EDITORIALS : While Congress slept . . .

THERE’LL BE plenty of time to examine the causes of the Panic of ’08 when it’s over, please let it be soon. The immediate task is to get past it. But when the history of this current unpleasantness is written, a special place (in opprobrium) should be reserved for those public-private giants with balance sheets of clay, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. - Monday, October 6, 2008

COLUMNISTS : Leadership vacuum

BY PAUL KRUGMAN NEW YORK TIMES

As recently as three weeks ago it was still possible to argue that the state of the U.S. economy, while clearly not good, wasn’t disastrous—that the financial system, while under stress, wasn’t in full meltdown and that Wall Street’s troubles weren’t having that much impact on Main Street. - Monday, October 6, 2008

Compassion, but justice, too

BY LEONARD PITTS JR. MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

The first time, Troy Davis came within 24 hours of death. The second time, he came within two. Last year, it was a Georgia clemency board that stepped in to block his execution. Last month, it was the Supreme Court. Davis, the 39-year-old convicted killer of Mark MacPhail, a Savannah, Ga. police officer, was granted a stay to allow the court to consider whether to hear his appeal for a new trial. A decision is expected on Monday. - Monday, October 6, 2008

LETTERS

D.C. in need of new leadership Four-dollar-a-gallon gas and the banking system on the verge of collapse, and while this was happening Congress was on a four-week vacation. Now none of this happened in a month or a year or even 10 years. Barack Obama will blame George W. Bush and John McCain will blame the Democrats. The fact is that the entire government has been asleep at the switch on these issues for decades. - Monday, October 6, 2008

Another day, another bailout

Pat Lynch

One of the most amusing moments of the past few days came when Nevada Sen. Harry Reid intoned the grim possibility that a major insurance company might go bankrupt. - Monday, October 6, 2008

Write to us, Northwest Arkansas

The Democrat-Gazette welcomes your opinions, Northwest Arkansas. - Monday, October 6, 2008

EDITORIALS : Somebody noticed

NOT EVERYBODY ignored the early warning signs about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, those twin public-private corporations that got the Panic of ’08 started when their sub-prime loans proved a time bomb that would threaten the whole economy. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

COLUMNISTS : The Palin revue, a review

Kane Webb

Got home Thursday night and the cable was out. No television. We called the appropriate cable-TV-type authorities and were told not to panic, that it would be back in no time. Lots of folks had been calling. To judge by the nervous interest, you’d have thought the Super Bowl was coming on, or a Razorback football game back when that wasn’t something you were looking to avoid. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

All in the family

MIKE HUCKABEE has never felt so far away. While the former Guv is busy finding a new life on the cable talk-show circuit, his former colleagues in the Arkansas legislature are busy slumping back to their same old, unopposed ways. The matter this time: A $91,909 payment from the State of Arkansas, aka You and Me, to a church in Pine Bluff whose pastor just happens to be a state senator. The bad old days are back. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

Another failing industry

MIAMI HERALD

While all eyes have been focused on the legislative drama over the $700 billion economic rescue package, Congress last week quietly slipped a $25 billion subsidy to the U.S. auto industry. As if that weren’t bad enough, Michigan’s Democratic Senator Carl Levin, Detroit’s chief promoter in Congress, vowed to begin work soon on obtaining another $25 billion in loans for 2009 and 2010. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

The pain of error

Mike Masterson

Anyone who writes for a living knows the sinking feeling that comes with being wrong. The imperfection stares back like a dark, ugly mole on the face in the mirror. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

LETTERS

‘Illegals’ label dehumanizing “Illegals” is used so consistently in this newspaper that if there’s a story about immigration, “illegals” is going to be in it. Never mind the illogic of supposing that persons, as distinct from their acts, can be against the law. The editors’ word is worse than that: It denies that immigrants are persons at all. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

Proposal eagerly awaited

Meredith Oakley

Kind souls everywhere are awaiting the results of Attorney General Dustin McDaniel’s negotiations over strengthening Arkansas’ inadequate animal abuse laws. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

Meltdown melts McCain

Bradley R. Gitz

The Republicans blame Democratic efforts to expand home ownership for minorities and the poor by loosening credit requirements. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

Write to us, Northwest Arkansas

The Democrat-Gazette welcomes your opinions, Northwest Arkansas. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

EDITORIALS : Welcome to the dance

WHEN IS a debate not a debate? - Saturday, October 4, 2008

If litter were chocolate

Mike Masterson

If the pastures and fields across Northwest Arkansas were permeated with chocolate from eight candy companies, would it matter if the chocolate were harmless to health? - Saturday, October 4, 2008

COLUMNISTS : Meeting (low) expectations

Ellen Goodman

So this is what they mean by the soft bigotry of low expectations. The long drumbeat that led to the vice presidential debate suggested it would be a matchup between an airhead and a gaffe machine. - Saturday, October 4, 2008

The Palin rebound

BY DAVID BROOKS NEW YORK TIMES

There are some moments when members of a political movement come together as one, sharing the same thoughts, feeling the same emotions, breathing the same shallow breaths. One of those occasions occurred Thursday night when Republicans around the country crouched nervously behind their sofas, glimpsed out tentatively at their flat screens and gripped their beverages tightly as Sarah Palin walked onto the debate stage at Washington University in St. Louis. - Saturday, October 4, 2008

We’re in the . . .

Good News! The state’s hit it big. Again. - Saturday, October 4, 2008

LETTERS

Hunting tradition swept away The old cliché ,“You can’t fight City Hall,” is true, especially here in Arkansas. The recent mandate by five of six autocratic and elite Game and Fish Commission members is proof plenty. - Saturday, October 4, 2008

New record for irresponsibility

BY DAN K. THOMASSON SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

The actions by the U.S. House in even temporarily rejecting the financial rescue package is the single most irresponsible act I have witnessed in 45 years of observing Congress up close. - Friday, October 3, 2008

EDITORIALS : Quick, do nothing!

AT THIS point it’s hard to decide whether the continuing spectacle that is the Congress of the United States is more of a tragedy or comedy. We vote for a tragicomedy. First the House of Representatives defeated the administration’s original plan to have the government step in and stop the economic meltdown by acquiring troubled assets that were bringing down one key financial institution after another. The vote was 228 to 205 to let the economy drift further into paralysis or let it go down the tubes, whichever comes first. Banks, investment houses, insurers, all had started to topple like dominoes in a growing row and the House’s response was to let ’em. - Friday, October 3, 2008

COLUMNISTS : First-class temperament

Charles Krauthammer

Krauthammer’s Hail Mary Rule: You get only two per game. John McCain, unfortunately, has already thrown three. The first was his bet on the Surge, a deep pass to David Petraeus who miraculously ran it all the way into the end zone. - Friday, October 3, 2008

The senator from hypocrisy

WE THOUGHT we’d heard it all when it comes to self-serving, self-righteous, self-parodying moral indignation out of Congress. But that was before we read the opening sentence of The Hon. Mark Pryor’s statement on the country’s continuing crackup : “Corporate greed has undercut the health of our economy, and now each one of us is being asked to pay for it. . . .” We didn’t need to read any further. Somehow we knew that nowhere in this press release and general pile of blather would the distinguished junior senator from Arkansas mention the political greed that makes the corporate kind all the grabbier—or his own role in it. - Friday, October 3, 2008

Speculators and derivatives

Dana D. Kelley

Mention the words mortgage crisis and the panic nerve in every red-blooded, working-class American starts to twitch. - Friday, October 3, 2008

It’s festival time

Meredith Oakley

Serious doings are afoot in the world, and I am not without concern for my fellow man, but old habits are hard to break. Pumpkin pie, anyone? - Friday, October 3, 2008

LETTERS

Judges’ salaries are higher than most Arkansas Supreme Court justices are complaining that most receive the very low salary of just under $140,000 a year and they are having a hard time paying for their children’s education. I find it very hard to sympathize with them. - Friday, October 3, 2008

EDITORIALS : Fire them up

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. - Thursday, October 2, 2008

The high school stays

THAT WHIMPER you just heard in Fayetteville was the sound of a school board saying Uncle. The board just voted—unanimously—to build the town’s new high school on the campus of the old one. There won’t be a new school in some distant location after all. - Thursday, October 2, 2008