JERICHO, Ark. — It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps. The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.
posted by finite on Sep 3, 2009 - 151 comments

Be a hero on your own time (VIDEO) When McDonald's employee Nigel Haskett interceded to stop a man who was beating a woman in the restaurant, the assailant went outside, retrieved a gun from his car and shot Haskett – “multiple times,” as the employee stood at the door to keep the assailant from re-entering the restaurant. $300,000 in medical bills later, McDonald's insurance says no dice: "we have denied this claim in its entirety as it is our opinion that Mr. Haskett's injuries did not arise out of or within the course and scope of his employment."
posted by thisisdrew on Feb 19, 2009 - 104 comments

The Faubus Motel: Possibly the Worst Motel in America
posted by Secret Life of Gravy on Dec 3, 2008 - 152 comments

Curfew is declared in a 10 block area of a small Arkansas town. [more inside]
posted by Daddy-O on Aug 13, 2008 - 90 comments

30 years ago today, Frank Stanford, a young Arkansaw poet shot himself three times in the heart with a 22-caliber pistol. He was 29. By then he had become a powerful and unique voice in the American poetry landscape, dubbed "a swamprat Rimbaud" by Lorenzo Thomas and "one of the great voices of death" by Franz Wright. He left behind a strong (though often hard to find and/or unrecognized) body of work, most notably his immense epic The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, a 15,280 line poem with no punctuation or stanzas. [more inside]
posted by troubles on Jun 3, 2008 - 44 comments

Every One That Hates Billy....” It featured a photograph of Billy’s face superimposed over a likeness of Peter Pan, and provided this description of its purpose: “There is no reason anyone should like billy he’s a little bitch. And a homosexual that NO ONE LIKES.”

Billy, busy building a miniature house, didn’t see it coming: the boy hit him so hard in the left cheek that he briefly lost consciousness. [His mother] remembers the family dentist sewing up the inside of Billy’s cheek, and a school official refusing to call the police, saying it looked like Billy got what he deserved.

[more inside]
posted by orthogonality on Mar 23, 2008 - 267 comments

Mayor Ken Williams of Centerton, Arkansas, recently resigned over allegations of identity theft and other weirdness. He claims that a truth serum injection helped him to recognize that he was formerly The Rev. Don LaRose. He runs a website telling the "amazing story" (in 11 chapters) of his abduction by satan-worshippers three decades ago.
posted by amyms on Nov 26, 2007 - 19 comments

Through a Lens Darkly - on September 4, 1957, when 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford tried to enter Little Rock Central High, she was blocked by the National Guard and surrounded by a screaming mob of 250: "Lynch her! Lynch her!" "No nigger bitch is going to get in our school! Get out of here!" "Go back to where you came from!" Looking for a friendly face, she turned to an old woman, who spat on her. Photos. Dramatic news footage. Ernest Green, another of the Little Rock 9 recalls the first day of school. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Sep 25, 2007 - 48 comments

Blood Money : A widow is fighting to open records on how tainted blood plasma from Arkansas prisoners entered the U.K. and led to the death of her husband.
posted by thisisdrew on Aug 20, 2007 - 7 comments

Go skateboarding Day didn't end well for a bunch of teenagers in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Youtube Video. Unreasonable/Excessive force by the police? You decide.
posted by blaneyphoto on Jun 27, 2007 - 175 comments

Maryland joins the ranks of states attempting to thwart the electoral college. Maryland's General Assembly approved a bill [PDF] to ignore the U.S. Electoral College [official website] in presidential elections, instead awarding the state's 10 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. [via | previously on MeFi | more inside]
posted by terrapin on Mar 30, 2007 - 71 comments

“There’s nothing like a BIG MELON to bring everybody together in Hope.” ( video ) It takes Bright Women to grow big melons, and old men to pick the world's largest. A better tagline possibly: "Hope Arkansas: Home of President Bill Clinton and the World's Largest Watermelons". Videos, as always, brought to you by the Hope MelonFest On-Deman Video Center.
posted by thisisdrew on Dec 21, 2006 - 9 comments

Crater of Diamonds State Park Interested in obtaining diamonds but feeling troubled by the diamond business? Head over to Arkansas and dig your own damned diamonds.
posted by Burhanistan on Dec 11, 2006 - 24 comments

First they came for the atheists - Arkansas state constitution says: "Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness:- No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court" Link to pdf, pg 74 in pdf(via reddit).
posted by forwebsites on Aug 18, 2006 - 102 comments

"I am under censure for mentioning numbers...." "I am instructed NOT to use hard numbers when telling kids how old rocks are. I am supposed to say that these rocks are VERY VERY OLD... but I am NOT to say that these Ordovician rocks are thought to be about 300 million years old."

Essentially, they are not allowing Bob to teach a certain set of scientific data in order to protect their ability to provide students the good science curriculum they do teach. The directors... have heard from them more than enough times that teaching evolution would be "political suicide".

In Arkansas, even supporters of teaching evolution feel they must hide, obfuscate, and water-down evolution.
posted by orthogonality on Mar 23, 2006 - 111 comments

Mirrors. Documentarian Bruce Jackson found "a group of about two hundred 3x4" identification photographs made between 1914 and 1937... in a drawer in the Arkansas penitentiary in the summer of 1975"; this (slideshow) is the online record of an exhibition.

It is impossible to look at these images and not think about the persons depicted there. But, save for one fact that is a given—and what we find in or infer from these images—we know nothing about those persons, and never will. The given is that they are all prisoners: for whatever reason, they have been deprived of liberty, the single piece of enduring proof of which is the image at which we presently gaze. The conclusions we draw, the feelings we have, the narratives we suppose—they are all our own. The images are mirrors, resonating with aspects of our selves we perhaps never before encountered.

Many of them are haunting; this one has been turned by time into a work of art. (Via Ramage.)
posted by languagehat on Dec 21, 2004 - 34 comments

Junkscience: Top Ten "Most Embarrassing Moments" of 2004 Whoops: "10. University of Arkansas researchers attacked the Atkins Diet in January with a report linking a high-carbohydrate diet with weight loss, saying it was possible to lose weight without cutting calories and without exercising. What they didn’t reveal, however, was that the study subjects who lost weight actually ate 400-600 calories per day less than those who didn’t lose weight." I don't see the big deal behind number 6.
posted by skallas on Dec 5, 2004 - 45 comments

Giant Jesus stops traffic in Ohio. Church officials say their King of Kings statue is the largest in America, but the folks in Eureka Springs, Arkansas might have something to say about that. Their seven-story Jesus weighs in at over two million pounds.
posted by Otis on Nov 30, 2004 - 60 comments

From the vantage point of my office window, one might wonder: "Presedential Library, or world's largest mobile home?"
This part of the country hasn't seen modern architecture like this, Newsweek lamented....the Clinton presidential library is an architectural tour de force that introduces the Midsouth to a structure more significant than anything it's ever seen. ..but from the vantage point of the Interstate 30 bridge, to the average columnist or cross-country trucker, didn't it kind of look like a trailer?"

For Arkansas, the grand opening of the center — which houses the Clinton Library — will be one of the biggest events in the state's history. All former presidents and President Bush will attend.
posted by thisisdrew on Nov 5, 2004 - 25 comments

Arkansas Governor's School , one of over 100 "Governor's Schools," starts today. The program is going in to its 24th year despite years of controversy over several mediums.
posted by whoshotwho on Jun 13, 2004 - 17 comments

Box of Snakes 'Linked to Death' Little Rock, Ark. Police are investigating a link between a mysterious box of venomous snakes and the death of a business traveler whose body was found in a rental car last week.
posted by mcgraw on May 22, 2004 - 10 comments

The Counter Clinton Library A tax exempt reaction to the Clinton Library being built in Little Rock, Arkansas.
posted by the fire you left me on Apr 15, 2004 - 26 comments

Sticking to the gay stuff: The ACLU is threatening legal action against a middle school in Arkansas whose administrators have gone to extraordinary lengths to punish a student for being gay, including outing him to his parents, forcing him to read passages of the Bible, calling him "abnormal" and "unnatural," and disciplining him for mentioning between classes to a female friend that he thought another boy was cute. (via CalPundit) [more inside]
posted by grrarrgh00 on Mar 16, 2003 - 29 comments

Arkansas court rules fetus is 'a person.' The court's ruling addressed "a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by a man whose wife and unborn child died during birth procedures." What does this mean for the abortion battle under the current administration?
posted by Julia2100 on May 11, 2001 - 74 comments

Whitewater Prosecutor Clears Clintons of Wrongdoing "Independent counsel Robert Ray said on Wednesday that there was insufficient evidence to prove that President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton engaged in criminal conduct in the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas"
posted by owillis on Sep 20, 2000 - 3 comments

The Clinton Legacy Grows The state of Arkansas began disbarment proceedings today. I've already blogged it but figured everyone else would want to know.
posted by mikewas on May 22, 2000 - 1 comment