The Observer planted 146 heirloom tomatoes last weekend. This is pure recklessness. The Observer would sooner drive down Cantrell Hill with no brakes as plant tomatoes in March.

The Observer planted 146 heirloom tomatoes last weekend. This is pure recklessness. The Observer would sooner drive down Cantrell Hill with no brakes as plant tomatoes in March. These late winter warm spells are just bait for the intemperate gardener, sending him on a fool's errand of planting, only to be ambushed in early April by a mass of Arctic air moving down from Canada.

Or so it used to be.

Any soul who denies global warming should spend time in The Observer's market garden. The Kentucky Wonder pole beans came up last week for heavens sake — a month early! Three weeks ago The Observer stepped on a king snake in the elephant garlic. The world is awry.

So this Saturday, he will plant 700 more heirlooms, the whole family drafted into stoop labor. He cuts a hole in the black plastic mulch over the raised bed, son drops a shovel of chicken manure onto the hole, daughter stirs the dirt and manure with a trowel and wife plugs in the tomato plant.

Thirty years of gardening history says The Observer is a fool. Yet this feels permanent. Something fundamental has changed.

Speaking of hot water, The Observer had to have a plumber out the other day to look at the pipes in the bowels of The Observatory. The night before, while the washing machine was running, we'd heard first a trickle and then a flood as the overflow under the windowsill backed up and sent soapy wash water everywhere — all over the sewing machine and our dented toolbox and the waist high stack of ancient paint cans we keep in the laundry room for God knows what reason. We got her shut off, but not before everything got a good and thorough soaking.

Service professionals of all stripes — roofers, painters, mechanics, AC guys, plumbers and so on — have long been the bane of our existence, making off with far too much of our hard earned scratch in times of great sorrow and gnashing of teeth. They tend to work on the stuff that you mostly never even think about until it breaks, and paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to fix something we know we'll never think about has always degutted us to know end.

Still, we ain't no plumber, so with Spouse forcing our fingers down on the button with every number, we dialed up one of those sultans of stoppage. Soon enough, a van pulled up, and there stood our hero in his blue work shirt, a big ol' rootin' machine in tow. Standing outside by the cleanout caps at the side of the house, The Plumber and Yours Truly had the following exchange:

HIM: "Where's the bathroom you're having problems with?"

THE OBSERVER: "It's in the house."

HIM: ...

There's really nothing you can do at a moment like that to keep yourself from looking like a chimpanzee that has escaped from the zoo, had a full-body wax and somehow learned to speak, is there? We both just pretended like The Homeowner hadn't said it.

Then again, as a pal later pointed out during the Commiseration Phase — us a few days and a few hundred dollars lighter — this IS Arkansas. There's always the chance the bathroom in question isn't of the indoor variety. We'd probably need a good carpenter to fix that one.

We ran across an Associated Press story the other day about attempts by the city fathers of Harrison to shed the town's racist image. Anybody who knows anything about the sad history of racism in this state knows that Boone County hamlet — which, as the Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes, was one of the state's "Sundown Towns" that forbade blacks from living there by threat of violence throughout a big chunk of the 20th century — has never received a gold star for "Most Improved" in that category, though the fact that some are thinking in that direction at least gives us reason to hope. It was an assessment from one white Harrison resident quoted in the AP article, though, that won The Observer's Award for Bass-Ackward Logic.

"How can it be a racist town," the fella was quoted as saying, "if there's no blacks here?"

Indeed, sir. Up next: curing sexism by rounding up all the women and shipping them to Australia.

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There are big beautiful burgers too.

Hunka Pie has been around awhile, but it's now in a new location, 250 Military Drive in North Little Rock, the old Starlite Diner property. They brought their pies with them, you bet.

Hunka is not just a pie place, but if you come specifically looking for pie, you won't leave empty-handed. Hunka claims the "largest selection of handcrafted pie in Arkansas." They're not all available every day, but the handwritten list they gave us the day we were there looked to have close to 20 on it. And if there's a special whole pie you want, made to order, call or e-mail (224-1104, chris@hunkapie.com).

The non-pie menu is big on burgers and other sandwiches. All of the burgers are one-third of a pound and are served on toasted buns. The turkey burger we had, in a rare concession to healthy eating, may have been the best turkey burger we've ever had, which means it actually tastes good, you don't have to fake enjoyment. A chili-dog freak among us ordered the chili-cheddar hot dog, but the waiter came back with the news that there were no hot dog buns, so our man ordered a bacon-mushroom burger instead, and was not displeased. Now that we've seen the Hunka menu, we know we'll have to go back and try The Bombay ("Garam masala-seasoned beef burger with greens, crispy onions and cilantro-yogurt sauce"), and the Greektown Burger ("Greek-seasoned beef patty topped with feta cheese and green olive tapenade with lettuce, sliced tomato and onion on toasted buttery bun"). The onion rings here, fried in a spicy batter, are as good as any in town. The fries aren't bad.

The Mile-High Reuben just about lived up to its name. Our companion found it tasty, but a little hard to eat because of its size and because the corned beef seemed to be pulled rather than sliced. (The corned beef is roasted on-premise, according to the menu.)

Though it's no longer the Starlight Diner, the place still has the diner look and feel, with half a dozen booths, and six or eight stools at the counter. The service was quick and helpful.

Back to the pie. The Almond Joy Pie was delicious and very rich, almost too much for one person to eat. The person who ordered the French Blueberry wasn't sure what he'd be getting, but he was sort of hoping for something juicy, and that's not what he got. The filling was non-juicy, more custardy, thickened with corn starch or something similar. The person who ordered the pie was a little disappointed; another member of the group thought it excellent. The filling of the coconut custard was great, but between a thick crust on bottom and meringue on top seemed a tiny bit slighted.

The breakfast menu is served from 6 to 10:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and 6 a.m. through 1 p.m. Sunday. Besides the usual thing, the menu lists a "signature breakfast." This is "The I-40 pileup – Crispy tortilla filled with hashbrowns, two eggs, bacon or sausage, topped with cheddar cheese. Choice of gravy." And, yes, you can get pie at breakfast.

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Maybe somebody should offer Iron Mike Tyson a TV news-talk show, although it probably won't be MSNBC. Last week the former heavyweight champ was one of vanishing few willing to await the evidence before pronouncing a verdict in the Trayvon Martin tragedy. by Gene Lyons

Maybe somebody should offer Iron Mike Tyson a TV news-talk show, although it probably won't be MSNBC. Last week the former heavyweight champ was one of vanishing few willing to await the evidence before pronouncing a verdict in the Trayvon Martin tragedy.  

Appearing on Piers Morgan's CNN program to promote a documentary film about his boxing career, Tyson was asked his opinion of a just-concluded interview with gunman George Zimmerman's older brother.

"I don't know," Tyson said. "I wasn't there. I don't know what happened. I have a good opinion what happened, like everyone else...He [Robert Zimmerman] doesn't look like a seasoned enough liar to talk to you."

Clearly, the champ learned plenty during his time in the penitentiary — where there are many seasoned liars, almost everybody's innocent, and some small percentage of inmates actually are. Tyson adverted to the nation's long history of young black men falling victim to racist violence, then made himself particularly clear: "I want to believe that Mr. Zimmerman did something wrong and illegal, but I wasn't there."

Neither were you, dear reader; nor was I. Like Tyson, we've learned everything we know about this terrible event from a ratings-driven and increasingly unreliable news media. That is, we've been presented a melodrama in place of a news story, with speculation and downright fictionalization being presented far in advance of facts.

And sometimes, alas, in their place. But hold that thought.

In consequence, roughly half the country has gone all Nancy Grace, the blonde former prosecutor who has never seen an innocent defendant; a smaller but impassioned cohort is replaying the late Johnny Cochrane's Greatest Hits, the flamboyant defense attorney who helped get O.J. Simpson acquitted. There's no shortage of commentators urging a racial dialogue, when what they appear to have in mind is a lecture.

Public fallout from CNN's interview of Robert Zimmerman basically told the story. Under polite, but skeptical questioning by Piers Morgan, Zimmerman advanced his brother's version of the confrontation between him and the 17 year-old victim. He described a scenario in which Trayvon Martin was the aggressor.

Supposedly, after a brief unfriendly exchange, Martin had broken Zimmerman's nose with an unprovoked punch, pounded his head against the sidewalk, and then threatened to kill the self-appointed neighborhood watch volunteer with his own holstered handgun.

"George was out of breath, he was barely conscious," Zimmerman said. "His last thing he remembers doing was moving his head from the concrete to the grass, so that if he was banged one more time he wouldn't be—you know, wearing diapers for the rest of his life...and there would have been George dead had he not acted decisively and instantaneously."  Morgan pressed Zimmerman to explain surveillance videos that appeared to show his brother brought into Sanford, Fla. police headquarters less than an hour after shooting Trayvon Martin "with no apparent markings to his face."

"There's no visible sign of any attack," Morgan said. "How do you explain that?"

"We're confident the medical records are going to explain all of George's medical history," Zimmerman said "because [of] how he was treated at the scene and how he was not."

Should it come to a criminal trial, whatever those records say will definitely be important.

Nevertheless, a sometime MSNBC contributor called Toure—he goes by one name, like Madonna—confronted Morgan on his own program the next night. Over at NBC, he informed the affable Brit, people were laughing at him. He expressed righteous anger at Morgan for "allowing Robert Zimmerman to come on your show and spread misinformation and perhaps prevarication throughout the waves, which we know many people will believe."

Toure never produced the Magic Decoder Ring enabling him to determine the truth with such certainly—except to advert to the same murky police surveillance video Morgan too had referenced, and which MSNBC sleuths have broadcast as often as the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination.

Anyway, Piers Morgan gave as good as he got; Toure later apologized.

That's not the point.

The point is that what MSNBC called a "newly released surveillance video" showing "new angles, never seen before" exists of George Zimmerman's entry into police headquarters that terrible night. It was broadcast once, on Martin Bashir's daily program at 2 p.m. Central on March 29th, and alluded to momentarily on "Hardball" that evening.

And what that video clearly shows is a large goose egg and a bloody abrasion on the crown of Zimmerman's head. Check it out for yourself. Here's the URL, sent to me by my indefatigable friend Bob Somerby of the dailyhowler.com.

The implications are obvious, if anything but dispositive. That's why it's so alarming that the telltale video appears to have vanished into a Memory Hole while MSNBC's ace team of talk show prosecutors pretend it never existed. Nor have rival networks broadcast it.  

One Fox News network is enough.

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Baby's little diaper loves shortnin', shortnin' ...

Baby's little diaper loves shortnin', shortnin' ...

From the police beat: "Baby Left in Car, Couple Arrested ... Wal-Mart employees who fed and changed the baby's diaper, told police the baby was hungry and had a soiled diaper when she was taken inside the store, the report said."

Michael Klossner asks, "But was the diaper hungry?"

Shirt happens:

" 'The New Republic,' though only now appearing in print, was completed by Shriver in 1998, near the end of a decade when the United States seemed fortunate and frivolous to observers overseas. ... In a shirty author's note, Shriver writes that in 1998, she was unable to find a publisher for her satire because, three years prior to September 11, Americans 'dismissed terrorism as Foreigners' Boring Problem.' "

I think shirty is mainly a Britishism, which is probably why the spell-checker put a red line under it. But Random House knows shirty, calling it "informal" and defining it as "bad-tempered, irritable, cranky."

Twit Romney:

"American Majority trainings and materials are part of a proprietary, cutting-edge curriculum of advanced political tactics. The curriculum includes policy education, messaging, precinct organization, Get-Out-the-Vote operations, fundraising and social media. American Majority's Twitivism guide is widely viewed as the leading manual for using Twitter as a tool to inform and mobilize conservatives." Is that worth doing? What we need more is a Twitivism guide to help us locate all the twits ("insignificant and bothersome persons') and keep them from congregating. A dog might be a possibility. North Little Rock is employing dogs, apparently with some success, to keep geese out of Burns Park

Monty Python used to run a contest in England to crown the "Upper-class twit of the year." Contestants competed in abusing waiters, keeping working people awake with loud, drunken conversations in the wee hours, and running over pedestrians. One year, the contest winner was an upper-class twit who'd somehow managed to run over himself. Perhaps because of Python, many upper-class twits fled England and settled in the USA, where they are now competing for the Republican presidential nomination.

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After an hour and a half long public hearing and another hour of board debate, the city board tonight voted 7-3 in favor of amending city code to require certain operations ? small food stores that sell beer and wine, community welfare centers (like the VA's controversial plan to move a drop-in clinic to 10th and Main and establishments that care for people with drug, alcohol and psychiatric problems ? to apply for a conditional use permits. Vice Mayor Dean Kumpuris said the ordinance would give people earlier notice and input into planned businesses: "It doesn't change anybody's ability to use that property. They just have to be honest about it on the front end."

Mayor Mark Stodola tonight prefaced the public hearing on the ordinance by saying the VA had obtained a building permit earlier in the day and the ordinance would not apply to the clinic (see earlier post on blog), but it didn't dissuade those who supported the clinic and those who opposed it from speaking anyway. Drake Mann, who sits on the board of the Brain Injury Center located in the VA-leased building on Main (therefore grandfathering it in, in the opinion of the city attorney) and is the attorney for the owner of the building being leased by the VA, criticized the ordinance for bypassing planning commission review, a point made later by City Director Ken Richardson. Mann said the "peculiar nature" of the ordinance, which was believed to have been triggered by the clinic, had left some people "concerned that the other shoe is going to fall and these folks have too much investment to not then seek redress in the courts to challenge the reality of this emergency."

Downtown resident Robin Loucks took the VA to task for referring to downtown residents and business owners who weren't happy to see a clinic that will primarily serve the homeless locate on Main as "gentry," instead of a diverse community whose investments had rejuvenated neighborhoods downtown.

There was no comment from the public about the other businesses affected by the bill. City Directors Doris Wright and Ken Richardson had some objections to the 5,000-square-foot limit applied to food stores in the ordinance, and Wright and City Director B.J. Wyrick complained that it didn't address those larger businesses that are located in C-3 zoned areas on larger arterials that are the entrance to neighborhoods. Kumpuris said necessary changes to the bill could be made later.

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• Jesco White comes to Revolution May 19.

Jesco White ? a.k.a. "The Dancing Outlaw" ? will bring his tap-dancin', Elvis-worshippin', notoriety-havin' self to Revolution May 19.

Now, if you don't know who Jesco is, chances are you didn't spend your salad days huddled around a tiny TV set in some dorm room or firetrap rental house watching grainy videotapes like "Faces of Death" or "The Dancing Outlaw," a clip from which you can now conveniently watch from the comfort of wherever courtesy of the internet. For example, here's Jesco on the rich subject of huffing solvents:

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It's rough out there. Talk amongst yourselves.

*Hog football coach Bobby Petrino, appearing in his first press conference following a motorcycle accident that left him with broken ribs, a cracked vertebrae and a neck sprain, promised to wear a helmet in the future.

*Terrifyingly massive tornadoes passed through the Dallas area today, tossing tractor trailers up in the air. Gizmodo has footage.

*Max should be back at it, if a bit jet-lagged, sometime tomorrow.

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• Kaiti Posadas-Tidwell

Okaidi Yasmin Posadas-Tidwell, 18, a senior at Centerpoint High School in Glenwood, is like many undocumented kids in Arkansas: unsure of what the future holds, whether she?ll be able to continue to live in the only country she?s ever known. But Posadas-Tidwell (or Kaiti, as she calls herself on her Facebook page) has a rare complicating factor: She was brought to the United States ? floated across the Rio Grande in a tire ? as an infant, before she had a Mexican birth certificate. That makes her a young woman without a country, an undocumented person who must first get Mexican citizenship before she can get U.S. citizenship.

At the age of 4, Kaiti was left in the care of chicken growers Grant and JoAnn Tidwell of Glenwood. What was supposed to be a temporary arrangement became permanent, JoAnn Tidwell said, though Kaiti sees her biological mother from time to time. JoAnn Tidwell is now Kaiti?s legal mother, adopting her when she was 11 on the advice of a Homeland Security employee who told Tidwell that would help her get American citizenship for Kaiti. It was the Tidwells? fourth attempt at getting papers for Kaiti; the first time the couple tried, when Kaiti was 7, they petitioned on the grounds that Kaiti had been abandoned, but the U.S. Immigration Service disagreed, saying that Kaiti had a family ? the Tidwells, JoAnn Tidwell said. On the second and subsequent applications, the fact that Kaiti?s birth was never registered in Mexico was cited. And finally, the adoption wasn?t enough to persuade the immigration service to let Kaiti apply.

The law allows undocumented aliens 181 days to register with the U.S. after their 18th birthday, Tidwell said. That means Kaiti, who turned 18 on Nov. 7, has until May 5 to be documented by the Mexican government so she can apply for U.S. citizenship. Kaiti and JoAnn Tidwell will be able to travel to Mexico City thanks to a temporary I.D. procured with the help of state Sen. Randy Stewart, D-Kirby, and a temporary passport from the Mexican consulate in Little Rock (after first being turned down). Tidwell has asked for an appointment with the consulate in Mexico City; if she isn?t granted one soon, she and Kaiti will travel to Mexico City, where Tidwell is prepared to stay until she can legally return with Kaiti. (Grant Tidwell died in 2009.) That could mean selling her home and car in Glenwood, she said.

?Me and Katie are tired now, we?re wore out,? Tidwell said. Kaiti, a member of the Centerpoint track team, who works at a restaurant four days a week, who Tidwell said has been offered scholarships to Henderson State University and two other Arkansas schools based on her grades, may not even get to walk with her graduating class or go to the senior prom. At the Mexican consulate in Little Rock, when it looked like she might not get a temporary passport, Kaiti wept and wept: This is her last chance at citizenship. But Tidwell is determined. ?I never give up. Someone?s going to tell me what to do and it?s going to work.?

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• PERMIT AWARDED: For VA drop-in clinic.

The city has issued the VA a building permit for its rehabilitation of the former Cook Jeep dealership at 10th and Main for a drop-in clinic to replace smaller quarters at 2nd and Ringo.

The permit was issued after City Attorney Tom Carpenter issued an opinion that the VA does not have to comply with UU (urban use) zoning requirements. It would have had to comply had the amount of the rehab stated in the permit ? $398,056 ? been more than 50 percent of the building's replacement value.

In deciding it did not, Carpenter had to tackle what is the replacement value versus appraised value. The appraised value of the building is $750,000. The VA argued, successfully, that the replacement value ranges between $850,000 to $1.26 million, and said it plans to spend $300,000, not the amount stated in the permit.

Carpenter's opinion is here.

The City Board will consider an ordinance tonight to amend its zoning regulations to remove certain "uses by right," an ordinance that was believed to have been drafted to prevent the VA clinic from opening. However, Mayor Mark Stodola said last week that he does not believe the ordinance will apply to the clinic because a business, Brain Injury of Arkansas, has already opened in the building, thus grandfathering its zoning in.

Looks like the VA Drop-in clinic has made it.

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Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Chris Piazza today approved a settlement agreement in the Arkansas Public Law Center's legal effort to end the salary supplements most state legislators receive.

Max is a member of the Arkansas Public Law Center.

See a release from the APLC on the jump.

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• Nuckolls

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that police in Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi are pursuing charges against a traveling evangelist who is accused of secretly videotaping female members of the families he stayed with as he was traveling across the country.

Samuel Nuckolls is currently being investigated by police in three states for what police say is the secret videotaping of as many as 18 women and girls, some as young as 17. He was indicted in February in DeSoto County, Miss., on 13 counts, and police in Texas are investigating his movements there as well.

Nuckolls was arrested last October in Gosnell, Ark., after police say the wife of a minister who Nuckolls was staying with noticed a pen-sized camera among Nuckolls' belongings left in the bathroom. When she played the video captured on the camera, she told police, she found footage of herself undressing.

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If the U.S. Supreme Court's oral arguments in the health-insurance suit are a guide, the court this spring will add another case to the pantheon of shame that enshrines Dred Scott, Plessy, Buck, Korematsu, Bush v. Gore and Citizens United. by Ernest Dumas

If the U.S. Supreme Court's oral arguments in the health-insurance suit are a guide, the court this spring will add another case to the pantheon of shame that enshrines Dred Scott, Plessy, Buck, Korematsu, Bush v. Gore and Citizens United.

You know those cases. Dred Scott said the descendants of slaves could never be citizens or enjoy the legal protections afforded other Americans. Plessy said racial apartheid and equality were harmonious principles. Buck stood for the premise that the government did not violate handicapped women's rights when it forcibly sterilized them so that they could never spawn disabled children. Korematsu was the 1944 decision in which the court said it was fine to strip 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent of their property and imprison them without cause or suspicion. Bush v. Gore and Citizens United stood for — well, you know those cases too well.

Those two and the impending 5-4 decision against what Republicans call "Obamacare" all run along the same line, where the court decides not just to declare what the Constitution means but to enter the political lists to decide elections for the right party and finally to fix public policy in the justices' direction, a domain until now reserved to the other branches.

So if the questions and observations of four of the five Republican justices reflect their intentions, the Supreme Court will vote 5 to 4 to declare the United States to be the only country among all the developed nations of the earth, and a few of the undeveloped ones, that is barred by its own constitution from ever giving health protection to all its people — unless, of course, it chooses someday to follow the socialist model.

That would be the result if the court concluded it is an unconstitutional exercise of congressional power to require that most uninsured people or their employers to either buy health insurance from a company or else pay a tax to the federal government to help pay for their treatment.

There are two ways to achieve universal coverage, which was an idea embraced by 10 of the 17 20th century presidents, including four Republicans. One way is the single-payer government system, Medicare for everyone, which Republicans now call socialism, and the other was the Republican idea of mandating everyone to obtain insurance, which was first tendered by Nixon and Ford in the 1970s and embraced in the 1990s by Republican congressional leaders, including Newt Gingrich. When Barack Obama was persuaded in 2009 that the Republican mandate was the only politically viable way, he and the Democratic Congress adopted it, which caused the Republicans to repudiate it. Do you imagine that even one justice would vote to strike down the insurance mandate if a Republican Congress and president had fathered it?

The three days of hearings by the justices were unprecedented. The four questioning Republicans wondered aloud about how the insurance companies would make sufficient profits if the court struck down the mandate and allowed the rest of Obamacare to survive. Issues about how well provisions of a law might work have never been the province of the courts — only whether they abrade the Constitution.

Whether the Affordable Care Act is good law is not a matter for the courts but for Congress and the president, which are obliged by the Constitution to resolve hard issues the best they can on the messy playing field of politics and compromise. The Affordable Care Act is not anyone's idea of the best way to protect the 40 million uninsured people, but it is what could get a supermajority in the Senate.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who will supply the pivotal vote, seemed to suggest that the right way was a single-payer system like Medicare, so that the government's power to make everyone pay would be unquestioned. He was right; it was the better way. But the economic power of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries ended that possibility long ago.

The justices' questions reached for absurdity. The case was supposed to be premised on the technical question of whether the commerce clause envisioned the federal government regulating health-care transactions. But that matter was settled, in the legislature and the courts, no later than in 1965, when Medicare and the modern Medicaid were established, but actually long before that with the enactment of old age, survivors and disability insurance, which was required of everyone. Congress has acted numerous times to mandate hospitals and other providers, insurance carriers and, yes, even individuals to meet certain requirements. Only eight years ago, a Republican Congress and president changed the Medicare law so that elderly and disabled people who need help with the prescriptions have to buy drug insurance from insurance companies.

The nadir of the hearing came with justices raising the old bugbear of absurd possibilities. If the government can require people to insure themselves, couldn't it make them eat broccoli?

The next thing you know the government could make people buy automobile liability insurance or obtain licenses to hunt or fish; it could make employers buy unemployment insurance, make hospitals give lifesaving care to indigents or make factories stop polluting the air and water. Where it all could end, God knows.

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Also for David Paschal and the VA day treatment center. It was a bad week for Joe Thompson, Bobby Petrino and University of Arkansas students.

It was a good week for ...

DAVID GEARHART. The University of Arkansas chancellor responded thoughtfully and politely to an angry e-mail from state Rep. Jon Hubbard (R-Jonesboro), who wanted to know why the university is hosting a panel discussion on illegal immigration that will include appearances by five young undocumented immigrants. In reply, Gearhart said, in part, "As I hope you understand, one of a university's many purposes is to serve as a gathering place where issues and ideas are shared and discussed. I believe it's important to offer our students and the public an opportunity to hear firsthand from individuals who have such a unique perspective: living most of their lives in and as Americans, if not citizens, but without having access to the same legal, educational, and economic opportunities as their classmates and neighbors." He also invited Hubbard to attend.

DAVID PASCHAL. The former Elkins teacher, sentenced to 30 years in prison, won his appeal of a sexual assault conviction from the Arkansas Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision. One of Paschal's former students previously testified that she engaged in a months-long consensual sexual relationship with Paschal when she was 18 and still a student at Elkins.

THE VA DAY TREATMENT CENTER. It got a prominent backer of its plan to relocate to property at 10th and Main streets, when Gov. Beebe said he believes the center should be on Main Street. He said he thinks it's a good place for the services, and that veterans deserve that.

It was a bad week for...

JOE THOMPSON. The state surgeon general was arrested at his Little Rock home Saturday, and was later charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, use of force and attempting to influence a public official following what police say was a drunken altercation with a security guard and Little Rock police officers.

BOBBY PETRINO. The University of Arkansas head football coach was injured in a motorcycle accident Sunday in Newton County. He's expected to make a full recovery.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS STUDENTS. They'll be paying 5.3 percent more in tuition and fees in the fall, after the University of Arkansas board of trustees voted unanimously to raise tuition at UA institutions system-wide anywhere from 2 to more than 5 percent.

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State Rep. Jon Hubbard of Jonesboro may not be a jewel of a legislator — the evidence that he falls short is strongly persuasive — but he has a talent for drawing worthy expressions from others.

State Rep. Jon Hubbard of Jonesboro may not be a jewel of a legislator — the evidence that he falls short is strongly persuasive — but he has a talent for drawing worthy expressions from others.

Prominent in the Arkansas anti-immigrant movement, and aggressively ignorant, Hubbard likes to send admonitory communications to public officials — and maybe his own constituents, for all we know — chastising them for exhibitions of reason and tolerance. G. David Gearhart, chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Fayettevile, heard from Hubbard after the UA announced that a public discussion of illegal immigration would be held on campus this month, and that it would include participation by illegal immigrants appearing at some risk to themselves. Hubbard demanded an explanation for what he apparently considered the university's unseemly involvement with education. "Please consider this as my official request that you explain both your own, and that of the University of Arkansas, roles in this specific, and most likely, 'illegal' activity," he wrote.

We tend to think of Gearhart primarily as a fund-raiser. But he's an educator too, and that side of him showed in his response. "One of a university's many purposes is to serve as a gathering place where issues and ideas are shared," Gearhart wrote. Some of the most vexing issues of immigration policy are those concerning young people who were brought to the USA as children, he said, and "I believe it's important to offer our students and the public an opportunity to hear firsthand from individuals who have such a unique perspective: living most of their lives as Americans, if not citizens, but without having the same legal, educational and economic opportunities as their classmates and neighbors." He invited Hubbard to attend.

In the legislative session earlier this year, Hubbard sponsored a bill to deny state services, including medical services, to anyone lacking a birth certificate. That elicited comment from the Rev. Wendell Griffen (a circuit judge on weekdays): "A religious or social ethic which seeks to justify denying help to immigrants is anti-holy. It does not come from the heart of God. It is not consistent with the life and teachings of Jesus. [Hubbard professes to be a Christian.] It may be politically popular to fear people who speak another language, come from other homelands, and are vulnerable in our communities on account of those realities and their economic and other hardships, but that isn't holy."

The bill died in committee.

A public university is and must be a part of the world around it. That world today includes the large problem of immigration, legal and otherwise. It also includes the problem of reckless politicians like Jon Hubbard, but that one is more easily soluble. The people of Jonesboro can solve it in November.

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by Tommy Durham

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If you're not reading sex advice disher Dan Savage's "Savage Love" column every week, stop what you're doing right now, go to the blog of the Seattle's The Stranger and start reading. by David Koon

SAVAGE U

Tuesdays at 10 p.m.

MTV

If you're not reading sex advice disher Dan Savage's "Savage Love" column every week, stop what you're doing right now, go to the blog of the Seattle's The Stranger and start reading. Unless you're a potential Santorum voter (it was Savage, by the way, who instituted Santorum's much-discussed "Google Problem" by holding a contest in which readers suggested the most disgusting imaginable definition to link to the legendarily homophobic Republican's last name), there's a good chance you'll become an addict like me, feasting every Wednesday on the smorgasbord of sex troubles, weird hang-ups, interests and fetishes that plague and delight humankind. Savage — by turns hilarious, gasp-inducingly vulgar, scolding and downright fatherly in his advice — leaves nothing in the closet, and no subject is taboo. That's what makes it all so much fun to read. He truly seems to give a damn about people, and is one of the few folks out there who seems to understand how much a person's happiness can depend on sexual fulfillment. Savage moved into the electronic realm a few years back with his well-received Savage Love Podcasts (which are also archived on The Stranger's website), and now he's bringing his face to television with this new weekly series from MTV called "Savage U." Every week, Savage and his producer/sidekick Lauren Hutchinson travel to a different college campus and talk to people about sex. From the trailers we've seen so far, it looks like the show will alternate between auditorium Q&As and sit-downs where Savage discusses the ins and outs of the ol' in-and-out with individuals and couples who have a problem. While something tells me the buckle-hats at the Parents Television Council will be hot after MTV to pull this one off the air for the Good of the Children!, it should tell you something about Savage that he's devoting his energies to trying to educate and inform the young folks, before they spend a lifetime confused, frustrated or hating themselves over a sexual issue. Good on him.

TITANIC: THE FINAL WORD WITH JAMES CAMERON

8 p.m. Sunday, April 8

National Geographic Channel

While we know that it's hard for some folks who saw "Titanic" to understand that the voyage and sinking of the real-life Titanic wasn't just a big scronch-a-thon for snooty society chicks gone slumming and all those dewy-faced Leonardo DiCaprio types with perfect teeth down in steerage, the truth of the matter is it was a tragedy of epic proportions, even for a time when having your 8-year-old get his arm ripped off at work by a sock-making loom was considered "a typical Tuesday morning." While I have issues with the vast, striding wang that is James Cameron and the movie he made about the sinking (suggested subtitle: "Give That Oscar For Best Picture Back Right Now, Because Other Than the Spectacle, It Kinda Sucked") the one thing you've got to say for the guy and his film is that he singlehandedly put Titanic back into the public eye and cultural imagination. There are, we're sure, people working on their PhD in engineering right now who — though they probably wouldn't admit it — are there because of Cameron's "Titanic." Drown 1,517 people in a stunning display of arrogance, bravado, engineering failure and personal sacrifice, and The Future is all, "Meh, that's kinda interesting, I guess." Dunk one slightly chunky redhead in the water and kill off her 14-year-old boyfriend, and suddenly you've got a whole generation of folks stoked about history, genealogy and metallurgy. That's worth any amount of listening to Celine Dion (OK ... a REASONABLE amount of listening to Celine Dion). Speaking of history: Here, in this two-hour special, James Cameron talks to engineers, historians, ship builders and others about why the Titanic sank 100 years ago this month.

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The Supreme Court rules that everybody doesn't have to buy health insurance but everybody has to have a shed.

Some pleasant reflections from last Sunday:

The Supreme Court rules that everybody doesn't have to buy health insurance but everybody has to have a shed.

The Latter Day Saints announce that Mormonism will henceforth go with something a little more plausible.

Every dog-peter gnat in the world perishes from a cause unknown.

The Duggars agree to try a different approach — something called restraint.

The United States says it will leave Afghanistan by the end of April if the bad guys there make a solemn promise that they'll straighten up and fly right.

Op-ed insipidity is held to be a violation of the First Amendment; WSJ is first charged; second, cretins closer to home.

Department of Agriculture predicts big comeback this spring of big succulent tasty pink tomatoes.

A liberal psycho, too wimpy even to carry a gun, pulls out all of Karl Rove's nose hairs on live TV.

Mitt R. thinks better of equipping his lavish California pad with a high-dollar car elevator. Or his handlers think better of it for him, and go to Plan B.

Rev. Franklin Graham agrees to take a vow of silence after admitting that every time he's opened his mouth for several years now something stupid has come out.

Ann Coulter admits that just the thought of Joe McCarthy makes her hot.

Iran leaders give up fanaticism, return to sanity after successfully completing a Dale Carnegie course.

New York Times calls Bentonville "one of the most cosmopolitan small cities in the country"; Pine Bluff files complaint, says it, not Bentonville, deserves the accolade.

Mild winter results in overabundance of ticks, but hey — they're an extra good source of protein. (Boil them first, of course, as a precaution against Lyme.)

State legislators who own and operate hallelujah Jesus schools admit it's unconstitutional and unconscionable to ask taxpayers to finance them.

Kansas legislature votes to require resident females who have impure thoughts to have vaginas sewn up.

Confederate veterans organizations mull the bitter cup of finally acknowledging that the Civil War is over and was lost, but insist on sweetening the acceptance with a last word of encouragement to diehard partisans: We'll get 'em next time. Another way of saying fergit hell.

Catholic bishops concede that there might be areas of human conduct that are none of their business.

Baseball hitches up its britches, spits, gets the bullpen going, turns on the corn popper, and preps for new season to be played out under the new MLB motto, Slow as molasses, but steroid-free.

Charles Krauthammer passes in front of a mirror that shows a reflection.

Stinky L. submits to the indignity of his weekly bath after his latest and proudest avoidance strategy, playing dead, fails to fool anybody.

Scientists say man-caused global warming is bad but could be worse as the human race has possibly 100 years left. At least 50.

Miss Jane passes, immediately takes up new post as a WalMart-style greeter at the Pearly Gates, telling new arrivals, according to her obituary, "Honey, come on inside. Let me introduce you to everyone's best friend, Jesus Christ."

The Easter bonnet with lots of frills upon it comes back into fashion. Wear one to the big Easter parade and you're sure to look demure in the rotogravure.

Spa flack calls Oaklawn slots loosest west of Tunica and east of Tahlequah. Oaklawn brass thankful for the pub but say their machines aren't slots. They may look like slots, sound like slots, whirr and flash like slots, and relieve you of your legal tender the same way, but they're not slots. No, really. Call them slotnots if you must, but not slots.

Frogs return from edge of extinction to fill warm nights with hearty ribbets. Bees still doing their Amelia Earhardt, however.

Texas schoolbook oversight board relents, admits Thomas Jefferson might have been as notable a historical figure as Phyllis Schlafly, and maybe as important a political thinker as Newt Gingrich.

Huckabuck asks to return as Arkansas governor just long enough to pardon a vanload of killers to take back to Florida as cheap labor finishing the gruntwork on his beachfront mansion.

Mark Pryor belatedly grows a pair but isn't sure what they're for.

House Speaker says he will devote congressional spring-break recess to working on his orange.

Jerry Lee Lewis, 76, who's married as often as the Duggars have whelped, does it again; forecasts a whole lotta wedding-night shaking and great balls of fire.

Etc.

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At new multi-use space downtown. by Cheree Franco

On the night of Feb. 25, 2012, the old furniture warehouse at Spring and Seventh streets was at its liveliest in decades. The line wound around Dedicated Studios, the gallery that recently moved into the warehouse, as a decadent gang in suspenders, feathers and fake mustaches waited to enter the belly of the beast — a cavernous room pulsing with music, colored lights and the shouted conversations of roughly 300 people. After the DJs and the live bands, there would be a burlesque show, because what's Queer Prom without a little skin? "Queer prom was crazy, but it was awesome," said Jose Hernandez, the 28-year-old artist behind Dedicated. "That's the kind of thing we want to do here."

On a recent Thursday afternoon, that same huge space is nearly deserted. Graffiti and spray-painted characters decorate the column and staircase, a couple of drum sets are nestled in corners, a skater's half-pipe rests against a wall and a handful of folding chairs dot the floor. "This is where we have bands and workshops," Hernandez said. Not that Dedicated has had time to host a lot of events — Hernandez and his business partner, Robert Messenger, 27, leased the space in December. It took them two months to strip, refurbish and haul out the junk left behind from its 55-year history as Balfour Printing Co. But when the venue does have bands, it's never just about music. Sometimes the half-pipe comes out, and those people not painting on walls grab their boards. In addition to live music, workshops (most recently, a food-carving workshop where participants learned, among other parlor tricks, how to carve cantaloupe into flowers) and random events, the room hosts slam poetry every other Wednesday.

In the gallery up front, there's a traveling exhibit, "Puro Borde," showcasing artists from Juarez, El Paso, and other Mexican and American border towns. Hernandez was born in Mexico, but he moved to Jonesboro when he was 10. He met some of the artists featured in "Puro Borde" during an eight-year stint in Savannah, Ga., where he formed a collective with friends after dropping out of Savannah College of Art and Design. "That school was too corporate," Hernandez said, shaking his head. "I just wanted to do my own thing."

Dedicated is what his "own thing" looks like — a gallery with rotating exhibits, focused on installation and urban street art; DIS, the Dedicated Independent Store, which sells artists' crafts on consignment; the big event space (home of Queer Prom), and an upstairs that Hernandez and Messenger plan to divide into studio space for rent. There's also a back room that Hernandez and Messenger use for commercial design projects, such as creating signs, painting logos on vehicles and airbrushing hot-rods — "whatever pays the rent on the place," Hernandez said.

Before Dedicated, Hernandez ran Super Happy Funland (SHFL), another gallery and event space, in the Arkansas Community Arts Cooperative space on Main Street, after the co-op disbanded in July. But only four months later, the owners wanted to sell, and SHFL had to get out. "Robert and I, we were just looking for a small place to work, and we were kind of like, to hell with the events thing. Then we saw this building and a phone number, and ...," Hernandez trailed off, shrugging. "I just want to paint. And I want to see other people paint. I want to see people do what they love, whether it's music, art, writing, whatever ... and teaching about it, so that kids can see that there's alternative ways to getting a job, working all your life for nothing."

That's where the workshops and planned after-school programs and summer camps come in. "We want to get grants and work with the school system and be really official about all that, so that kids won't have to pay," said Hernandez. As the oldest of three in a family for which money was tight, Hernandez wants to offer neighborhood kids the art classes he couldn't afford growing up. Workshops are volunteer-led and open to the public. Thus far, in addition to food carving, Dedicated has held workshops on knitting and painting.

"I also want to work with kids who've gotten in trouble, to have their community service hours be going around and cleaning up walls and painting community murals," he said. "We can talk to the neighbors and the business owners, tell them what we're doing, and ask them what they think the community is and what it needs, then brainstorm those ideas and start drawing. It gets the kids out of the house, gets them out of their shell, talking to people. What's cool about it is, when you're painting in a neighborhood, you get people all the time. They stop by, they talk to you."

He's already in discussions with parole officers to make that a reality. As a street artist, Hernandez has a well-honed relationship with law enforcement. He's six months through a two-year parole for graffiti in Hillcrest. "If you do graffiti downtown, it's just a fine and a misdemeanor, but if you do it in rich neighborhoods, it's a felony," he said. "That's kind of why I did it, because nobody tags Hillcrest. They charged me with seven felonies, but then it got knocked down to one." (According to city prosecutor Larry Jegley, the graffiti becomes a felony once someone tops $1,000 of damage, no matter the neighborhood.)

But as far as Dedicated goes, Hernandez considers his attempts "more social than political. It's community-oriented work. I'm not trying to be political about it." It certainly seems to be laid back this afternoon, with a couple of Hernandez's friends lounging on the gallery counter, everyone half-dazed with the sunlight, streaming full-force through the front wall-of-windows. It seems to be a good kind of place to be.

Check the Dedicated Facebook page for upcoming events, which include bands, burlesque, an art bazaar and a summer art camp.

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Plus Tavis Smiley and more. by Robert Bell and Cheree Franco

WEDNESDAY 4/4

MONICA STAGGS

7:30 p.m. Stanley Russ Hall, room 103, UCA. Free.

Monica Staggs is a real life superhero, except that sometimes her world-saving is a bit dubious (think Tarantino — she's been cast in three of his films, both volumes of "Kill Bill" and "Death Proof"), and sometimes she flings herself from moving 18-wheelers and ends up with four skull fractures ("Joyride"). But usually she flies through the air ("Bewitched"), falls down stairs ("Crash") and jumps rooftop to rooftop ("Four Dogs Playing Poker"), as breezy as can be. This North Little Rock girl turned Hollywood crash dummy (a.k.a. stuntwoman) has doubled for everyone from Nicole Kidman to Uma Thurman, and she's in town to tell all — what's been fun, what's been dumb, why she'll fight in lingerie but never go topless on camera, her unabashed fear of heights and how her whole career goes back to her middle school dance classes. (Did we mention that she's brash, fast-talking and hilarious?) Check out her creds at MonicaStaggs.com, check out her stories at UCA on Wednesday night. CF

THURSDAY 4/5

BLESS THE MIC: TAVIS SMILEY

7 p.m. Philander Smith College. Free.

Tavis Smiley's career as a radio and TV host spans more than two decades now. After starting out in Los Angeles doing local radio spots, Smiley became a regular contributor to the "Tom Joyner Morning Show," discussing issues of race and discrimination against minorities. Some of his past jobs include hosting "BET Tonight" and "The Tavis Smiley Show" on NPR. Today, you can hear him on PRI and watch him on PBS on his self-titled shows with guests who run the gamut of politics, academia, sports and entertainment. Alongside Terry Gross and Charlie Rose, Smiley is one of the most successful and widely known interviewers in public media. This will be the final installment of Philander Smith's Bless the Mic series under President Walter Kimbrough's tenure. RB

THURSDAY 4/5

ROBERT EARL KEEN

9 p.m. Revolution. $25.

I've never seen Robert Earl Keen play a concert, but I saw him at a live taping of NPR's "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me" a few years back and he was the epitome of the laid-back, irreverent entertainer, a perfect counterpoint to host Peter Sagal's adenoidal yuppie smugness.That is to say, it was an odd pairing, but worked out surprisingly well. Keen was quick-witted and hilarious and didn't give Sagal an inch. After introducing Keen as "the singer/songwriter all the other singer/songwriters want to be," Sagal said that "Rolling Stone once called you The Grateful Dead for frat guys. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I like it. I guess it's songs you can sing along to especially when you're drunk." "Right," Keen said, "if you run out of mushrooms you can drink Keystone." That's true, though woe to the unlucky soul who has to hang out with frat guys whose bellies are full of cheap suds and psychedelics. Even the literate, easygoing country anthems of Keen probably couldn't keep that situation from turning tragic. So will this show be full of frat bros tripping their flip-flops off? Maaaaaaybe. A far more likely scenario on a Thursday night in Little Rock: A roomful of Keen diehards, gripping Bud Light longnecks and singing along to every song. The show is 18-and-older. RB

THURSDAY 4/5

ARKANSAS TRAVELERS OPENING GAME

7:10 p.m. Dickey-Stephens Park. $6-$12.

Man, can you believe it's already baseball season again? It seems like only a few days ago that I was watching the Cardinals win the World Series. Maybe it's the fact that we didn't have a winter this year. Or perhaps it's simply that as the cosmos continues its incomprehensibly massive expansion further and further into the realm of the unknowable void, time itself is speeding up, imperceptibly at first, but increasing exponentially. Either way, time flies, huh? Anyways, the Arkansas Travelers make their return to Dickey-Stephens Park this week for a three-game series against the RockHounds of Midland, Texas. In a couple of weeks, the promotional giveaways get rolling, starting with Mike Trout Pinstripe Jersey Replica Shirt Night on April 21. Mike Trout Bobblehead Doll Night is May 19. You can get a planter kit on Go Green Sunday, April 22, or Travs Tube Socks on July 14. Probably the biggest giveaway — Clunker Car Night — is Aug. 17, followed by pre-game Midget Wrestling on Aug. 18. This year's concerts include Band of Heathens on June 15, Honeytribe on July 21 and Walter "Wolfman" Washington on Aug. 4. But even without any promotions or concerts or giveaways or doo-dads you can always count on the cheap fun that is minor league baseball. Affordable admission? Reasonably priced beer and snacks? An uncomplicated, almost guaranteed good time? Sign me up. RB

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FRIDAY 4/6

'BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE RED OCTOPUS'

8 p.m. The Public Theatre. $8-$10.

Looks like the good folks behind Red Octopus Theater have been feasting on trash lately — specifically, lowbrow auteur Russ Meyer's 1970 film "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" (co-written by Roger Ebert). This time around, they're paying their respects to the kitschy, the campy, the trashy, the cheesy and the cornball. Sample skit titles: "All My Children Went to Amsterdam, and All I Got Was This Crappy T Shirt," "Is Jesus a Rabbit?" and "LSD? You're Soaking in It!" As usual, this show is for grownups with fully developed senses of humor, and not for kids, prudes, squares, scolds, prigs or no-fun-damentalists. The cast for this show includes Sandy Baskin, Brian Chambers, Alli Clark, Josh Doering, Drew Ellis, Michael Goodbar, Grant Morris, Jason Willey, and Ramthor, a.k.a. Luke Rowlan. The show runs this weekend and returns April 12-14. RB

FRIDAY 4/6

'NEXT FALL'

7:30 p.m. The Weekend Theater. $12-$16.

Geoffrey Naufft's "Next Fall" concerns a couple — Adam and Luke — who don't see eye-to-eye on matters of spirituality. Luke is a dyed-in-the-wool fire-and-brimstone Christian and Adam is an atheist. Luke is worried his significant other will spend an eternity in the lake of fire, while Adam can't brook such superstition. An accident forces uncomfortable confrontations amongst their friends and families. When the play opened in June 2009, the New York Times' Ben Brantley called it "an intellectual stealth bomb," and "the kind of gently incisive, naturalistic play that rarely materializes anymore." The play's off-Broadway run was extended for several weeks, and opened the next spring on Broadway with the same cast and director. Weekend Theater director Ralph Hyman saw the play on Broadway and loved it. This production stars Jackson Stewart, Harold Dean, Ryan Whitfield, Hannah Blackburn-Parish, Allison Pace and Byron Taylor. It runs through April 21. RB

SATURDAY 4/7

DESIGNERS CHOICE FASHION PREVIEW

6 p.m. Metroplex Event Center. $35-50.

Soaring temps warrant bare skin, and bare skin warrants catwalks. Lucky for Little Rock, this Saturday marks the fifth annual Designers Choice Fashion Preview. It's the largest fashion event in the state, attracting hundreds of Arkansas fashion devotees to check out the merch (clothing and jewelry), the flesh (hot local models) and the talent (do the names Korto Momolu and Jerell Scott jolt your brain? Hello, "Project Runway?"). It's for a good cause — yeah, a good cause other than ensuring your summer wardrobe is up to par. Proceeds benefit the Timmons Arts Foundation, which focuses on restoring art and music programs in public schools. In addition to the show, there's a beauty product expo and if you spring for the pricier tickets, a V.I.P. greet-and-munch fest (rub shoulders with models much?). Tickets are available at www.designerschoicefashion.com, Jeante, Vogue Visage, Box Turtle, 4th Dimension Salon and Uncle T's. CF

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MONDAY 4/9

REAL ESTATE

8 p.m. Revolution. $12.

The name Real Estate might have an appealing, Pavement-like plainness to it, but where Pavement's name belied its sprawling, omnivorous guitar rock, Real Estate's sound is mostly neat-as-hedgerows jangle pop that never raises too much of a ruckus. The Jersey band was last in town in 2009, supporting its self-titled debut. That album was an odds-'n'-sods collection of singles that felt remarkably cohesive, sorta like The Clientele's "Suburban Light," which had a similar reverb-soaked sound. Their latest, last year's "Days" sounded like a natural progression, with more of the clean-sounding guitars and lilting melodies and faintly melancholic vibe. If you've been digging on the similarly forlorn pop of Girls or Smith Westerns and somehow haven't checked out Real Estate, here you go. Opening the show are the Flying Nun adherents The Twerps, all the way from Melbourne, VIC. RB

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Patricia Guardado disappeared in broad daylight and was found dead four days later in a flooded quarry near Sweet Home. After six months, her killer still walks free. by David Koon and Rafael Nunez

Once upon a time in America, there was a young woman named Paty who seemed to be doing everything right.

She was devoted — to her family, to her church, to her job, to doing well in college so she could eventually get her own piece of the dream her parents had left a country to find. She didn't hang out with a bad crowd. Though any young man would have loved to have the pretty, smart, dark-haired young woman on his arm, she'd only had one real boyfriend in her life, and had kindly turned down all other suitors since they broke up, deciding instead to put her energies toward her studies. She was the good one, her friends and family say, the best of them, the most caring, the one who was always willing to help.   

So it was even more of a mystery, then, when 20-year-old Patricia Garcia Guardado disappeared on her way to class one sunny morning last October, after leaving her burgundy Scion parked and locked in a lot behind a Burger King across from UALR. Four days later, fishermen found her body floating in a water-filled rock quarry near Sweet Home.

Though Patricia Guardado was Hispanic, this is not a Hispanic story. It's not a story about an outsider. It's not a story about The Other. This is a story about a young woman who anyone would have been proud to call their daughter; a born-and-raised Arkansan who seemed to be doing everything right and yet still met an end none of us would wish on an enemy. Left behind: friends, family, and a grieving mother and father who still ask themselves why. The whys eat at them, along with the knowledge that out there, somewhere, is a witness with information that will finally bring Patricia's killer to justice.

***

The room where we met Leonor Garcia — a small, dusty space in the midst of being converted into a restaurant, one door down from El Paisano, the store she and her husband own in Levy — happens to be the same place where she learned from detectives and her priest that her daughter was dead. That room in shambles, cluttered with sawed-off lengths of two-by-fours, drop cloths, carpenter's tools and assorted screws and nails, could serve as a fitting metaphor for the way her life has been since then.

"She was the apple of my eye," Garcia said through an interpreter. "She had a lot of dreams and a lot of hopes — a lot of dreams that she wanted to fulfill upon her graduation, which was coming up in 2013." 

Patricia was always a smart child, her mother said, always dedicated to her school work. She'd graduated with good grades from Joe T. Robinson High School in Little Rock, then had gone on to UALR, where she was a student in the International Business program. In addition to her classes, Patricia worked as a teller at the Metropolitan Bank branch on McCain Boulevard in North Little Rock. About a month before she disappeared, Garcia said, Patricia's manager had told her that after she graduated with her degree, she could have a full-time career with the bank.

"For her, this was like a dream come true," Garcia said. "She told me, 'You know, mom, when a lot of people graduate, they struggle to find a job. With me, that's not going to happen. I already have a job, and I have a promise from my manager that when I graduate, I'll have a career here if I want it.' "

Patricia's friends and family also remember her as a kind and loving young woman with a sense of responsibility beyond her years.

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"She was one of those young ladies who you were glad was a friend of your child," said Maria Garcia, the mother of one of Patricia's close friends (and no relation to Leonor Garcia). "She was always very respectful, a kind person. ... Whenever her mom or her siblings needed anything, she was always there. She was always thinking about them, always concerned about them."

Karen Alejandri was close to Patricia from the time they were both girls. Though they saw less of each other once Alejandri went off to UCA and Patricia stayed in Little Rock to attend UALR, they remained friends. She said that Patricia's relationship with her mother was very close and she couldn't believe that Paty had hidden anything from her mother. "Her mom was really open with her," Alejandri said. "Her mom would give her enough liberty to trust her to go out. It wasn't like she would sneak out. Her mom and her, by what I saw — my perception — they had a really good relationship."

Several others we spoke to also said they couldn't see Patricia keeping anything from her mother — especially a hidden romantic entanglement or anything dangerous. Family friend Angelina Lublin, who had trusted Guardado enough that Paty had a key to her house and sometimes met her daughters at the school bus when Lublin couldn't, said through an interpreter that "they were so close that even to buy a schoolbook, Patricia would ask her mom's opinion. ... They were like close friends at times. When they went shopping, it was like a friend-to-friend thing, not mother/daughter."

Leonor Garcia said that Patricia had had only one steady boyfriend, but "he was going around with other girls," so Paty and the boy had broken up over a year before she died. Sometimes, when Patricia would see him around town, she would become depressed.

"I would try to pick up her spirits by saying she should get another boyfriend," Garcia said. "She used to tell me, 'No, mom. Right now I want to focus on my studies. There will be time for that later, but right now I just want to study — romance and all that can wait.' "

The morning Patricia Guardado disappeared —Oct. 12, 2011 — was just like any other Wednesday. Garcia borrowed her daughter's car and drove from their home near Alexander to downtown Little Rock to take Patricia's younger sisters to school at St. Edward Catholic Church near MacArthur Park. When she got back home around 8:30 a.m., Paty was already out of bed and dressed. Garcia offered to make her lunch, but Patricia said she was already late leaving for her 9 o'clock class. Scheduled to work at the bank that day after school, Patricia was wearing her dress clothes. As she was on the way out the door, Garcia stopped her to admire the woman her daughter had become.

"I remember I told her she looked very beautiful," Garcia said. "She was all fixed up, and had put on some makeup. She looked like the picture of a young woman going out into the world. The only thing I remember telling her was: 'What a pretty daughter I have.' She sort of looked embarrassed, and said 'Oh, mom.' She smiled at me, and that was it." 

Patricia's normal routine was to call her mother after she got off work, sometime between 4 and 6 p.m. That day, however, she didn't call. Sometimes, Patricia would stop by El Paisano to see her relatives before coming home, so Garcia called there, but they hadn't seen her. She called a cousin who attended some of the same classes as Paty at UALR, and learned that Paty hadn't attended her first class at 9 a.m.

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Panic began to set in. Patricia's brother called local police departments to see if she'd been in an accident, but got no information. Garcia called Paty's cell phone, but it kept going through to voice mail.

"By 7," she said, "I knew, and even said out loud, that something had happened to my daughter."

In desperation, Leonor put her younger daughters in the car and went out looking, driving aimlessly through the gathering dark. They drove to UALR and circled through the parking lots near the campus where she knew Paty sometimes parked. As Garcia cruised the lot near the Mexican Consulate across from the school, her daughters spotted something.

"My two younger daughters started crying because they saw her car," Garcia said. "They told me, 'There's Paty's car!' ... I couldn't tell because I had tears filling my eyes. I couldn't see. I came in through the entrance to the Consulate. They kept saying, 'It is her car! It is her car!' I parked behind it, but there was nobody in there."

The doors to the car, which was parked squarely and neatly in the slot, were locked. Garcia called the police. Eventually, it was determined that the only things missing from the car were Paty's purse, cell phone, backpack and a pair of prescription eyeglasses. From that moment, the search for Paty began. In many ways, it's never stopped for Leonor Garcia.

Garcia said that she was at the lot until midnight. Officers tried tracking Patricia's cell phone that night, but to Garcia's knowledge, they never were able to get a fix on it (Garcia said the phone, along with Paty's purse, keys and backpack, have never been found). She didn't sleep that night, or the next. The next morning, family, friends and fellow parishioners from St. Edward met in the lot behind the Burger King and fanned out. Garcia said she searched where her instincts told her to look: in parks, alleyways, dark streets, anyplace where her daughter might have been dumped out of a car. 

Carissa Noriega was one of those who helped with the search. A UALR student who didn't even know Patricia, Noriega said she learned about Guardado's disappearance from a TV news report. The next morning, she was taking her boyfriend to the gym on campus when she drove by the lot where Guardado went missing and saw the searchers gathering. "It was disappointing. It was basically the family and some church members from St. Edward's. That was it. The school wasn't there. Students didn't come who didn't know her. I was the only student there who didn't know her, who just wanted to help."

Noriega went on to organize a search for Guardado through social media, and reached out to news stations to encourage them to keep covering the case. "Doing that, it really touched my heart," she said. "I didn't feel like a lot of people were helping. It was hard for us to get any coverage. There were some channels that showed up, but it just felt like when the family was trying to get help in the community, people were slow to react."

Similarly, Noriega said the Little Rock Police Department didn't seem to take the case seriously enough in what she calls the "crucial" early hours and days after Guardado's disappearance, when Leonor Garcia was telling them it was totally unlike her daughter to go missing like that. "Maybe they were doing things behind the scenes," Noriega said, "and there's a reason why we felt like they weren't showing up to these events and they weren't calling us back, and they weren't rushing to help, but certainly before they discovered and identified her body, they were not doing everything that they could." 

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Also involved in the search early on was Father Jason Tyler, the parish priest at St. Edward. Tyler said he heard that Paty had gone missing on Thursday. By Friday, searchers had printed up fliers and were handing them out. The family asked if they could hold a prayer vigil at the church on Friday night at 6 p.m. "I thought maybe we'd have 20 or 30 people," Tyler said, "but I bet we had 150 to 200. This was very impromptu, word-of-mouth, with very little notice this was going to happen, but we had that big of a crowd here." Tyler said he was impressed with how the whole congregation of St. Edward stepped up to help. With masses presented in both Spanish and English at the church for 20 years now, Tyler said it can feel like two congregations sharing one building at times, with the two rarely crossing. The story of a missing daughter — a girl who had volunteered at the church's Fall Festival just a week before her disappearance — clearly touched parishioners' hearts, both white and Latino. "By Saturday and Sunday," Tyler said, "[the white parishioners] were right there side by side with the Hispanic people, handing out leaflets and missing-person fliers." 

Garcia was up again on Sunday morning, ready to search, when she got a call from police detectives telling her they needed to meet. "When we got there," Leonor said, "the detective showed up, and he told us that he wanted to tell us before we heard it on the news: They had found a body in a place called Sweet Home."

It says a lot about Garcia's mind at that moment — about her fierce hope — that even after a detective went to her house to collect Paty's hairbrush and toothbrush to make a DNA match, Garcia went out and searched for her anyway. "In my conscious mind, I refused to accept it and believe it," Garcia said. "That Sunday, after he came to my home and took those items, we still went out and looked for her. I didn't want to accept that she was gone. It wasn't until two in the morning on Monday that we stopped searching for her."

The next morning, Leonor and the searchers had gathered again in the parking lot behind the Burger King when she received a call from detectives, asking her to meet them at El Paisano at noon. Around the same time, Father Tyler received a call from LRPD Detective J.C. White, asking if he could meet them nearby. Together, Tyler and the detectives settled on the parking lot of the Kroger store on Camp Robinson Road, just down from El Paisano. When he arrived, Tyler learned what he'd already feared: That the body found in the lake at Sweet Home was Patricia Guardado. Detective White asked Tyler if the priest wanted to be the one to tell the family, or if he should do it.

"I asked him, 'Well, do you speak Spanish?' " Tyler said. "He said he did not. I said, 'It's probably better for me to break the news, because while some of the people there will speak English and some won't, I think it would be better for whoever is in the room to get the news all at once without translation.' "

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In separate cars, Tyler and the detectives drove to El Paisano. A crowd of friends and supporters was waiting outside, and as Tyler walked through them, someone cried out "Tell me it's not really true!" in Spanish. "I didn't know what to do or say," Tyler said. "I think I shook her hand or hugged her or something, and just kept walking."

Inside, Garcia was waiting. After asking all but immediate relatives to step out of the room, Tyler told Patricia's family that she was dead. It was, he said, the hardest thing he's ever done in his six years as a priest.

"I was totally unprepared for the outpouring of grief that came at that moment," Tyler said. "I've been in the hospital with people who have died. I've been with friends and family members of those who have died in accidents or unexpectedly. Each of those has its own pain and its own difficulty, but none of them really had as much of a feeling of tangible grief as that moment."          

At the words, Tyler remembers, Leonor Garcia yelled "No!" Then the whole family surged forward and surrounded him, bear-hugged him and each other, embracing him so tight, he said, that he wondered if his arms would come off. And there they stood in that room: priest, detectives, Paty's family, the moment surely seeming to hang forever, the people who had loved her gripped in a vise of loss and sorrow.

the place where they found the body of Patricia Garcia Guardado was often called a pond in news reports, but it's really a lake — an old granite quarry filled with rain, so deep that the water there is the dark blue of dusk. Even though it's only a few hundred yards off state Hwy. 365, it feels like wilderness, a windy place surrounded as it is by spotted shadow, sawbriar and pine. On a bluff above the water stands a simple wooden cross that bears the name "Paty."

Even all these months later, the cross is still bright white. Among the trinkets left at the shrine is a fading paper bookmark that says "Sonrie, Dios te Ama" — "Smile, God Loves You." Patricia's mother put the cross there. Last December, Father Tyler came to bless it. Garcia said she is sure her daughter, who had only recently started driving and was still nervous about going anywhere in town other than to UALR and the bank, had never been there in her life.

Since Patricia died, Leonor Garcia said she has never quit searching for who killed her daughter. Detectives still haven't told her how Paty died, or where they suspect she was for the days she was missing. Garcia was never allowed to see the body. At the vigil and funeral for Patricia held at St. Edward — both of which were so well-attended that people filled the church until the crowd flowed out the door, down the front steps and into Sherman Street — the casket had to remain closed. Father Tyler told her that was a blessing. The last image she has of Patricia is of her standing in the doorway, a woman going out to meet the world.

Garcia meets with Detective White regularly. When they met last week, she said, he told her there had been no new developments. He has told her he can't reveal the details of how her daughter died yet, saying that it might compromise the case. "When he says that to me," Garcia said, "it makes me understand how this might hinder the investigation. I agree with it, and I say, 'OK, if that's what it takes to keep the investigation going, I will wait.' "

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Police spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings said that withholding information on cause of death, even from the family, is common in an unsolved homicide case. He said even he doesn't know how Patricia Guardado was killed. "Many times when you question suspects, and they talk about how a person was killed, the method they used and where the person was injured becomes important to make sure we have a true suspect. That's why we protect those details tightly."

Hastings said that since Guardado's body was found, the department has received hundreds of tips. "Detectives have run all those tips down and talked to everybody you can imagine about it, trying to get a better handle on it. They're still doing it. This is not a closed case by any stretch of the imagination. We're still actively investigating it."

Police have run into several factors that are making the case more difficult to solve, Hastings said. The most obvious is that they just don't know where Patricia Guardado went after she left her home for school. Though the lot where her car was found is surrounded by businesses and near the Mexican Consulate, it apparently wasn't covered by any surveillance cameras. Since her death, yellow signs have been put up warning drivers to park there at their own risk, and that the lot isn't monitored.

"We found her car, which tells us she ended up at school," Hastings said, "but did she get in the car willingly with somebody? Did somebody take her? That makes it difficult. We've found no one around there who saw anything."

Another factor, Hastings said, is the language and cultural barrier. "Hispanics historically don't trust police because of the relationships they've had with police in the countries where they came from," he said. Currently, there are nine homicide detectives, on the force. Hastings said none of them speak Spanish, so they have been relying on a Hispanic officer temporarily assigned to the Guardado case for translation. Department-wide, Hastings said, there are around 10 officers who are fluent in Spanish.

Police are investigating to see if an attack on a woman at Little Rock's Rave Motion Pictures movie theater on Nov. 20, 2011, is linked to the Guardado murder. That night — a little over a month and less than two miles from where Patricia Guardado's car was found — a woman was leaving the theater just before 8 p.m. when two Latino men, one of whom police say was Crescencio Duran, (a.k.a. Salbador Carillo) of Little Rock, tried to stun her with an electric stun gun and, according to the original incident report, "attempted to grab her." After she managed to break free and crawl under a car, an accomplice — also armed with an electric stun gun — jumped out of a nearby car and also came after her, but the woman's screams alerted passersby who came to her aid, and the two assailants sped away. Carillo, who was in the Pulaski County Jail charged with firing a gun from a car in January, was charged in February with robbery in the Rave case. An internal police flier circulated prior to his arrest said he was "wanted for questioning in regards to the homicide of Patricia Guardado." At this writing, Salbador Carillo is still on the Pulaski County Detention Center roster as an inmate.    

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For now, all Patricia Guardado's parents, family and friends can do is wait. A parishioner at St. Edward who works with Lamar Advertising arranged for a number of large billboards about the case to be put up around Little Rock and North Little Rock, and every store in Southwest Little Rock seems to have a flier in the window seeking information. Patricia's friends want to believe. God is big, one of Patricia's friends told us, and there is no such thing as a perfect crime.

"We want to see the killer brought to justice," Father Tyler said, "but we also want to see a grieving family be a little more at peace. ... We'd love for the greater Little Rock community to see Paty Guardado as one of their own, and to see that this is not just a Hispanic situation, or a Latino or Mexican thing." 

The Arkansas Times talked to Patricia Guardado's father, Martin Guardado, at length, but he decided that he didn't want to be quoted for the story. A bricklaying contractor who worked his way up from nothing, he and Garcia have been separated for two years and are in the process of divorce. The anger and frustration comes off him in waves at times when he talks about how other stories about the case have focused too much on the family's personal life, particularly the reports that gave the names and ages of his surviving daughters. He said several times that he doesn't want people to feel sorry for him. He believes Detective White will eventually find the killer, and that writing about it will make witnesses more reluctant to reveal what they know.

Garcia, on the other hand, talks to anyone who will listen. Since the murder, she said, she has never once turned down an interview request. She has stacks of fliers about the case, each offering up a $10,000 reward along with the numbers for the Little Rock Police Department and the Mexican Consulate. When she sees a flier that is ripped, she takes it down and puts up a new one. She talks to everyone she can think of. She will never stop, she said.

"Whoever it is, I just want them to pay," Garcia said. "They have to pay, because what they did to her is not something you do to a human being." She said she doesn't know why there haven't been any results in the case so far, but believes in her heart that the killer will be found. "Every time I talk to [the detectives], I tell them, 'Please don't forget about our case just because we're Hispanics. Please keep remembering this case. Please don't abandon it.' " The detectives tell her that one day, they'll call and say they have her daughter's killer. "I want to believe that," she said.

Garcia drives Patricia's car now, the sporty burgundy coupe that Patricia loved. She'll never sell it, she said, because the car somehow keeps them connected. During our conversation at El Paisano, she said that she can sense her daughter's presence every time she drives that car.

Every Wednesday morning, Garcia drives Patricia's Scion to the lot behind the Burger King across from UALR, parks, then sits there for at least an hour in the place where her daughter disappeared. From behind the wheel, she watches the students come and go with their bags and backpacks, so full of hope and promise.

"I sit in the car and try to imagine," she said. "I try to retrace her steps. I still ask myself: how in the hell could my daughter disappear at 8:45 in the morning and nobody saw anything? I can't believe it. I don't believe that's possible."

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If you have any information regarding the kidnapping or murder of Patricia Garcia Guardado, contact the Little Rock Police Department at 501-580-8706, or the Mexican Consulate at 501-372-6933, ext. 223. All tips will remain confidential. Those wishing to contribute to the reward fund can do so at any Metropolitan Bank branch.

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“California is a bankrupt, insolvent, dysfunctional mess, just like so many actors and actresses is Hollywood: broke with no future,” says Wayne Allyn Root in a commentary for Personal Liberty Digest®. The State’s tax rates for the rich are exorbitant, and millionaires are fleeing the State. Root suggests millionaire Kim Kardashian leave California for Nevada, since the Silver State won’t take her money.

Thanks to a tweet by Spike Lee, an elderly Florida couple is now residing in a hotel. Lee tweeted the couple’s address as that of the home of George Zimmerman, the man who pulled the trigger in the Trayvon Martin case, to his 250,000 followers.

A battle over the Bank of the United States between President Andrew Jackson and Congress turned into a Constitutional issue when Congress sought to censure Jackson for not turning over classified documents he used in his decision to veto Congress’ vote to renew the bank’s charter.

The Senate, led by Jackson’s nemesis Henry Clay, passed a resolution demanding to see Jackson’s papers. When Jackson refused, Clay introduced a resolution to censure Jackson.

New York City residents who challenged a policy that requires handgun owners in the city to pay a $340 residential licensing fee as unConstitutional were shot down by a Federal judge on Monday.

The political establishment has done everything in its power to negate Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul, but he is still the first of the GOP candidates to have his name on the ballot in all 50 States.

Check out what's happening in the NewQuestCity Forums for Arkansas .

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04/18/2012

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04/18/2012

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04/18/2012

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04/18/2012

It was a good week for the University of Arkansas
04/18/2012

Jessica Dorrell resigns from Razorback Athletic Department
04/18/2012

• ILL-FATED COUPLE: Petrino and Dorrell at Razorback event in recent months.

Had to happen.

Jessica Dorrell, the Bobby Petrino girllfriend whose undisclosed relationship cost him his $3.6 million-a-year job as University of Arkansas Razorback football coach, has resigned from her job as student-athlete development coordinator for the football team, less than a month after she took the $55,700-a-year job.

Dorrell, 25, was riding a motorcycle with Petrino when he crashed April 1. He kept her presence a secret from athletic officials to obscure what he said was a previous relationship. Her involvement came out in a police report April 5 and Athletic Director Jeff Long fired him April 10 for dishonesty and failing to disclose the conflict in hiring Dorrell from 159 applicants. She had been placed on leave. She was hired in March after working in fund-raising for the Razorback Foundation. A Texas native, she played volleyball for the Razorbacks and earned an MBA at UA. Before the controversy erupted, the Razorback Foundation had announced she was to be married to Josh Morgan, who works with the Hog swimming and diving team. The status of that is unknown to me.

No wrongdoing was alleged. It was agreed it was best for her to move on. She gets $13,933.75, which will be paid by the Razorback Foundation. The university gets her promise not to sell her story or do anything commercially that would harm the reputation of the UA and she releases the UA from liability.

She also gets a terse recommendation letter from Jeff Long, which you can see on the link below. It says she was hired March 23 and resigned "in good standing" April 17.

Here's the formal agreement.

The news release issued today:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. ? The University of Arkansas announced today that Jessica Dorrell resigned late this afternoon as the football program?s student-athlete development coordinator, effective immediately.
In making the announcement, athletics director Jeff Long said both he and Ms. Dorrell agreed her resignation was in the best interest of both parties.

?While Ms. Dorrell had a legitimate right to apply for and accept a position within the football program, the circumstances surrounding the former coach?s decision to hire her compromised her ability to be effective in such a position,? he said. ?She and I believe she should have the opportunity to move on.?

As part of her resignation, Ms. Dorrell agreed she would not attempt to sell or profit from her affiliation with Razorback Athletics. The University will pay Ms. Dorrell approximately $14,000 as part of a settlement and resolution of all matters between the parties.

There are no immediate plans to re-open or advertise the job opportunity. Those duties will be assigned to other staff members for the time being.

I learned by the way that, on account of internal procedures, Dorrell had not yet filled out an annual conflict of interest form required of university employees. They are required on an annual basis, not at hiring. So there is no document responsive to my request for it, a spokesman said. The agreement says Dorrell agrees to release of other materials "giving rise" to this agreement, within FOI limits. I've asked for them, but don't know at this point if any exist. Normally, personnel records are not open to review except in cases of firing or suspension. Here, the agreement provides some indication of openness, but the university might also claim there are no public records, under definition of the FOI, to release.

Reader notes that the settlement is three months' pay, a modest severance, and Dorrell's takes little else away except a gag order and a hard time seeking new work. She could have, in today's tabloid world, made a lot more than $14,000 somewhere, rest assured. Might I say that she leaves with some dignity, whatever else went before?

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Tuesday line
04/18/2012

It's open for your comments. Final words:

• LEVON HELM

* LEVON HELM: 'FINAL STAGES': Hundreds of people around the country have tuned in to Rock Candy's note that Arkansas native musician Levon Helm is in the "final stages" of cancer, according to a note on his website from his family.

* SITUATIONAL ETHICS: When Secretary of State Mark Martin took office he issued a statement that said he would endeavor to see that his office's employees not take part in partisan politics. It was one of his first broken promises and hypocritical, too, given his criticism of Democratic opponent Pat O'Brien for campaigning for Barack Obama. The latest example is press spokesman Alex Reed's $100 contribution to Sen. Fireball Holland, who has a Republican challenger, Rick Green, in the primary. Not to worry, Reed says. Martin amended his original no-exceptions policy to bar politicking only by those employees who work directly in the elections division. Flacks such as Reed and Mark Myers are free to politic incessantly. And do. Including on election matters. But what they say must be irrelevant, else Martin wouldn't allow it, right? So ignore them.

* VIDEO SPECIAL ? HOT DOGGING: Drunk man tries to rob Fort Smith convenience store with a pair of tongs seized from food counter where hot dogs dispensed. Fails.

* THE SECRET LIFE OF ANIMALS: The Missouri legislature is moving to make it a crime to make undercover videos at farms. The lawmakers want to prevent more of the videos that expose bad conditions in agricultural production facilities. What a great idea. Let's extend that to all private businesses, cops and others whose bad acts have been exposed and discouraged by the unblinking lens.

* THEY DON'T CALL THEM WINGNUTS FOR NOTHING: The Family Council's Tony Perkins thinks the Secret Service whore hopping scandal can be blamed on gays in the military. I kid you not.

And speaking of wingnuts: Ted Nugent. Batshit crazy. He likened president and Democrats to nuisance coyotes, which should be shot.

* ANOTHER CANCER CASE: Warren Buffett receiving treatment for Stage 1 prostate cancer.

* PETRINO GOLF TOURNAMENT CANCELED: Children's Hospital has canceled the Bobby Petrino benefit golf tournament that had been scheduled for June 18. The Hospital Foundation said it had "no choice" after consulting with the Petrino family but thanked them for past support.

* BEGGING FOR PUBLIC RADIO: Early warning. Rosi Smith of Children's Hospital and I will do our customary Friday morning shift begging for money for public radio in Little Rock beginning about 6:30 a.m. The Blog match applies ? $10 for everyone who calls or sends to the web a pledge for KUAR/KLRE. I'll double that for Republicans. Call 569-8485 or 1-88-952-2528 that morning. Or send it to kuar.org. But you have to mention the Blog to get the match and it's best you do it Friday morning. I'll post a reminder as usual.

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Tim Griffin sticks with Republican budget
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WR, the progressive
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The ghost of Ernie Passailaigue
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