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John Brummett

John Brummett

Arkansas Online

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Love, Arkansas-style

Love, Arkansas-style

Note to readers: The Howard County Elberta peaches showed up on the porch a little early this year. But it's never too early to rerun this ode to them...

yesterday 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Frank as a friend

Frank as a friend

The column Sunday came off harsher toward the late Gov.

previous day 1

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

If it walks like a duck …

If it walks like a duck …

In media and entertainment, nothing once big is big anymore.

wednesday 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

White ahead of his time

White ahead of his time

The voters get to decide what to teach kids in school, and they do that through the kinds of politicians they elect.That's

21.07.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Atop the balance beam

Atop the balance beam

Let me take a shot at a candid, paraphrased summation of the welcomed announcement Tuesday in a YouTube video by 37-year-old farmer advocate Hallie...

18.07.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Health-care deserts coming

Health-care deserts coming

Democrat-Gazette onlineArkansas health care in poor rural areas, which account for the preponderance of acreage in the state, is reported to be...

17.07.2025 1

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Coordinated counterattack

Coordinated counterattack

The Arkansas Constitution is a jumbled mess.

16.07.2025 7

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Bubba goes on a tear

Bubba goes on a tear

Bubba McCoy answered the phone, and I asked whether he'd had a good July 4 holiday.

14.07.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Practical compassion

Practical compassion

It's not as simple as right versus left.

11.07.2025 10

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Prison moving forward, of course

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Prison moving forward, of course

All the big shots--the governor and leading legislators--profess a terse confidence.

10.07.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Autocracy takes root

Autocracy takes root

It's the press' job to irritate.

09.07.2025 4

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

We learn from critics

A columnist is blessed if even one bright and serious reader takes time to analyze and critique his work in a careful, detailed, informed and...

07.07.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: How the sausage is made

Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" to run up the deficit and debt by trillions and kick millions off Medicaid and food stamps passed in the Senate...

04.07.2025 8

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Caught in a tiresome cycle

Democrat-Gazette onlineThe U.S. Senate meets all night and through the next day and does nothing except argue and preen amid Democratic procedural...

03.07.2025 6

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: The end of presumption?

Let us not lose sight of the issue.

02.07.2025 4

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Catching up with Chris

I sent a text to Chris Jones, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 2022, saying I hoped we could talk about my hearing of his possibly running...

30.06.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Dropping f-bombs

First, let's talk a little about the "f-bomb," which isn't what it used to be.

27.06.2025 5

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

The method of madness

Democrat-Gazette onlineIs Donald Trump megalomaniacally mad, or does he pretend to be that on television and thereby apply tactical madness as his...

26.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Ineptitude on parade

The national political condition is such that Democrats could be rendered incapable of winning the presidency or the U.S.

25.06.2025 5

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Arrows aloft again

Readers still say they like the arrows.

23.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A letter of relevance

I'd like to say that the letter to the editor was the best thing on the Voices page Sunday except for my column.

20.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Another excuse for partisan smears

In American politics as currently diseased, cold-blooded murder can be less a cause for human grieving than a cause for partisan blame games.In

19.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

The opposite of news

Seventeen years ago, I fell into--or perhaps I started--a public dust-up with a young woman reporter for a Little Rock television station.She

18.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Still fanning the flames

Sarah Sanders went on Fox News on Tuesday and did her thing for Donald Trump. She's no Karoline Leavitt, but she still has skills. Sanders'...

16.06.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

2025 is not 1957

Everything is totally different about federalized troops activated in Los Angeles without a governor's request in 2025 and federalized troops...

13.06.2025 30

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

A surprise from the Supremes

The credibility of media reporting on politics plummets hourly.

12.06.2025 5

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Megalomaniacal infantility

Let us use as a guide The New York Times' piece over the weekend describing the anatomy of the burst of outsized infantility in Donald Trump and Elon...

11.06.2025 10

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

The Democrats’ problem

An intellectual, atheist, neuroscientist and meditation advocate--that's all one person--was speaking on his podcast last week with a 37-year-old...

09.06.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Prison plans roll on anyway

At the behest or command of Gov. Sarah Sanders, the Arkansas Board of Corrections is making final preparations to hire an architectural engineering...

06.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Walz struts his [expletive deleted]

Tim Walz was all over the political news last weekend.

05.06.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Turn of the screw

A fellow from out in the country who drank a bit applied without invitation many years ago to be the editorial cartoonist for the old Arkansas...

04.06.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Garden-variety Trumpism

Two fine conservative fellows forwarded me copies of President Donald Trump's pardon of former state Sen.

02.06.2025 4

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Democrats in disarray

We need to stay up to date on the death spiral of the Democratic Party in presidential politics lest we wind up like students sleeping in algebra...

30.05.2025 4

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Separation of law and politics

We must stop treating political issues and legal issues the same.

29.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Woo hoo, more debt!

House Republicans in Washington were hugging and otherwise celebrating early Thursday morning.

28.05.2025 10

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Bubba ready for the day

"Thank goodness you called," Bubba McCoy said. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have any Memorial Day tradition left.

26.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Monosyllabic impediment

A coalition of direct-democracy advocates filed a proposed constitutional amendment Monday that would remove the Legislature's intentionally...

23.05.2025 10

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: A lesson for Democrats

Democrat-Gazette onlineThe wise and venerable Democrat spoke with careful deliberation to younger admirers gathered around him at lunch.

22.05.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

The singer and the president

The rock singer is a serious person. The president of the United States isn't.

21.05.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Inhumanity by euphemism

It was great news for Arkansas and all other places where working poor people live.

19.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

As the arrows fly

Let's get right to the arrows. You know the drill.

16.05.2025 4

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: When in doubt, just don’t

One time, in an indoor pickleball contest, an opponent overhit the pickleball, similar to a wiffle ball, so badly that it came like a missile directly...

15.05.2025 10

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Not old political claptrap

I recall the last time I wrote favorably in this space about a culturally connected and genuinely rural Arkansas woman with an interesting history...

14.05.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: The danger of certitude

There will be other commentaries this weekend on the pope, but those probably will be about the real one, the new one--Robert Prevost out of the north...

12.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Books focus on Joe’s decline

Joe Biden did an interview with the BBC on Tuesday.

09.05.2025 7

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

‘60 Minutes’ not cowed by Trump

Democrat-Gazette onlineAll hail the journalists working on "60 Minutes."

08.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Menace to quality dialogue

What we have for certain is a wildly reckless, say-anything president.

07.05.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

A legislative post-mortem

The legislative session will be formally adjourned Monday after a mid-April recess to await the governor's vetoes and the discovery of any technical...

05.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

Right to know over profit

Mainstream-media newsroom people with whom I've happily spent much of my life always struck me--generally speaking, of course--as impractical and kind...

02.05.2025 2

Arkansas Online

John Brummett

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: How low can they go?

Democrat-Gazette onlineThere apparently is not a catastrophic poll plummet for Donald Trump that Democrats can't manage to limbo under.

01.05.2025 3

Arkansas Online

John Brummett