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That's what Andrew Bagley's blog is reporting exclusively from Helena-West Helena. He says a judge has signed off an animal cruelty charge against the mayor, James Valley, for cutting stray dogs loose in the national forest rather than caring for them properly at a city animal shelter. Given that the mayor has admitted this action, I think he may be in deep dog doo.

Mike Huckabee, newly minted TV commentator, needs to remember: The TV camera never blinks. And somebody out there might hold you to account for your bodacious B.S. (The gig of him here on pollution post-Katrina doesn't even get into on-shore devastation from oil leaks.)

Summary: On Fox & Friends, Mike Huckabee falsely asserted, "When Katrina, a Cat-5 hurricane, hit the Gulf Coast, not one drop of oil was spilled off of those rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico." In fact, according to a report prepared for the federal government by an international consulting firm, damages related to Hurricane Katrina resulted in 70 spills from outer continental shelf structures with a total volume of approximately 11,104 barrels of oil and petroleum products.

Just in from an evening out I find a news release from County Clerk Pat O'Brien on the recent discovery that public records he's put on-line include some old real estate records that carry Social Security numbers, as was the custom for many years. That's not illegal. And not much of a problem until some nuts on the subject decided to make a point of publicizing it to the point of posting on-line specific Social Security numbers.

Anyway, O'Brien has folded, after talking with the attorney general. I'm not aware of any law being broken by on-line records. But O'Brien is pulling real estate records off the web until they've been cleansed of Social Security numbers. Presumably you can still see them in paper records at the courthouse.  Other court records, some of which occasionally turn up with an S.S. number despite court orders against inclusion of that information, will remain on-line.

If Attorney General Six-gun McDaniel whipped O'Brien into restricting on-line access to public records, shame on him. Too late to find out his reasoning on this. I hope to hear more from both tomorrow.

It's an open line. But, if you're not among the quarter-million or more who've already viewed this video, I think you'll get a kick of out this young fellow's spoof on George Bush and global warming.

Boondoggle? You know the words "Pulaski County government" are about to follow, don't you?

Remember a fine story by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Mark Minton last year? The county floated a $43 million bond issue, announced in 2002 by County Judge Buddy Villines with great fanfare, to help poor people buy houses. A whopping total of six got houses before the program was shut down, having spent $2.1 million. The only people really helped by this were bond daddies and bond lawyers.

The IRS wasn't happy. This type of program was abused all over the country and investigations were begun.

It's now just about over here. The County Public Facilities Board (which seems to exist in large part to provide tax-exempt bond finance for white-flight private schools) will consider a proposed settlement of the housing bond dispute Monday. You can read it here.

The county gets off fairly easily in the deal negotiated with the IRS. Though the IRS asserts that rules were broken (something the county doesn't admit), the bonds that were sold won't be deemed as taxable for those who received interest before the bonds were called in 2007. The county board will have to pay a $60,000 penalty to the feds. The money will come from bond funds, not from county general revenue. There have, of course, been additional legal fees incurred in working this matter out.

The laughingly named state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission today slam-dunked the effort by conservation groups to get carbon dioxide defined as a contaminant. The U.S. Supreme Court thinks that's a reasonable proposition, and they're not exactly liberals.

Randy Young of the laughingly named Arkansas Natural Resources Commission dropped a pollution lobby-crafted order on the commission which then duly approved it. The commission didn't even bother to give the conservation groups' proposed rule change a formal vote.

It was just more of the same. This agency has never been about anything but protecting polluters to the extent possible.

What crazy weekly newspaper was it that quoted somebody as saying Gov. Mike Beebe was good on environmental issues? His office's silence on this issue was deafening. Neither he nor his staff talked to any of the commissioners, many of them gubernatorial appointees, about the issue. Commissioners with conflicts of interest not only voted, but aggressively participated in the debate (see Tom Schueck).

UPDATE: Yes, I'm reminded by someone with a better memory, the governor has been the recipient of a free jet ride from industrialist Schueck. Schueck and family also gave $9,000 to the Beebe campaign in 2006 and $41,000 to the Arkansas Democratic Party. You think he could get in to see the guv? Also, Schueck is an investor with Jay DeHaven in that Lake Maumelle watershed grass farm land that they hope to flip into a huge profit at ratepayers' expense with the help of wobbly water commissioners and others.

This same "Pollution Control" group will "deliberate" and vote soon on that poison-spewing coal-fired power plant in Hempstead County, too. Randy Young can give you the vote now. He probably has the order already drafted.

Even as the DOG was dissing us in the news section, the Arkansas Times sustained a few nips, by name this time, in the Democrat-Gazette feature section. There, film critic Philip Martin contributed still further to the dialogue we mentioned earlier about his 85 rating of "Love Guru," which has been widely panned. Lindsey Millar had written a few sentences chiding Phil on his Rock Candy Blog; Martin responded and the discussion also rolled over to our community movie blog.

I've now been able to link to Phil's today so you can read his criticism of us and his further defense of his review.  Here's his original review on "Love Guru," which opens -- "Vulgar, crude and at times inspired ..."

One small point. Martin writes today that the Times did not review the movie. We did. It was on-line by about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday (we go to press about 24 hours earlier), which may have been after the production deadline for the D-G's Friday film section.

UPDATE: Ah, youth. I'm more philosophical about criticism. We dish, we take. You decide. But David Koon chooses to rise in vigorous defense against Martian slings and arrows. Vintage Koon.

UPDATE II: Phil returns Koon's fire. On the jump.

UPDATE III: Lindsey is supposed to be vacationing, but he has a say in l'affaire 'Guru,' too. Get thee to Rock Candy for that. I think he hit the jackass.

UPDATE IV: Dang. Lindsey already has a jackass T-shirt for sale to memorialize Gurugate.

OK, sex offender is harsh. Then-state Rep. Dwayne Dobbins copped a plea bargain to a harassment charge and thus isn't classified as a sex offender. But the charge stems from copping a feel of a teen in his home. He wants to run again, even though leaving the legislature was understood to be a condition of his leniency. Now he has a Green Party opponent, a political novice.

But wait... there's more beyond the chances of a Green candidate, who is white, to beat Dobbins. Dobbins, who is black, is running in a majority black district and there's been a historic tendency of black voters to support black candidates over white candidates in such circumstances.

Democratic Majority Leader Rep. Steve Harrelson is quoted here as mentioning some sentiment in the House in favor of refusing to seat Dobbins if he's elected. This comes several days after I'd been told that the Republican caucus might make an issue of this. I don't think that's a bad idea. It remains to be seen -- given the frailties some of them have exhibited over the years -- whether legislators will  impose sexual harassment as a bar to membership. There's also a more interesting political dimension, at least for Democrats. Sen. Tracy Steele, a leader of the black caucus in the legislature, which is solidly Democratic, has already been quoted in a manner supportive of Dobbins. A black caucus behind Dobbins might create sticky politics for Democrats who look to the caucus to form alliances on other issues.

UPDATE: Rep. Bryan King, leader of the House Republican caucus, confirms that Republicans are looking into the possibility of a vote to block Dobbins' seating. "There's a likely possibility that not seating him will be addressed," he said.

Between The Iconoclast's own insightful commentary and the well-informed readers of his NWA-centered blog, you get a good deal more texture about the bizarre machinations underway over the future of Fayetteville High School.

Will it move to another location?

Will it be sold to the UA?

Will it be sold to a shadowy private development group?

Did you know the University's offer of about $50 million -- despite a $60 million appraisal -- is actually worth only about $40 million?

Which fat cats -- Tyson, Lindsey, someone else -- are REALLY driving this deal?

Public affairs worthy of a reality TV show. It might give some indication why they're having such a hard time finding a new superintendent for one of the state's best school districts.

The forces of intolerance are closing in on the number of signatures needed for a ballot initiative to make adoption harder for all Arkansans, but most particularly gay people. They've announced plans to have canvassers at the Farmers Market Saturday morning to lurk among the pole beans to gather more signatures.

Just say no. Politely of course. Encourage others to do the same. The measure is profoundly anti-family, despite the label carried by the group advocating this proposal.

Unless I miss my guess, I doubt there are any gun restrictions on the books in Arkansas subject to challenge under yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The legislature took away city and county home rule on gun legislation years ago.

But for gun nuts and their opposite number, there's good analysis in the NY Times of what will come next. The court's care to say many kinds of restrictions, including on specific weapons, would not be disturbed doesn't mean the NRA won't be out trying to blow holes in any impediment to quick arming of the populace with as many and as powerful guns as possible. Linda Greenhouse did her usual good reporting of the decision itself.

Good for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for following our disclosure, published Wednesday, that the city of Little Rock had paid $1,770 for an article about Vice Mayor Stacy Hurst in Soiree magazine.

Bad for the DOG for not noting that a tip to the Arkansas Times, and a Times information request, unearthed the news in the first place.

PS ON THE MEAT OF THE MATTER: A reader who's had some dealings with the state Ethics Commission writes to object to Commission Director Graham Sloan's seeming off-hand exoneration of Hurst in an interview with the D-G, particularly in that his remarks were based on the presumption that she had not requested the payment from the city. That is an issue that remains at best unclear. It's hard, after all, to know how the bill reached the city if Hurst didn't direct it there. She and the city haven't been taking questions. The reader complains:

A reporter calls Graham Sloan. He offers an opinion without any evidence. He says "well, it is not like she used her position to pressure the city" and so it is not a violation of the statute that prohibits special privileges. How the hell does he know? In fact, we know his premise is false. Now, if someone files a complaint, Graham is not going let the facts get in the way and change his opinion.