Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Arkansas newspapers:

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. July 15, 2019.

Paul Krugman, that card, once said predictions are hard, especially about the future. His writing may not be intentionally funny, but when an economist writes, you take the giggles where you can find them.

It didn’t take a clairvoyant to understand that the medical marijuana people all those years ago really just wanted a foothold in Arkansas. And the next item on their agenda would be recreational pot.

That’s how they got there in other states. See Colorado, Nevada, the left coast states. First go to the voters with this plaintive argument: Just give the sick some comfort, will ya? You can’t want to take away their only freedom from pain or distress.

Then, once voters fall for it, you go to them for full legalization.

When Arkansas’ voters were being courted by the medical marijuana crowd back in 2015-16, one spokesman for a pro-dope outfit let the truth slip. It was dutifully reported in Arkansas’ Newspaper. He said, as far as the budding industry of marijuana was concerned, his people would work to decriminalize it eventually, but through “incremental change.”

One step at a time. And the first step was medical marijuana.

So it should come as no surprise to see the headlines from last week. Now they’re pushing for a vote on recreational pot in Arkansas. Emphasis on pushing.

Arkansas is a scorchingly populist state. That’s how voters here are able to elect and re-elect Asa Hutchinson, Tim Griffin and Leslie Rutledge, and then vote for medical marijuana, raising the minimum wage, etc. Voters in these parts hire politicians. They don’t always listen to them.

Which is why for all the conservative groups and politicians condemning recreational marijuana, it’s going to be hard to predict any vote, especially one in the future.

More from the papers: “A longtime medical-marijuana advocate said Tuesday that she’ll make a push to get on the 2020 ballot a proposal to legalize marijuana for recreational use in Arkansas. Melissa Fults, executive director of the Drug Policy Education Group, said she plans to file two proposed constitutional amendments with the secretary of state’s office this afternoon, so that she may begin gathering signatures for the 2020 ballot.”

Two proposed constitutional amendments? Yes.

One to legalize pot. The other is called the Arkansas Marijuana Expungement Amendment, which would allow people with convictions for small amounts of marijuana to petition a court for expungement of the record. So not only would these folks legalize weed, but make it retroactive!

Can it happen here? You’re darned right it can. Some of us never dreamed that Arkansas voters would approve medical marijuana, yet the dispensaries are opening all over. Any day now we’ll see advertising on TV: Mary Jane’s blowout sale!

Asa Hutchinson seems to have the same concerns that a lot of us have - and have had. According to Hunter Field’s report the other day, the governor, on hearing the latest, told a luncheon: “I do not believe it is the right direction to go for Arkansas, so I would encourage you, don’t sign that petition, don’t support that initiative. Let’s make sure we get the medicinal marijuana right and let’s hold the line and the distinction on that point.”

But that’s never been the goal. The objective has been complete legalization of marijuana from the beginning. Those pushing legal dope always knew that. And sometimes even said it.

All the “incremental” steps have just been smoke and mirrors. With a lot more smoke than mirrors.

___

Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. July 16, 2019.

There must be at least 50 ways to be a book lover.

In Bentonville, thanks to two creative librarians at Osage Creek Elementary School and Creekside Middle School, one of those ways this summer might involve a driver saying “Get on the bus, Gus.”

Carol Halbmaier and Kim Moss, according a July 5 story, for years dreamed of doing to something to promote reading during those summer months when kids like to forget about school. But forgetting about school doesn’t mean forgetting about learning, and reading is hands down one of the fundamentals to lives filled with learning.

The former kindergarten teachers-turned-librarians, during the school year, work at what’s known as The Bridge, a shared library connecting Osage Creek and Creekside schools. As advocates for reading, they recognized what a lot of school teachers and libraries know: If kids stop reading during those summer breaks, a lot of the progress made in their school-year academic work can be lost.

Their answer literally cranked up in June. The School District provided an old bus and helped marshal the resources to transform it into a mobile library. A lot of volunteer work went into the transformation, too. Complete with bookshelves and places to sit, the bus makes the rounds to 11 stops within the schools’ attendance zones every Wednesday during the summer months. Other school staffers have pitched in to spread the word that the Bridge Bus has arrived offering books. Those books can be returned later, but nobody is sweating the details if kids decide to keep them. The whole point is to create opportunities for year-round reading at kids’ homes.

Certainly other schools or districts have had mobile library efforts. We applaud them all, and appreciate the creative drive to serve young people during those summer months when a trip to a public library may not always be possible or, perhaps, not high on a parent’s priority list.

The Bridge Bus is a great example of the passion many educators have for helping students learn - whether at school or away.

___

Texarkana Gazette. July 16, 2019.

On the morning of July 16, 1945, a group of scientists and military officers were gathered in a remote part of the New Mexico desert to watch the dawn of a new age.

It had taken three years to get to that point. The world was at war and these men had worked to develop a weapon that would end it.

The Manhattan Project was the code name of their effort. The weapon was the atomic bomb. And on that morning they would find out whether they had succeeded.

The bomb was 10 miles in the distance. At 5:10 a.m. the 20-minute countdown began. The explosion came a few seconds before 5:30 a.m.

The bomb exploded with the fury of 20 kilotons of TNT. A mushroom cloud rose more than seven miles into the sky. The shock wave was felt more than 100 miles away. A crater 10 feet deep and 1,100 feet wide was left at the site of blast - the desert sand inside crystalized into radioactive green glass.

All their work had come together. The project was a success. The atomic Age was born.

It was more than a bit chilling for some observers. Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer later said he thought of a line from Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

President Harry S. Truman was notified of the test results. It would be less than a month before the bomb would be used on real targets.

Modern historians debate whether it was right to create such a weapon. Or whether we should have used it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 100,000 people.

Hindsight is easy. But we see no reason for such revisionist speculation.

The development and deployment of the atomic bomb ended World War II. And saved millions of lives_both American and Japanese_that would have been lost in the invasion of Japan. One can endlessly debate the merits of nuclear weapons. But the fact is the successful bomb test of July 16, 1945, was the culmination of one of the greatest scientific and military operations in history. It was done for the right reasons.

And it brought peace.

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