Andanh.com

Have you seen the Democrat-Gazette's newspaper-leading exhaustive and exhausting report that says Public Service Commissioner Paul Suskie got an irregular early return on his National Guard tour as a JAG officer in Iraq? (It was his second war tour. The state JAG explains he's been working to provide shorter tours for lawyers -- akin to those routinely given doctors -- as a means of recruiting sufficient numbers of the professionals to JAG duty.)

Your thoughts?

Mine: It was interesting, but didn't merit the prominence it was given. The courtesies afforded professionals (doctors, lawyers, at least in Arkansas) are special treatment, but they seem to be justified to meet staffing needs. The undue burden placed on all troops and their families by Bush's war remains the more compelling story.

Will vampire stories from an Arkansas author, Charlaine Harris, be the basis for HBO's next big hit? The NY Times does a big feature on the coming series "True Blood."

I'll pass.

Arkanas isn't likely to go Obama, barring a national landslide,  Brummett writes.

So to summarize with brutal candor: Obama's biggest political problem nationally is with white rural voters and that only so happens to be the very group that decides races in Arkansas.

Mike Beebe, Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln, Marion Berry, Mike Ross - it serves them well to say they'll not get involved with Obama unless he puts a premium on their efforts by getting involved with us.

They'd like black voters to know of this willingness, you see. Remember that an Arkansas Democrat must appeal at once to rural white voters and black voters.

SPEAKING OF OBAMA: David Sanders writes (link fixed) that he has an apparent white soul brother in the Republican candidate for House in Conway.

Belinda, over at the Ninja Poodles blog on our community blog page, offers some striking up-close-and-personal photos and comment on what happens when a Chesapeake shale drilling operation comes to a residential neighborhood. Not pretty. Not quiet. Despite what the expensive PR campaign might have you believe.

Picture this same operation if you will in a wildlife refuge, where there are no neighbors with phones to complain, however vainly. The laying hens that had to be relocated from this site give you some idea of how much the animals like it. On the jump, Belinda passes along a cry of distress from her friends.

The latest Gov. Mike gets a mixed review in Andrew DeMillo's weekly column. 

Rough essence: Sounds good, but a question about follow-through.

Brummett comments on the Britney-Spearing of Barack Obama. Problem is: it's sure enough happening. And there's not a great counter-strategy apart from mass brain implants for voters susceptible to Republican attack politics.

NOTED TODAY: Obama doesn't intend to get whipped on the issue that seems to be the only thing Republicans have working -- more oil drilling. He's with Pryor and Lincoln and expanding offshore drilling. It'll do nothing for gas prices, but that doesn't matter. Repubs seem to have convinced voters that it will.

Gov. Beebe said in a radio interview yesterday that he thinks public pressure is growing sufficiently to produce a meaningful felony animal cruelty law. (Morril say it was OK this time?)

The linked article mentions the state Game and Fish shale lease, but not the growing legal controversy over the notion that any gas bonanza on its lands may be used only by the agency for wildlife purposes. Carried to the logical extreme, Game and Fish could share money for environmental expenses only to cure depredation to its own land. Nothing else in the state could or would benefit.

If that's so, it's time to change the Constitution, period. Or get ready for an agency that not only has a car for every employee, but a Land Rover for every employee, if the gas bonanza is of the size that Chesapeake seems to expect with its $30 million front money payment. Some time in the 22nd or 23rd century the agency might even begin actively serving wildlife lovers who find different ways to enjoy them beyond shooting them or impaling them with hooks.

UPDATE: I exaggerate a bit about Game and Fish by way of making my point about their wildlife myopia. But, in fairness, the environmental groups should not be claiming they were blind-sided by gas exploration on wildlife refuges. Back in 2006, the agency filed its budget request for consideration in the 2007 legislature. The document contains a discussion, beginning on page 4, about the agency's hope to reap a windfall from gas leasing. They are actually behind schedule. They had hoped for $15 million in the first year of the two-year budget cycle, which ended June 30. But they have more than caught up to the $20 million they hoped to earn.