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As I'd mentioned yesterday, the Arkansas Repertory Theatre announced today a $6 million capital campaign to renovate its home at 601 Main; provide off-site space for storage and set construction, and renovate its apartments for guest actors on Sixth Street. About $3.4 million has been committed.

The Rep promises a new "state-of-the-art" main stage theater, expanded educational facilities, new public spaces, expanded restrooms and new heat and air.

The work will mean a move of some of the 2008-09 season to alternative venues -- the UALR theater and Wildwood. The first three shows -- Les Miserables, If You Sing It, They Will Come, and It's a Wonderful Life -- will be staged at the Rep.

Editorial note: Chip in. The Rep is one of the city's treasures.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report:

Arnold Murray, a reclusive 81-year-old pastor with ties to white supremacy and the Christian Identity movement, has quietly built himself an empire via his Shepherd's Chapel in tiny Gravette, including weekly (and often anti-Semitic) sermons broadcast on 225 stations, and an annual gathering in Branson, Mo. that draws over 4,000 devotees.

"Arkansas's Favorite Nudist Colony Returns!"

That was the come-on in Little Rock Zoo publicist Susan Altrui's news release about opening of a new exhibit for the zoo's naked mole rats. Who could resist.

Had Bush avoided the calamitous war, I think this kind of thing would still be going on. But the watershed of lies and ineptitude in the war -- finally -- washed away the protective coating from every other aspect of his corrupt administration. Flag-waving was no longer a king's cross against criticism and inspection of the epic disaster.

An investigation by the NASA inspector general found that political appointees in the space agency's public affairs office worked to control and distort public accounts of its researchers' findings about climate change for at least two years, the inspector general's office said yesterday. ...

From the fall of 2004 through 2006, the report said, NASA's public affairs office "managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public." It noted elsewhere that "news releases in the areas of climate change suffered from inaccuracy, factual insufficiency, and scientific dilution."

Officials of the Office of Public Affairs told investigators that they regulated communication by NASA scientists for technical rather than political reasons, but the report found "by a preponderance of the evidence, that the claims of inappropriate political interference made by the climate change scientists and career public affairs officers were more persuasive than the arguments of the senior public affairs officials that their actions were due to the volume and poor quality of the draft news releases."

Brummett for the last day of the primary season.

Hillary and her people can give you many compelling reasons she should be considered the winner of the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. All those caucuses that Barack Obama won were unfair, giving an advantage to his younger and more mobile supporters. Texas was an outrage, having an open vote by day that she won and then letting him come in with a mitigating caucus at night. Hillary has won most big states and swing states lately. If they had winner-take-all primaries, like the Republicans, she'd have locked this thing up long ago. The point is to nominate the strongest candidate to beat McCain, and, plainly, she is it.

True. Every word. And irrelevant to the score, which is determinative, the one thing that matters.

A new "longitudinal study" says public schools do as well as private schools in improving students' math scores over a period of years. The Walton School of Vouchers and Charter Schools should shortly have a Jay Greene release debunking these results. But, until then:

Put another way by Sarah Lubienski, “school type alone doesn’t explain very much of why these scores vary … in truth, whether the school is public or private doesn’t seem to make that much difference.”

The researchers go on to write that they “personally see private schools as an integral part of the American system of education” and “there are many valid reasons why parents choose private schools and why policymakers may push for school choice.”

Academic achievement, however, may no longer be one of those reasons, they write. “Claims that simply switching students from one type of school to another will result in higher scores appear to be unfounded.”

They suggest “moving away from a simple focus on school type and instead examining what happens within schools.”

A Central Arkansas Transit bus, eastbound on Twenty-first Street, was in a wreck shortly before 4 p.m. this afternoon. Early information at CATA says the bus collided with an LRPD pickup driving on Scott Street. Four people on the bus and the driver of the pickup required medical treatment, according to early reports, but injuries aren't believed to be serious.

Recent news about unexpected dips in local sales tax collections might not be entirely a reflection of a sharp downturn in the economy. The state Department of Finance Administration says a mail distribution delay of some 250 sales tax reporting forms accounts for some $5.5 million in additional sales tax revenue that should be distributed to several cities and counties.

John Theis, the assistant state revenue commissioner, told me further that, while the delayed payments cover localities all over Arkansas, "Once final distributions have been calculated this is going to address many of the shortfalls reported recently by cities and counties in Central Arkansas."

From the campaign trail today:

ABC News' Sarah Amos Reports: Speaking to a crowd in Milbank, SD former President Bill Clinton admitted that today could be the last time he has such an active role in presidential politics.

"I want to say also that this may be the last day I'm ever involved in a campaign of this kind. I thought I was out of politics, 'til Hillary decided to run. But it has been, one of the greatest honors of my life to go around and campaign for her for president," said Clinton as he began his speech.

Watch the VIDEO HERE.