IT WAS A GOOD WEEK FOR …
BILL CLINTON. Robo-campaigner was well enough to appear for John Kerry before wildly cheering throngs and, more good news, he’s expected to lend a last-minute hand in Arkansas.
VOTING. Record crowds turned out to vote early, with waits up to three hours reported. People really seem to care about this election.
CONFESSIONS. For reasons unclear to law enforcement, a Perry County man decided to confess to three 1999 murders, including the high-profile highway death of Carson Prince, 19. Investigators had not a clue until Stephen Talley turned himself in to Perry Sheriff Ray Byrd.
NORTH LITTLE ROCK. Plans have firmed up for a new ballpark for the Arkansas Travelers and surrounding residential and commercial development on 22 downtown acres, thanks to a major gift and investment commitment from Warren Stephens.
PHILANDER SMITH COLLEGE. It announced hiring of a new president, Walter M. Kimbrough, 37, who said he’d be among the first of the “hip-hop generation” to be a college president.
PULASKI TECH. The boomingest two-year college in the state won permission to put a satellite campus in the former Little Rock Expo Center on Interstate 30.
IT WAS A BAD WEEK FOR …
STATE PRISONS. We like ours inhumane in Arkansas. Now we’re going to charge inmates $3 to go to sick call even though we don’t pay them even pennies for work that produces revenue for the state.
LT. GOV. WIN ROCKEFELLER. He moved still farther to the right by raising dark, unsupported implications about the possibility of vote fraud in the minority community. GOP goon squads apparently will be out in larger numbers to intimidate black voters. Those voters should remember Rockefeller in 2006 when he asks for their vote for governor. We will.