Columns

The same day a jury found Carl Magee guilty of criminal libel on June 22, 1923, Judge David Leahy spared no words as he sentenced the editor to a year in jail.

“No, Carl Magee,” said Judge Leahy, “you, and others of your kind — and thank God they are mighty few — are a greater menace to civilized society, to the lives and liberties of the people generally, than is the cow thief or horse thief.”

Call me an old fogey if you want, but I think the Farmers’ Almanac is an interesting read.

I can’t say I’m a loyal buyer of the annual booklet, but I’ve been perusing it for years, as a “gift” to this and other newspapers I’ve worked at. In other words, it’s a freebee I’ve enjoyed.

This year, however, I didn’t receive one (or somebody else around here got hold of it before I did). So I was pleased to find a complimentary copy sitting on the counter at Quality Motor Co., which I gladly snatched up.

In a rare moment of genuinely bipartisan lawmaking, the president recently signed the JOBS Act into law. Short for “Jumpstart Our Business Startups,” JOBS will roll back some of the regulatory barriers that small and mid-sized entrepreneurial ventures face in their efforts to grow and go public.

This is a great victory for the American start-up community. Now, policymakers need to turn their attention to the hurdles in the way of talent acquisition.

In honor of the fiestas that grace our landscape, last year at about this time I wrote a column about some of the festivals I’ve experienced up close and personally.

There’s Toad Suck Daze in my old hometown of Conway, Ark. It’s named after an area along the banks of the Arkansas River where, legend has it, people used to go to suck on bottles of booze “until they swelled up like toads,” giving Conway a novel name for its festival that, actually, has nothing to do with Toad Suck but has drawn national attention anyway.