CHARLESTON – Lonnie Turner was so evidently displeased to see me that you might have thought he was a Razorback fan who had booed Texas.But, no, he was an oil and gas lawyer from Ozark, distressed about the imminent rise in the severance tax on natural gas. He spent the next several minutes apologizing for [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – The extent of the flood damage in northeastern and eastern Arkansas will be significant, although an estimate still has not been calculated because waters have yet to recede, officials said Monday.“All indications are that this is really a major catastrophe for Arkansas,” U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said after meeting with Gov. [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – Gov. Mike Beebe didn’t change many minds with his short and to-the-point pitch for raising the state severance tax to legislators Monday. But he didn’t have to, considering he knew going in he had the super-majority vote in both chambers required to increase the severance tax for the first time in 50 [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – Gov. Mike Beebe’s plan to raise the state’s severance tax on natural gas sailed through separate House and Senate committees on Monday, the first day of what is expected to be a three-day special legislative session.A proposal to repeal a 2007 law that inadvertently allowed people of any age to marry with [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – The beginning of spring football practice is two days away and Bobby Petrino has already scored two touchdowns in the arena of pr.The new football coach did himself proud with a warning and a welcome.His much-publicized suspension of linebacker Freddie Fairchild was blunt with a clear message for other Razorbacks – do [...]

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Hello there. Please allow me to tell you about myself.I graduated with honors from an Ivy League college. I was a Rhodes Scholar. I chose journalism over professional football, into which I was drafted as a quarterback by the Dallas Cowboys after Tom Landry happened to see me throwing a football on a playground. I [...]

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I’ve received several e-mails instructing me to go to Texas or hell, and a few explaining that the destinations would be the same.These kindnesses were extended because I wrote a column on a rampantly subhuman condition within Razorback fanhood.You have these primitive life forms with red T-shirts pulled tautly over well-graveyed girths. They booed University [...]

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LITTLE ROCK – You’d think raising a tax for the first time in 50 years, and having to muster a three-fourths majority in both chambers of the Legislature to do it, would take a while.But legislative leaders expect quick work of the special session they will convene Monday to consider raising the state severance tax [...]

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A special session is set to begin Monday to raise the severance tax on natural gas in Arkansas. Governor Mike Beebe is asking lawmakers to consider a 5 percent tax based on the market value of natural gas.Ninety-five percent of the proceeds from the new tax would go toward highway and road improvements at the [...]

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Here’s the latest in the presidential race, by which I mean the conventional wisdom of the hour, if not minute.It’s that John McCain wins as long as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton keep going at it, damaging if not destroying each other. She’s cast him as unfit to be commander in chief and he’s cast [...]

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