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Satire just doesn't go down easy. The New Yorker gets a blast from the Obama campaign for its latest cover. I hope somebody shows this to all the people furious at Tommy Durham, creator of Orval, for his own satirical take on those who are demonizing Obama.

UCA's Lu Hardin is by no means the only Arkansas campus leader whose statutory payment is augmented by outside sources. He is, so far as we know so far, the only one whose augmentation wasn't carefully handled enough to stay within the legal limits. You are allowed by state law only your statutory pay plus a 25 percent bonus from public money.

Belatedly, I notice David Sanders wrote a column Sunday on a $250,000 deferred comp plan, financed by a campus-related Foundation, for Arkansas Tech president, Robert Brown. The column doesn't cover all the nitty gritty, but Arkansas Tech appears to argue that the foundation in this case is fully private and thus any payments made at its discretion to the president are outside the state pay cap. Sanders writes about secrecy in the operation of this foundation. That is perhaps legal if the foundation receives not a cent of public money from Arkansas Tech. It's still bad practice. And its payments also must be reported annually in filings with the IRS. Plus, at UA campuses, top leaders file an annual disclosure on outside income sources. Thus, for example, you can see the payments coaches receive from the Razorback Foundation and any outside pay the chancellor receives. I don't know if this is a legal requirement or only campus policy,  but it's a sound practice.

UPDATE: David tells me the Tech Foundation is housed on university property and its employees are paid by the university. If that's true, no way in hell they can claim an FOI exemption. Razorback Foundation tried that years ago. Lost. That's when they went totally private.

Another e-mailer this morning wrote to complain about the bonus plan and retirement plan voted for the former president of Henderson State University, along with a housing stipend. In this case, the payments were reportedly Board authorized and financed by public money, apparently within the amount allowable by law. The writer just believed it excessive.

The mail started me thinking about housing stipends and other add-ons. Is this considered income for purposes of computing maximum allowable pay?

It's probably time for a comprehensive statewide look at total pay packages and money sources for all the top campus leaders in Arkansas.

John Fund in the Wall Street Journal isn't too impressed by Mike Huckabee's decision to endorse star boodler U.S. Rep. Don Young in what looks like a losing race for re-election in Alaska. Not exactly vice presidential judgment.

Mr. Huckabee lauds Rep. Young, an original backer of the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," as one of the few in Congress "who fully recognized the direct link between infrastructure and job creation and economic development." In other words, Mr. Huckabee considers money hijacked from taxpayers and used to fund Congressional earmarks to be an engine of economic growth.

... Meanwhile, in linking up with Mr. Huckabee, Mr. Young has only underlined what kind of "conservative" he is. Mr. Young is a classic big-government conservative whose appetite for more infrastructure projects became so large that just this spring he proposed a $1 per-gallon tax increase on gasoline. Talk about bad timing.

It's open. But the growing problems in Afghanistan, where nine U.S. troops died today, are on my mind. Afghanistan, remember it? That's what the war was supposed to be about until Bush took us into Iraq on false pretenses.

And, of course, there's the implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and a debt-ridden government piling on more debt to rescue them.

Hillary Clinton shucks the corn on this sorry administration:

"Our president goes to Japan four months before the election that will finally show him the door and says he's going to take global warming seriously," Clinton said. "Then as he's leaving the G-8 conference, says to people around him, 'Goodbye from the biggest polluter world in the world.' You've got to ask yourself, how did this happen to our country?"

Clinton said the last eight years had many "highlights."

"A vice-president who shoots somebody in the face, you couldn't make that up," Clinton said to laughter.

She added, "the Republicans should hold a press conference and apologize to the country and say they're just not going to run anyone for president."

Arkansas Blog readers, I hope, click around from time to time to our other blogs. Such as:

Eat Arkansas, where Jessica Kokinos-Havel is reporting on the latest sushi in town and where Jennie Swanson (above, left) reports on her salmon fishing expedition to Alaska to catch her own sushi.

A Boy Named Sooie, where, if you missed it in the print edition, Derek Jenkins wrote a touching tribute to a former Razorback.

Ninja Poodles, where Belinda Hankins chronicles an outing on Greers Ferry Lake.

Street Jazz, where Richard Drake is assessing the race for Fayetteville mayor.

And there are still more blogs to choose from here, from A Chick Named Mick to blogs about the law, movies, Razorbacks, nightlife and whatever pops into Billiken Man's head.

Interesting update from Stephens Media today on a state law that requires driver's license suspensions (and teachers' licenses, too) for people identified as child support deadbeats. It's showing some positive results.

Winners of the Arkansas Press Association's annual contest were announced at the convention this weekend.

There are threeweekly and three daily newspaper categories, based on circulation, but the weekly Arkansas Times chooses to compete in the top category against the state's daily newspapers. (Our staff of 9 compares with roughly 250 for the Democrat-Gazette.) Nonetheless, we managed to eke out a little recognition.

This year:

FIRST PLACE, coverage of education;

FIRST PLACE, website design;

FIRST PLACE, special issue (our anniversary coverage of the Little Rock school crisis);

FIRST PLACE, free-lance writing, by UALR's Dr. Johanna Miller Lewis, an article examining the roots of the 1957 crisis;

THIRD PLACE, editorial cartoonist Tommy Durham for his "Orval" strip.