Free Republic

After a long day crisscrossing Arkansas in a motorhome, Tom Cotton receives a rock star’s welcome when he walks into the Craighead County Republican Headquarters in northeast Arkansas. He is there to thank volunteers who have been doggedly working the phones to get voters out to the polls. "I've largely played the part I can play," he tells the crowd. "Now, it's up to you." The work Cotton has done since he declared he would challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor has him going into Election Day with a head of steam. The latest Real Clear Politics average has him...

Pfc. Due W. Turner is no longer the unknown soldier of Columbia County, Arkansas. At last his name has been added to the monument dedicated to the country's veterans on the courthouse square in Magnolia, Arkansas. That empty space on the list of Columbia County's veterans of World War II had stood waiting to be filled all these years, like a silent sentinel. The committee in charge of the monument, once it learned that one of the county's own had been overlooked all these years, did its duty -- just as Private Turner had done his. At long last, it...

Consider this an object lesson and fair warning for all those other states that are trying to what they can to improve education or even cut through the bureaucracy that seems to cover it everywhere -- like kudzu. Here in Arkansas, our never-give-up reformers came up with a simple way to let parents, teachers, schools boards, taxpayers and anybody else who's interested -- and we all should be -- know how good a job their neighborhood school is doing. That's right -- the school where little Johnny or Judy goes. Just give each school a grade, the kind you might...

It was just another routine photo-op at a Republican field office Tuesday morning until Mike Huckabee decided to improvise. In a cheeky attempt to bring himself level with Cody Hoefert -- the 7-foot-tall co-chairman of the Iowa Republican Party -- Huckabee pulled up a chair and began to climb atop it. He didn’t have to complete the physical joke to get the laughs he was looking for from the group of gray-haired volunteers who had assembled for his appearance with Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst. “Golly!” the 5-11 Huckabee marveled. “I’ve never felt like a shrimp like this before.”

Republican Cong. Tom Cotton has stretched his lead against Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor, according to a new poll released by Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College. Q. In the race for U.S. Senate, the candidates are Democrat Senator Mark Pryor, Republican Congressman Tom Cotton, Libertarian Nathan LaFrance, and Green Party Candidate Mark Swaney. If the election for U.S. Senate were today, which candidate would you support? 40.5% Democrat Senator Mark Pryor 49% Republican Congressman Tom Cotton 2.5% Libertarian Nathan LaFrance 2% Green candidate Mark Swaney 6% Undecided - See more at: http://talkbusiness.net/2014/10/tbp-hendrix-poll-cotton-up-8-points-on-pryor-in-senate-race/#sthash.IGL0U99f.dpuf

Many politicians prove themselves nothing better than powerful arguments for term limits. But Arkansas State Senator Jon Woods rivals the very best of them. Sen. Woods (R-Springdale) and State Rep. Warwick Sabin (D-Little Rock) co-authored a 22-page, 7,000-plus-word constitutional amendment that voters will find on this November’s state ballot. If passed, the amendment, simply known to voters as Issue 3, will constitute roughly one-eighth of the entire Arkansas Constitution — even including all 85 previous amendments to that document. Issue 3 is so long, in fact, that it cost Arkansas taxpayers more than $1 million to print it in newspapers...

Republican Congressman Tom Cotton still holds a slight lead over incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor in Arkansas’ U.S. Senate race. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Arkansas Voters shows Cotton with 47% of the vote to Pryor’s 44%. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) remain undecided.

A passenger train collided with a freight train Thursday in northwest Arkansas injuring 35, five critically, 5NewsOnline.com reported. The incident occurred at about 10:30 a.m. and involved four passenger cars carrying 44 people. Emergency responders were at the scene in Washington County and transported 31 to local hospitals, the report said.

Ozark Regional Health in Arkansas is under lockdown because it has a patient that may have the Ebola virus. The lockdown went into effect on Thursday afternoon. The hospital in Clinton is checking one patient for the virus due to the patient’s travel history.

Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe released his latest startling video this week, offering evidence that Arkansas Democrat U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor has been lying to his constituents about his position on marriage. Ahead of next month’s election, the lawmaker has reiterated his ostensible support of traditional marriage as he battles a tough conservative Republican opponent. According to the footage published by O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, however, Pryor’s true feelings on the matter are much different. Speaking to the chairperson of a pro-gay Arkansas Young Democrats organization, an undercover investigator posing as a homosexual potential campaign donor expressed his “misgivings” about Pryor regarding his stated...

A bombshell hidden-camera video released Wednesday airs a claim that Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor has privately told gay rights activists he supports a redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbians unions. Pryor, who is in a tight reelection battle, has publicly maintained an anti-gay-marriage stance in the red state in order to stay electable

A bombshell hidden-camera video released Wednesday airs a claim that Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor has privately told gay rights activists he supports a redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbians unions. Pryor, who is in a tight reelection battle, has publicly maintained an anti-gay-marriage stance in the red state in order to stay electable. 'I support traditional marriage, and I've been pretty clear on that for a long time,' Sen. Mark Pryor said in a May 31 news broadcast on KHBS-TV40 in the city of Fort Smith. But one of the state's prominent gay rights leaders told an undercover...

Today, at the University of Central Arkansas, four candidates sought to convince the voters of the Natural State why they deserve to be elected to the United States Senate. The debate lasted some 90 minutes. The following is my analysis of how the top two contenders fared. Mark Pryor: ItÂ’s no secret that the senator's political ship is starting to sail. As a result, he needs to turn in two solid debate performances this week to give himself some momentum heading into November. And in fairness, he did certain things well today. What was striking to me, for example, was...

Fortunately for the GOP, there are six races that lean toward Republicans: Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky and Louisiana. We’ll refer to these states as the “Maroon 6” (because maroon is somewhere between red and purple). In each Maroon 6 state, the Republican candidate has a 65 percent to 75 percent chance of winning, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast.

Latinos' furor with red-state Senate Dems escalated this week when the grassroots advocacy group Presente Action began running radio ads against Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), targeting her push against executive action on immigration. The Spanish-language ads will air for a week on two stations and tells listeners: "Senator Hagan voted with the most anti-immigrant senators in Congress in support of the continued deportations of our community." Hagan, locked in one of the most competitive Senate races this cycle, has for months publicly resisted Obama moving unilaterally on immigration and that has earned her the wrath of groups like Presente -...

"This is not a coffee and donut shop," Jan Morgan, owner of the Gun Cave Indoor Shooting Range in Hot Springs, Ark., wrote in an online post last month. "This is a live fire indoor shooting range ... Why would I want to rent or sell a gun and hand ammunition to someone who aligns himself with a religion that commands him to kill me?" Morgan, who says she has "read and studied" the Koran thoroughly, found "109 verses commanding hate, murder and terror against all human beings who refuse to submit or convert to Islam." ... Morgan claims that...

Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee warns he'll leave the Republican Party if it stops opposing same-sex marriage and abortion. "I'm gone. I'll become independent. I'll start finding people that have guts to stand. I'm tired of this," he told the American Family Association's radio show. His comments follow the recent Supreme Court decision not to take up gay marriage. "I am utterly exasperated with Republicans and the so-called leadership of the Republicans who have abdicated on this issue when, if they continue this direction they guarantee they're gonna lose every election in the future," Huckabee said. "Guarantee it." ...

As I was having my morning coffee and chicory, I couldn’t help but smile reading Jonathan Martin’s piece on former President Clinton’s recent appearance in Arkansas on behalf of incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor, who is facing a tough race for reelection. As one ages, it can sometimes have the effect where you become less certain about things than you might have been as a younger person. There is one thing I am certain of, however: Bill Clinton yesterday was probably the happiest man in the United States. Start with the fact that he is now a grandfather, and combine it...

The first federal prosecutor to probe the financial dealings of Bill and Hillary Clinton says he was poised to bring high-profile indictments against top Arkansas political and business figures — based in part on testimony from a chief witness against the then president — when he was abruptly replaced by a panel of federal judges, throwing his investigation into turmoil. "I was angry, frustrated and above all disappointed that I was not going to be able to carry through and finish bringing the indictments," writes Robert Fiske, a former U.S. attorney who served as the original independent counsel in charge...

Former President Bill Clinton returned to his old haunts of northwestern Arkansas on Tuesday and implored college students to support Democrats at risk of losing what's left of the political power they have held since Reconstruction. Next to the building where he once taught law, Clinton challenged students at the University of Arkansas to turn out for an election without a big national race. "The polls that show us in trouble uniformly believe that younger voters who voted for president will not show up in a midterm," Clinton said.