Sept. 1-7, 2010

It was a good week for …

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SEN. BLANCHE LINCOLN. An underdog against Republican challenger John Boozman, she’s decided to take the only available path, getting tough on Boozman’s scary record. It includes sponsorship of a 30 percent national sales tax to replace the income tax, a measure that would cripple poor people and engorge the wealthy.

ATTORNEY GENERAL DUSTIN MCDANIEL. He claimed a victory over sex-for-sale. Craigslist responded to complaints from McDaniel and other attorneys general by closing its adult services listings.

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It was a bad week for …

The UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS. News that a federal grand jury is looking into financial transactions at the school during the presidency of Lu Hardin guarantees those old stories won’t disappear any time soon.

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STATE REP. BILL ABERNATHY. While still sitting in the legislature, the Mena lawmaker struck a deal to become a lobbyist for two-year colleges when term limits end his legislative career in January. This is more than an appearance of conflict of interest.

CIRCUIT JUDGE MARY ANN GUNN of Fayetteville. She’d envisioned taking her drug court, already televised locally, to a national audience. A judicial ethics advisory committee said that was a terrible idea and, furthermore, said she should reconsider making a show even locally of drug defendants seeking rehabilitation and clean records. How can they do that with indelible video proof of past transgressions?

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SHILOH CHRISTIAN. Karma is a bitch. The private school, whose powerful football team has angered foes in Arkansas by running up the score, got a taste of its own medicine in a nationally televised Labor Day game in Cowboy Stadium in Dallas against Euless Trinity, a much larger high school. Final score: Euless 80, Shiloh 26. And it wasn’t even that close.

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Jefferson Thomas, a member of the Little Rock Nine, died in Columbus, Ohio, of pancreatic cancer. He was 67, a retired Defense Department accountant and a combat veteran of Vietnam. It was only 53 years ago that it took federal troops to get him through the doors of Central High School.

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