The House has just passed a watered-down version of the Violence Against Women Act, by a vote of 222 to 205. The GOP-backed iteration of the bill strips out the provisions to protect undocumented, Native American, and LGBT victims that were included in the Senate version.

VAWA is usually a non-controversial, bipartisan effort, but this year has become a political talking point, with Republicans trying to slow its passage and providing fewer protections for victims. A misogynistic ‘men’s rights’ group has even voiced its support for the GOP’s version of the bill.

And yes, all three of our Republican caveman Congressman voted the way the misogynists that praised the bill wanted them to.  (Mike Ross, bless his washed up political career, voted the right way.)  This weakening of something that shouldn’t be controversial is, of course, all in line with the Republican belief that it’s okay to hit “certain people”.  But here’s the really sickening part.  This weakened excuse for a bill would let abusers to know their victims asked for help.  The language in the bill targets immigrant women, who already have plenty of reason to fear going to the police.  Confidentiality is important in protecting victims of abuse, and no one should ever have to fear doing what they need to do to put an end to the violence, no matter who they are or what neanderthals like Crawford, Griffin, and Womack think about people like them.

Four Arkansas grass roots organizations have joined together in a Ballot Question Committee, the Coalition to Preserve Arkansas Values (“CPAV”), to oppose two proposed constitutional amendments to grant to out-of-state companies unregulated monopolies on casino gambling and to oppose a proposed initiated act to legalize so-called medical-marijuana. Those groups are the Arkansas Family Coalition, Families First Action Committee, Family Council Action Committee, and the Arkansas Committee for Ethics Policy, a companion organization to the Arkansas Faith and Ethics Council.

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Arkansans will be equally unwilling to take the first step toward the full legalization of marijuana for recreational use, which is a major impetus for “medical-marijuana” laws, according to some of the national leaders of the movement. CPAV contends that “if there are components of marijuana (THC, for example) that render medical benefits for patients suffering from certain maladies, there are more efficacious, safer, and saner ways to deliver the THC rather than the smoking of marijuana cigarettes. Components of opium have proved to have medical benefit, but the FDA has not approved the smoking of opium or heroin. Instead, medical science extracted the beneficial components and developed medicines such as morphine, codeine, hydrocodone, and oxycodone. The same has been done and is continuing to be done with marijuana.”

Members of CPAV point out a number of other things. Smoking marijuana cigarettes, especially long-term use as is common to treat things such as chronic pain, poses serious respiratory and other health risks. Marijuana contains carcinogens and tar similar to tobacco cigarettes. Marijuana can be addictive and serve as a gateway drug. One need only look to states like California and Colorado to see how easily medical-marijuana laws lead to the virtual legalization of marijuana for recreational use and totally frustrate law enforcement relative to marijuana laws.

Okay, let’s take this apart piece by piece.

First, the gateway drug line is ridiculous, cliche, and totally debunked.

The problem here is that correlation isn’t cause. Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang members are probably more 104 times more likely to have ridden a bicycle as a kid than those who don’t become Hell’s Angels, but that doesn’t mean that riding a two-wheeler is a “gateway” to joining a motorcycle gang. It simply means that most people ride bikes and the kind of people who don’t are highly unlikely to ever ride a motorcycle.

It’s an idea that’s been totally abandoned by scientists, as the above link from a Time health article demonstrates, while actually citing their sources.  Gee, imagine that.  Two whole generations have now grown up being told this scary gateway crap, and it hasn’t done one thing to curtail marijuana usage or drug addiction in this country.  There is no less effective way of getting kids to not use drugs than lying to them, because once they found out you lied they’re not going to listen to you anymore.  You’d think the folks who are rightly concerned about keeping kids from doing drugs would have learned that by now and tried actually being honest and not trying to scare them.  Then again, perhaps I’m thinking too reasonably.

Next, the group falsely claims that marijuana’s health effects are being misrepresented and compares them to that of cigarettes.  This is interesting because a 20 year study was released back in January of this year that found that marijuana does not have the same kind of health impacts as tobacco.  So again, total misrepresentation on this coalitions part…Say, isn’t there something the Bible about how it’s wrong to lie or something like that?  Or do these folks think that’s a commandment you can ignore?

Now as far as the total legalization of marijuana goes, no, this law doesn’t do that.  Like everything else these groups contend, they don’t have a shred of evidence to support that statement.  What this effort is about is making sure that people who are sick and are in pain can get something that gives them a little peace and lessens their suffering.  It’s a moral statement that it isn’t right for the state to handcuff and charge people who are sick with cancer or other horrible illnesses as criminals.  It won’t change federal policy, but it will send the signal that in Arkansas we have compassion for the sick.  What Would Jesus Do?  Probably use his healing powers to make the illness go away.  But for those of us who can’t work miracles, this kind of compassion will have to suffice, and legalizing medical marijuana is the compassionate thing to do.  These organizations know this, and so to accomplish their ideological goals they have to lie to provide a justification.  Gee, for so called Christian organizations, that all seems rather un-Christian doesn’t it?

Well gee, if he wanted documentation, all he had to do was ask for it:

# Ricky Tyrone Lewis is a 58 year-old Marine Corps veteran. Despite the fact that he was able to offer Wisconsin voting officials proof of his honorable discharge from the Marines, Milwaukee County has been unable to find the record of his birth that he needs in order to obtain a voter ID card.
# Ruthelle Frank is an 84 year-old former elected official who voted in every election for the last 63 years, yet she will be unable to obtain a voter ID unless she pays a fee to obtain a birth certificate from the Wisconsin government — despite the fact that the Constitution explicitly forbids any voter from being charged a fee in order to vote. Worse, because the attending physician at her birth misspelled her name on her original birth certificate, she may need to pay hundreds of dollars in court fees to petition the state judiciary to correct her certificate before she can obtain a voter ID.
# Paul Carroll is an 86-year-old World War II veteran who has lived in the same Ohio town for four decades. Yet, when he attempted to vote in the recent Ohio primary, he was told his photo ID from the Department of Veterans Affairs was not good enough because it did not include his address.
# Dorothy Cooper is a 96-year-old African-American woman who says she has voted in every election but one since she became eligible to vote. Yet, when she attempted to obtain a voter ID, she was turned away because she did not have a copy of her marriage license. In a subsequent interview, Cooper said that she didn’t even have problems voting in Tennessee “during Jim Crow days” — only now under Voter ID.
# Thelma Mitchell is a 93-year-old woman who cleaned the Tennessee Capitol for 30 years. She never received a birth certificate, however, because she was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918 and there was no record of her birth. When she attempted to obtain a voter ID, she was turned away for lack of a birth certificate by a clerk who suggested she could be an illegal immigrant.
# Virginia Lasater is a 91-year-old woman who has been active in political campaigns for 70 years. Because of her advanced age, however, she is no longer able to stand for extended periods of time. When she attempted to obtain a voter ID, she was confronted with lines that stretched for several hours and no place to sit while she waited — forcing her to abandon her effort to obtain an ID due to her physical constraints.
# Darwin Spinks is an 86 year-old World War II veteran. He was told to pay a fee before he could obtain a voter ID in Tennessee, despite the fact that charging someone to vote is unconstitutional.
# Rita Platt is a Wisconsin resident who was turned away from her attempt to obtain a voter ID because she required either a birth certificate or a passport to obtain one — both of which can only be obtained if the voter pays a fee. Worse, in Wisconsin, voters must fill out a misleading form which suggests that they cannot obtain the birth certificate they need to obtain a photo ID unless they already have a photo ID.
# Jessica Cohen is a Texas resident who lost her license and other identification papers in a burglary. She now must also pay an unconstitutional fee in order to obtain the birth certificate she needs to obtain a new voter ID. Because Cohen lives in Texas, she will likely be able to vote in 2012 because the Department of Justice blocked Texas’ law under the Voting Rights Act — although there is a high risk that the Supreme Court’s conservatives will declare the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.

Then there’s Viviette Applewhite, a Pennsylvania woman who marched with Martin Luther King.

The 93-year-old has voted in almost every election since 1960. Her daughter was a public servant. She has five grandchildren, nine great grandchildren, and four great-great grandchildren. She’s a widow. She marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Macon, Georgia during the civil rights movement and traveled to Atlanta to hear him preach.

Under Pennsylvania’s voter ID law, Applewhite wouldn’t be able to vote.

There are your documented cases of “hypothetical people”, Mr. Bell.  The sad thing is, these are just a few examples.  But I’ll put the same question to him as I did to Mark Darr.  Can you find that many examples of voter fraud Nate?  Darr’s  yet to find one example for us.  Think you can?  After all, if you’re so intent on bringing a law so dangerous to our most sacred of rights to Arkansas, you must carry the burden of proof.

Also receiving a “Community Outreach Consulting” payment was Tommy Cole of Helena.

Tommy “Carwash” Cole?  From the corrupt Arnell Willis machine in Helena? 

We’ve documented the corruption of Willis and his administration, as well as the strangely close ties to the GOP that someone who’s supposed to be a “Democrat” has, in the past. Now, truth be told, Mr. Cole is not one of the more notorious picks to run city government that Mayor Willis has made.  He’s not a two time felon who beats up his wife like Sanitation Director Bobby Jones, nor is he accused of being a pedophile like Parks and Recreations Director Anthony Banks. But you know what, he’s standing in the background behind Willis and beside those two men in this picture:

That’s him on the left on the left in front of the flag and behind Willis.

Well, it’s not the wife beater or the pedophile, but coming out of that snake pit you have to wonder.  (No offense meant to snakes.)  I would hope the Hall campaign screened Cole carefully.  Because if there’s anything there at all, you can bet that his rivals are likely to dig it up, and I’m not just talking about his Democratic primary rivals.  Do we really want the kind of garbage we’ve seen from Helena dragged out to tarnish our chances of taking back this seat?  Remember all those corruption issues?  Remember the saga of Joe St. Columbia?  Considering Mayor Willis’s other frighteningly inappropriate hires for city government, this is a fair relationship to question.  Cole might not have a thing on him, and the work he did may have been legitimate, but considering his associations, it’s definitely something that merits more scrutiny before the primary.

U.S. Rep. Mike Ross won’t be running for governor in 2014. This decision had been going around and I think Durango reported it pretty reliably in our comments thread over the weekend.

Instead, he’ll be a lobbyist for the Southwest Power Pool, the energy distribution agency based in Little Rock that’s in a huge battle to keep from losing Entergy’s business to another power wheeling agency.

Ross attributes this decision to the ever cliche reason of “I want to spend more time with my family.”  Horse manure.  He looked at the landscape and saw that the Democratic Party would hand him his hat in the primary if he attempted this run.  For my part, I’d already made plans to roll out every bad vote he’d ever cast on a nearly daily basis.  Ross had done more than any other fake Democrat to earn the party faithful’s ire, and he finally realized that if he did this it was going to catch up with him.  Good riddance.

This pretty much leaves our choices for Governor next cycle as Dustin McDaniel and Bill Halter (and some guy named Burkhalter who’s probably better off running for Lt. Gov, or Land Commissioner, or something).  Personally, I’m still hoping that maybe Pryor will do as Ross did and see the writing on the wall and retire.  That would open up that seat and we could spare ourselves an expensive and bruising primary and present a united front against the Republicans that year.  If worst comes to worst though and Bill and Dustin do face off in the primary, I don’t know what I’ll be doing.  I have a great deal of respect, appreciation, and affection for both of them as public servants, Democratic candidates, and as people.  I would like to find a way that we could get both of them in positions of leadership for our state.  If they do face off, I expect I’ll be hiding under a rock somewhere rather than getting in the middle of that.

Still, we’ve got reason to celebrate.  Mike Ross was one of the last of the Blue Dogs in Congress and the last of the old style Dems in office even in Arkansas.  His way of doing things, running as a closet Republican while selling out the majority of Arkansans for the sake of the wealthy and the powerful, is outdated, ineffective, and wrong.  Even the most likely Democratic successor for his seat, Q. Byrum Hurst, who’s no flaming liberal himself, is running a dramatically different campaign with progressive-populist economic tones, the same approach we’ve been advocating here for several years now.  Mike Ross’s 2014 campaign would have been the last hurra for the old guard.  Now, instead of going out with a bang, they’re going to die off with a whimper.  Good riddance.

The Democratic Party of Arkansas is changing.  It isn’t happening as fast as many of us would like but it is happening none the less.

When was the last time Steve Womack gave back to the district this way?  Oh wait, he told Arkansas food pantries, struggling to keep themselves running to help Arkansans in need, to shove it.

Here’s the video where Ken announced the can haul.  More are apparently still coming in:

First, let’s talk about the big news of the week, our awesome President coming out in full support of marriage equality!

(ABC disabled the video, but you can watch it at the link.)

I can’t begin to describe how huge a thing this is. Speaking as a gay man, it’s phenomenal. Let me put it in perspective-I was seventeen years old and just starting to come out of the closet in January, 2004. I was just starting to come out to my closest friends. I was yet to come out to my family. I was dealing with a lot, my first shaky attempt at a relationship with a boyfriend and the usual and unfortunate fears gay youth have to endure, from what would happen if word made it around my school to the thought of my parents disowning me or kicking me out of the house. It was against that backdrop that I saw President Bush stand up in his state of the union address and call for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. I remember when he said it, it looked like he was leering down like some kind of gargoyle, and I remember feeling my stomach turn and having to pretend not to have a reaction while I was sitting there with my family watching it, then heading to my room with this horrible feeling that I couldn’t talk to anyone about.  There’s a reason that the suicide rate among LGBT youth is so high.  They think that the world’s against them, that God doesn’t love them, that the love of their families and friends is conditional, that their future’s are grim, that they’re evil and going to hell for feelings they have that are beyond their control.  They get this message often from their relatives, their peers, their churches, the media, and hate mongers in our politics who exploit fear and prejudice for political gain, including our last President.  That’s why this was so monumental.  There are thousands of gay kids out there, many of them struggling with their sexuality no doubt, who instead of seeing their President join the long list of people who seem to hate you just saw the leader of the free world say, with the utmost compassion and empathy, that there is nothing wrong with them and that they deserve the same rights, all the rights, that everyone else enjoys.

Keep in mind, it has only been eight years since Bush was on the winning side of this issue and John Kerry was struggling to not look too pro-gay.  In that short amount of time, the shoe is on the other foot.  A solid majority of Americans agree with the President on this, Romney is having to defend himself on the issue (not to mention the fact that he himself was a bully who once cruelly tortured a classmate, something he’s trying to dismiss as ‘hijinx’), and there’s now a former Bush pollster circulating a memo that’s telling Republicans that they need to change their position on marriage equality or suffer politically in the long term.  That’s a ton of progress.

Now of course, this is Arkansas and the South.  We’re going to have a lot of catching up to do on this issue.  We always do on civil rights-we’re part of the country that tried to leave because we wanted to keep slaves after all, and since then we’ve been on the wrong side of every civil rights issue there ever was.  Hell, a huge chunk of Arkansans still aren’t happy that the President is black-that’s how much catching up we have as a state.  Being in the Bible Belt complicates the matter as, sadly, religion only seems to work its way into our politics when it involves dividing and bashing people rather than loving our neighbors.  There are leaders emerging-Ken Aden, State Rep. Hudson Hallum, and Herb Rule have all endorsed marriage equality.  Others are not so comfortable doing so just yet, and there will be those (mostly in the Republican party) who will still exploit prejudice.  That said, I’m willing to live with that.  Know why?  Because for all the work we have to do here, nationally if Republicans keep harping on this they’re going to become trapped as a southern regional party.  The demographics are on the side of equality, and as one generation dies off and another comes of age, Republicans will totally lose their wedge issue outside of about ten states.  The American Taliban is a cancer on the Republican party, making them too extreme for the majority of Americans and for a super majority of the youngest generation of voters.  If they don’t find some kind of political chemotherapy quick, their party will die at the national level.

***

Speaking of things that put Republicans in an awkward position, there’s a new scandal on Wall Street involving JP Morgan.  The loss underscores the need for part of the Obama Administration’s Wall Street Reform, the Volcker Rule, which is still in the process of being implemented and will go into full effect in July.  What happened was that JP Morgan gambled away 2 billion in depositor money on the same risky derivatives that caused the 2008 crisis.  The Volcker Rule will prohibit that kind of bad corporate behavior.  Why is this bad news for Mitt Romney?  Because in addition to the fact that he is Wall Street’s candidate in this election, he has also called for the repeal of Wall Street Reform.  Yeah, that’s going to go over so well this election cycle.

***

Last, but certainly not least, something that’s Arkansas news, and exciting news it is.

Regnat Populus finally got some major leagues help in getting signatures to put their initiative on the ballot:

A bipartisan triumvirate has taken the lead on the new Better Ethics Now Committee to get this proposition on the ballot. They are Brent Bumpers, son of former U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers and now looking for ways to put fruits of the sale of his Brent and Sam’s cookie empire to public-spirited use; Jim Keet, the restaurateur/entrepreneur and former Republican state senator and gubernatorial nominee, and Baker Kurrus, the Little Rock lawyer and former school board member who manages business interests of the late former Republican Lt. Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller.

Bumpers father was a pioneer in cleaning up Arkansas government as was the father of the man that Kurrus worked for, Governor Rockefeller.  I have to say, I will always remember Keet as the man who got in a shouting match with a sixty year old lady over health care reform but I will give him props for being willing to do this.  Arkansas needs to reform the den of thieves that is the legislature and neither political party is going to be willing to do it.  The people will have to show them the way, and can you imagine how much things are going to change for the better if lobbyists can’t bribe legislators with gifts and corporations can no longer contribute directly to candidates?  Yes unions will be restricted to-they’ll have to play by the same rules at the state level as they do nationally.  But fair is fair, and that’s a small price for unions to pay for the sake of reigning in the corporate juggernaut.  The benefits to Arkansans if we can get this on the ballot and passed into law will be astronomical.  What’s more, Arkansas will change dramatically if we do this, with some major roadblocks to progress being greatly weakened.

So there’s my catch up.  Hopefully I’ll have some more time to write this week.  Oh and we might find out soon if I’m actually getting sued or not!  Could be a big week.

Yeah, a whole bunch of Republicans just died laughing when they read that I’m a conservative…and “political bigots”?  Yeah, I don’t think he knows what that word means.

Now full disclosure.  I know Jacob Holloway from Jonesboro.  And, well, let’s just say there’s some fun stories.  But I’ll be nice and keep those to myself for now.

Now again, the post I wrote was all about the Greens happily welcoming an ego maniacal con-artist, Fred Smith, into their party.  That doesn’t get addressed in Holloway’s little rant.

But you want to see how he just goes and kind of proves my point about the Greens being a joke?

Lol, “FEAR ME NOW!!!”…I want that on a t-shirt.

Lol: If you look on Holloway’s facebook page, he asks me now if I’m really going to stand up for the farm bureau.  First off, I’ve criticized the farm bureau before.  Secondly, I guess the fact that what I was doing was making fun of his silly and immature statements went right over his head.

Mr. McAvoy,

This is not a communication either that I give permission to be reprinted. I am not a candidate for office, but a private citizen. However, your blog has erroneous, libelous, and slanderous posts about me. Either you remove the slanderous and libelous statements that have posted about me on your blog and which have been used against me and my name recently, or I will sue you.

This is not a joke.

The accusations made against me were unfounded. There was never a case filed against me. There was no proof provided. Furthermore, I am a private citizen and you are violating my rights as well as slandering my name.

You have till Monday or I will file a lawsuit against you.

Thank you,

Drew Pritt

All this arises from a post I wrote back when Drew was making noise about running against Tim Griffin in the second district after it was alleged that he stole money from a charity event (raising money to make a wounded vet’s home handicap accessible).  You can read the offending post at this link.

Here’s the email I sent back:

Bring it.

Just make sure you sue David McAvoy II (not Jr., a roman numeral II) so that you sue the right David McAvoy.

Have a nice day.

-David McAvoy II

Now, as you probably guessed from the fact that I just posted all this, I don’t particularly care if Drew Pritt (or much anyone else for that matter) tells me not to publish something.  Watch him try to sue me for that.  Good luck.

Secondly, let me assure you nothing is getting taken down.  I’m not going to let the rights of a free press or a blogger’s free speech rights be trampled on without a fight, and I don’t care if it’s someone like Drew Pritt or someone higher up on the food chain trying to do it.  Then there’s the merits of this thing.  Slander and libel are very hard to prove, and for good reason-a society where doing so would be easy would be one where the first amendment couldn’t exist.  Pritt though, really doesn’t have a leg to stand on here.  He can claim he’s a private citizen all he wants, but the fact that he announces one quixotic bid for public office after another every time you turn around and the fact that he was doing so when I wrote the post in question, makes him, for legal purposes, a public figure, and as Jerry Falwell found out when he got into it with Hustler Magazine over a rather unflattering portrayal that turned into a landmark Supreme Court case, it’s much harder for you to sue successfully for slander/libel when you’ve inserted yourself into the public domain.

For that matter, I’m not even the guy that originally wrote the story.  I picked it up from the Alaskan LGBT blog, Bent Alaska, and the Alaska progressive blog, Mudflats, and from the website of a local Alaskan news station.  Oh and let’s not forget that Dianne Benson, the mother of the veteran and the alleged victim of the scam charity event, was the one who put out this tweet:

So yeah, this was all pretty much public domain by the time I got to it.  Is Pritt threatening to sue all of them as well?  No idea.  After he dropped out, there were write ups on the matter at Bent Alaska, the Arkansas News Bureau, and TalkingPointsMemo.  Hell, if he’s going to do this at all, shouldn’t he try suing everyone else who’s ever written something about him he didn’t like on the internet?  Would be a pretty long list by now don’t you think?  But no, Drew seems to have it in his head that this is all my fault somehow, despite everything else that everyone else has written, and this isn’t the first email he sent me on it.  Before this, he sent me one out of the blue calling me a “cyber bully”.  (Responding to that one really wasn’t worth my time so I just kind of ignored it.)  Why am I so important out of all the other people out there who’ve written about this?  Again, no clue.  I have no idea how this man’s mind works nor do I particularly care.

So yeah, Pritt can go ahead and sue me.  I’m not worried about it.  After what happened with Blue Hog, I sat down and thought long and hard what I’d ever do if something like this transpired and decided I wouldn’t back down without a fight if anyone ever tried to shut Blue Arkansas down or push us around, and trust me, I prepared for much worse than this.  So yeah, guess I better get a lawyer ready.  Fun times.  Anyway, hopefully I’ll have more time to write soon guys.  And believe me, I’ve got much more important stuff than this to post on when I finally get the chance.

After 9/11, I had to do my part. I’m running for Congress for the same reason I joined the army. Our country is fifteen billion dollars in debt and Obamacare’s a real threat to our freedom.

Yes Tom, those things are exactly the same as terrorists flying two 747s into the World Trade Center and killing nearly three thousand people. And while this sort of thing is red meat for teabaggers, it’s still revolting to exploit, for your own political gain, a national tragedy where thousands of Americans lost their lives, no matter how subtle you try to be about it. Absolutely shameful.

His opponents had better follow suit quick if they can.

The Democrat-Gazette did further analysis today of something I’ve noted before — the amount of out-of-state money flowing into the campaign of Republican 4th District candidate Tom Cotton. Not totally surprising. He left Arkansas after high school, and returned only a few months ago to move into a family house in Yell County in hopes of being elected to go back to the Beltway, where he’s worked for years.

70 percent of Cotton’s money comes from out of state, as he did. A huge chunk, $183,000, came from members of the Club for Growth. One of the Club for Growth’s single biggest supporters is Little Rock’s Jackson T. Stephens Jr., heir to the Stephens financial empire fortune. Stephens has never made much money from toil himself, but he’s highly interested, as all in the Club for Growth are, in cutting taxes on unearned income, such as dividends and capital gains on his inherited riches.

Cotton says no voters in his district are concerned about where his money is coming from. They’re just concerned with the direction the country is going.

His leading primary opponent, Beth Anne Rankin, and her supporters, are hitting this pretty hard.  How it plays out will be interesting to see.

Meanwhile, Democrat Q. Byrum Hurst has aired his first tv ad:

That ad is actually really good, and I am pleasantly surprised to see Hurst, who’s long had a reputation as a conservative Democrat, hitting the populist progressive themes we’ve been advocating for on this blog since 2009-protecting Medicare and Social Security, taking on Wall Street corporations and CEOs for not paying their fair share of taxes and sending jobs overseas and selling himself as a consumer advocate. It’s a far cry from what I expected Hurst to run and it sounds nothing like the things Democrats like Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, and Mike Ross run.

I confess I’ve had some rather ambivalent feelings about this race. The other Democrat in the race (not counting D.C. Morrison, the Republican running as a Democrat), Gene Jeffress, has a good voting record and would likely be a top notch congressman. Thing is, he’s proving to be a very poor campaigner, which was in part the driving force to Hurst getting in. Hurst, meanwhile, has long been considered someone who was just barely a Democrat, and he does have some baggage. That said, if this is what he’s basing his campaign on, it is still a refreshing thing to see. Does it mean that Hurst is a progressive? No, I don’t think so. Could it just be election year talk? Sure it could. But you know what? A couple of years ago, this would not have been the message, which should show that some of the stuff progressives like us have been arguing for are starting to sink in. That Hurst has seized on it tells me that he thinks these are winning stances to take and he’s right. And hey, if this is how he’s going to run, then more power to him. Sure makes me feel a lot better about him being our potential nominee down there. And hey, if he’s lucky enough to get elected, we’ll hold him accountable to the things he promised to do just like we do everyone else.

The ad, aired by his primary opponent Price Dooley, rips Meeks for corruption and his rating of being one of the least effective members of the legislature, all of it true. Meeks of course is a tea party favorite and a partisan hack. He’ll likely survive the challenge, but the Democratic candidate in the race just got handed a nice little club to hit Meeks with in the general.

The Green Party of Arkansas nominated a former Harlem Globetrotter for a state House seat this weekend — a month after a judge said he wasn’t eligible to run for the Democrats.

Fred Smith said Monday that the Green Party picked him as its candidate for the House District 50 seat.

Now remember, these are the people who treat Democrats to all kinds of sanctimonious lectures on purity and nitpick any flaw they can find in President Obama to show he’s some kind of evil, fascist, warlord or something.  So yeah, it’s a little bit…shall we say ironic?  Yeah, for now, let’s go with ironic…that they’d nominate someone like this.  But wait until you see just how fervently this sad little party has embraced Smith (and you’ll vomit when you see just how big Smith’s ego is):

The state Green Party says it has no qualms about Smith.

“He’s perfectly qualified and I think he’ll do a good job,” the Green Party’s state secretary Mark Jenkins said.

Jenkins said Smith approached the party about two weeks ago.

When asked about whether he approached the Green Party, Smith said, “Me being who I am, everybody wanted me to be in their party after they denied me.”

This of course isn’t the first time the Arkansas Greens have happily taken in a shameless opportunist.  Great example, last year’s Green Party candidate for Treasurer, Bobby Tullis, a former Democrat with ethical issues of his own who couldn’t win a Democratic party nomination.  He’s now running as a Libertarian candidate in the 4th district, after as I recall, flirting with running as a Republican for the same office.

Now look, the Greens are right about one thing.  The Democratic Party isn’t pure.  This is news from nowhere.  No political party is ever pure.  They’re certainly not, and this stuff shows it.  But for crying out loud could they knock off the sanctimonious lectures about how awful the Democratic party is and how voting Green is the only way to be true to your principles as a progressive.  Whining like that while your party props up cons and crooks only shows you to be a hypocrite or tells the rest of the world that your head is lodged firmly up your butt, one of the two.

That’s not to say that all the Greens are bad.  I would love to see their last AR-01 candidate, Ken Adler, run for the state house or something as a Democrat.  We could use a smart, personable guy like him, and he and others like him would be able to do a lot more good that way than they do running as Greens.  We have a two party system-always have and always will.  The best option for progressives is to take over one of the two parties, and the Democratic party is the one that we can do that with.  Yes it means we have to work hard to change things and sometimes hold our noses or even wretch a bit, but it’s the only way possible to get our goals accomplished in this political system, and I would much rather do that than tilt at windmills and never get anything done, much less lecture everyone about “purity” while nominating folks like Fred here.

I got to admit, part of me was half worried that I’d be writing an obituary for Ken when he started doing this.  This wasn’t easy-he got heat stroke at one point, lost his lunch at another, and had to stop for rest a couple more times than he had planned.  But he did it!  He finished the run and he raised a ton of cans to help needy Arkansas families.  The only time a politician ever did something like this that I can think of was when Bill Halter helped out at the free clinic in Little Rock back in ’09.  Message to other Democrats around the state: stuff like this is what you should be doing.  I’m not saying to kill yourself trying to do what Ken just did.  But I am saying to give back to your state and your community in a big way.  Make serving us part of your public service.  (Gee, isn’t that a radical idea?)

So here, you guys know what to do, throw Ken $20 bucks on ActBlue.  Consider it a slap on the back for pulling something amazing off.

Oh and while I’m writing this, I have to beg the question.  What has Steve Womack ever done for his constituents that was in any way comparable to this?