its rally at Reynolds Razorback Stadium later this month.Chavis also discounted criticism of his organization by several groups, including the Green Party of Washington County and the National Organization for [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – Dr. Joe Thompson of Little Rock was named Arkansas’ first chief health officer on Tuesday.Gov. Mike Huckabee, who announced the appointment at a state Capitol news conference, said Thompson’s role will be to help set the state’s health agenda – similar to that of the nation’s surgeon general. “Really there has [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – The driver of the No. 16 car for the Rahal Letterman Racing Team did extremely well for a rookie at the Indianapolis 500.Too bad that’s not the end of the story. Because the driver was a woman, this is going to go on for a while.Danica Patrick came close to winning on [...]

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Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army’s push through Germany was interrupted one last time. It was 10:09 p.m. and my son, a little curly-haired 3-year-old, was staring at me through the slats on the stair rail. “Daddy will you wead to me?” he said while holding a little book. His aversion to going to bed [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – Dropping names, even the most-talked about in the industry, doesn’t grease the grade for a particular horse race.Locked in a room for a day or more in November, the 10-member American Graded Stakes Committee hands out Grade I, II and III to more than 450 races. When 3-year-old thoroughbreds are concerned, any [...]

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Dubious about the wisdom of the Democrats’ nominating for president another lightning rod for cultural resentment, people have asked, “Just which state that John Kerry lost does anyone think Hillary Clinton might win?”How about ours? She spent her early adulthood in Arkansas, was the state’s first lady for a dozen years, contemplated running for governor [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – Arkansas voters next year will take part in an unprecedented political fruit-basket turnover, at least in modern politics.The state’s top constitutional offices – governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general – are being vacated – two officially and one unofficially. Forty years will have passed since voters attached new faces to those positions [...]

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The old boy at the Lions Club asked, “Isn’t this mostly about John McCain sticking it to Bill Frist?”Positioned as I am outside McCain’s mind and heart, I could not say. McCain is an incurable maverick and an old disciple of Bob Dole who has long championed Senate traditions. But that he reportedly dislikes Frist [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – In Oxford, Miss., and Columbia, S.C., it’s more sic ‘em than sit still. In Baton Rouge, La., there will be less hollering and more helping. In Auburn, Ala., it will be more about situations than anything else. In Athens, Ga., it’s status quo except for the man in the front of the [...]

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