Hello.

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We've got a beautiful Capitol.

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Saturday.

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Passing a rainy afternoon at Ozark Beer Company.

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Happy Mother's Day.

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Three years and a day ago, Emily and I attended the inaugural lecture of the Dale and Betty Bumpers Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Arkansas. President Clinton served as the speaker, but Emily and I wanted to snag a photo with DB.

(You can watch President Clinton’s full lecture here.)

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Passed HB1197 through House Judiciary Tuesday. I'll present the bill before the full House Thursday.

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You have to have sharp elbows if you want to change something.

James Carville

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January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, Arkansas accounted for 170 calls to its anti-trafficking hotline [phone]) and 26 reported cases of human trafficking in 2013.

I worked with a group of bipartisan legislators (including Senator Missy Irvin, with whom I'm now working on a juvenile justice issue) to pass a package of anti-human trafficking bills that year. At the time, Polaris ranked Arkansas among the four worst states in terms of its ability to address human trafficking. After the bills became law, Polaris ranked Arkansas as one of the five best states in the country.

The bill I carried included a requirement that certain establishments—including airports, bus stations, strip clubs, and others—post information regarding the NHTRC hotline.

The day I filed the bill marked a decade since I had traveled to Romania, Serbia, and Bosnia to research human trafficking with the hopes of writing a book—but that's a story for another time.

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I'm working with Senator Missy Irvin (R-Mountain View) to address this issue here in Arkansas. Our state maintains one of the largest populations of individuals serving juvenile life without parole (JLWOP). Only Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, California, and Louisiana hold more individuals sentenced to JLWOP.

Last November, I traveled to Washington, DC, for the annual Healing & Hope event hosted by the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. While there, I joined a handful of bipartisan legislators from across the country as part of a workshop panel to talk about juvenile justice issues.

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Met Emily for lunch at Eleven at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art today. I might love the architecture even more than the collection.

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Local treasure and renowned poet Miller Williams passed away January 1. Emily and I always loved seeing Miller and his wife, Jordan, around Fayetteville. They each always had such encouraging words.

Among his many accomplishments: founding the University of Arkansas Press and reading his poem "Of History and Hope" at President Clinton's second inauguration in 1997. I remember watching the latter on television. Miller was also the father of singer and songwriter Lucinda Williams.

The photo above of Miller sharing a hug with Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, his cousin, was taken at a campaign event of mine in Fayetteville on September 14, 2012. It's one of my favorite shots from that night.

Miller was 84.

[Photo credit: Stephen Ironside, Ironside Photography]

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Mario Cuomo's 1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote

If you’ve got forty minutes or so, Mario Cuomo’s keynote at the 1984 Democratic National Convention really is something else.

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Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation—the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the “impossible,” come true. Life was something you dominated if you were any good. Life yielded easily to intelligence and effort, or to what proportion could be mustered of both.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

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Great morning here at the National Ideas Meeting hosted by No Labels.

We're at the United States Institute of Peace. The building is beautiful. Walking around this morning, I kept thinking that something about the space felt familiar, so I looked up the architect, and I learned that the building was designed by Moshe Safdie, the same man who designed Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.