Even for southerners, Arkansans are amazingly friendly and extend hospitality to all strangers with astonishing openness. You couldn't find a pretension in that state if you hunted from Jonesboro to El Dorado.

Arkansas, the state Bill Clinton loves and that loves him back, is a place with just no pretension at all.

Anyone who has ever spent time listening to a legislature knows the astonishing speed at which all presiding officers and reading clerks can spit out the formulaic incantations of parliamentary procedure.

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.

In Congress, there are some who are unashamed to aspire to eloquence, even to scholarship, but the only state legislator I ever knew who would not join in the mispronounceciation of a word for the sake of camaraderie with her fellows was former State Senator and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.

Even I felt sorry for Richard Nixon when he left; there's nothing you can do about being born liberal - fish gotta swim, and hearts gotta bleed.