A light freebie schedule for legislators today, but a good one.

The Arkansas Bar Association will be pouring from 4:15 p.m. to 6 p.m. today at the Riverview Room of the Marriott Hotel. Free drinks and eats despite a constitutional amendment prohibiting same thanks to a legislatively-engineered loophole for events to which all legislators (but not the public) are invited. The Constitution kind of requires open meetings of the legislature. But rules and constitutions (state and U.S.) are for chumps to obey.

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Oh, and please, shed some crocodile tears for your part-time legislators, who knock down roughly $60,000 a year, plus pension benefits and solid-gold, low-cost health insurance and the likelihood of future lobbying and state agency gigs when they’re through with careers comforting the rich with enormous tax cuts. Some of them worked until almost 5 p.m. yesterday.

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