This is simply a prediction: Kim Hendren will drop out of the Senate race. I speculated to that effect Saturday and here’s a little news item that takes note that he hasn’t actually filed any papers. I think running was kind of a hoot for him, and then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t. Will Gilbert Baker run? Oh, now I guess probably so, though I remain convinced he has some personal qualms. Curtis Coleman? Yes. Someone else? Yes. Who? Don’t know. Chris Bequette? I’ll have to meet him and talk to him to develop even a clue.

Meanwhile, it looks like Max Brantley is huffy at me. In his blog link of my column this morning assailing Doyle Webb’s absurd attack on Kathy Webb over sexual orientation as a mad dash to the lowest common denominator of Arkansas politics, Max says, wait, he thought that attacking Doyle Webb would merely embed his prejudice and bad behavior. See, I wrote a couple of weeks ago that compiling and publishing that list of signers on the gay adoptive and foster care ban petitions would not succeed in shaming or embarrassing those signers. Max sees inconsistency. It’s two different things — doubting that you can shame old rural Joe for signing something everyone else in his church signed and giving a richly deserved rebuke to a Republican Party chairman for the outrage of trying to get Republicans elected to the Legislature merely to keep a most admirable woman from getting her just desserts simply on account of her sexual orientation. Ignorance by a private citizen can’t easily be shamed. But crass political exploitation by the front man of a state political party can be and should be and must be. And that’s my two cents on that.