I am posting a great March Madness Moment from the article by A. J. Foss called Ultimate March Madness: The 20 Greatest Moments in NCAA Tournament History
Christian Laettner’s game-winning shot ended one of the great games in NCAA Tournament history.1. 1992 Duke-Kentucky
It is the moment that is replayed every March. It is “The Shot” or the Laettner game.
With 2.1 seconds to go in overtime and trailing 103-102, Duke forward Grant Hill throws a full-court pass that is caught by Christian Laettner at the top of the key.
Laettner dribbles once after the catch and shoots an 18-foot fade away that goes through the net as time expired to send Duke to the Final Four for the fifth straight year.
Laettner finishes the game with 31 points as he makes all ten of his shots and all ten of his free throws in what most experts consider to be the greatest game in NCAA tournament history.
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What are the Democrats in the Arkansas State House and Senate up to now concerning the issue of the “Fayetteville to the Fourth” movement? I wrote earlier that they were going to succeed in getting this done but it was a political move that will pass because of their political power in the House and Senate and not because the people support this move. (By the way it passed the house already with only one Democrat voting against it, Rep. Lindsey.)
In fact, I pointed to a poll that showed clearly that over 80% of the people in Fayetteville oppose this move. Since then the Democrats have questioned the results of that poll even though they dare not run a poll of their own. Maybe someday the Republicans will win the majority and consider putting Fayetteville back in the 3rd district?
Jay Barth is M.E. and Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of Politics Chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations Director of Civic Engagement Projects at Hendrix College. He wrote the article Legal Gerrymandering in the Arkansas Times.
The best way for Arkansas’s Republicans to reshape district lines in their favor is to win control of state government by the time the next redistricting process takes place. (A more complex issue is whether they could do that before the next census, as the Texas legislature—driven by House Majority Leader Tom Delay—did in the middle part of the last decade.) For this is an area where elections truly have consequences.
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Steve Brawner wrote the article “After losing, Democrats try to renew the map.”
The Fayetteville Finger has only one purpose — to pull more Democrats into the First and Fourth districts while cramming as many Republicans as possible into the Third. It’s winning not by persuading voters to a particular point of view but instead by simply shifting them out of the way. That kind of power grab has a long history in American politics — it’s called “gerrymandering” — but we haven’t seen it in traditionally one-party Arkansas until this year.
I’ll give the Democrats this — at least they are being honest about their intentions. And it could be worse. Some districts in other states look like jigsaw puzzles even my mom wouldn’t have tackled. The idea actually appears to strengthen the GOP’s position in the Second District, won in 2010 by a Republican, Tim Griffin.
Still, this kind of game-playing hasn’t been the status quo before and doesn’t need to become the status quo now. Parties should win elections by earning the trust of a majority of voters, not by redrawing maps. Fayetteville belongs in the Third District.
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It now seems the Democrats have put the finishing touches on their Fayetteville to the Fourth plan and that they will pass it like I earlier predicted. Here is what it looks like as reported by Jason Tolbert:
Tolbert comments:
The most glaring feature of the new map is that it still includes moving Fayetteville out of the third and into the fourth…. Gone is the Crawford County Slice and Franklin County move. Instead that go through Johnson, over the bridges of Madison County to wrap into Washington County and grab Fayetteville… The connection from Johnson County into Madison County is more dirt roads.
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We will have to wait and see how this drama plays out in the next few days.
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