One night in Arkansas: Sarah Palin and Madeleine Albright

It's a busy segment to the week in Central Arkansas, with a visit from a prominent political personality topping the list of coffee shop chatter this Wednesday morning.

About 5 thousand people showed up to hear Sarah Palin talk at Verizon Arena last night. Palin was speaking at a fundraising event for the state Republican Party. She urged Arkansans to start a revolution at the ballot box in 2010. The event brought in about $400,000, before expenses.  There are unconfirmed reports that Palin was paid about $75,000 for her appearance, plus expenses including a private jet. It also cost the party $13,500 to rent Verizon Arena for the evening.  Palin said she agreed to the Arkansas appearance because the state is the center of political change and is being watched by the entire country.

Saline County is looking for new ways to go after kids who skip school. The Saline County Quorum Court has given preliminary approval to a daytime curfew for anyone under 18.  If you're on the streets between 9 am and 2 pm when school is in session, you can be arrested.  The curfew needs a second reading and subsequent approval next month before going into effect. Saline County officials note that a similar curfew has been effective in Pine Bluff.

An employee at a Benton preschool says she was fired because she had to report to jury duty. The judge in the case has called her boss into court to explain what's going on. His attorney says the call for jury duty just happened to correspond with other issues, but the employee says her termination letter explains she was fired because her boss believed the letter to report for jury duty was faked.

As we turn to the blogs this Wednesday, we're sticking with politics and taking note of another interesting event that was happening at the same time Sarah Palin was speaking:

While Sarah Palin was appearing last night at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock, another woman of distinction was across the river in Little Rock speaking in the Great Hall of the Clinton Presidential Center. The first female United States Secretary of State and the highest ranking woman in the history of [...]

Sticking with politics, Citizens Daily News blog notes the latest from the U.S. Senate Race:

A coalition of environmental groups has taken Senator Lincoln to task for her support of the Murkowski amendment that will essentially take the teeth out of the Clean Air Act with regards to CO2 emissions.   Audubon Arkansas sends the following release: LITTLE ROCK, AR (February 16, 2010) — Today, a coalition of Arkansas conservation organizations sent [...]

And from Northwest Arkansas we got a kick out of the headline for this blog post at Ozarks Unbound:

Study: University of Arkansas Worth $725 Million to State Economy in 2009 – ArkansasBusiness.com. FROM THE ARTICLE: The chancellor’s office commissioned the Walton College of Business’ Center for Economic and Business Research to conduct the study. The full 106-page document can be found here. It examined spending by the university, faculty, staff, students and visitors, and includes [...]

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