After my column about Attorney General Jon Bruning's crime package was published last Saturday, I had a voice mail on Monday from his Chief of Staff, requesting that I return her phone call so we could "discuss" what I had written in that column. I returned the phone call immediately, but got her voice mail. I identified myself, told her I was returning her call and that I would be happy to discuss my column with her if she still had an interest in doing so. She never returned my call.

 

The inside word is that Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel will not only not run for president, he won't run for re-election to the U.S. Senate either. Seems like he's had enough, at least for now, of the political process and the minefields that elected officials have to navigate through. A recent poll indicated the leading Republican candidate to replace him would be Attorney General Jon Bruning.

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Remember the live video of the University of Nebraska private plane parked on the runway in Fayetteville, Ark., a few years ago while University of Nebraska officials tried to persuade the Arkansas football head coach, Houston Nutt, to become Nebraska's head coach after Frank Solich's dismissal?

As the news finally came out later, Nutt was given sufficient future assurances from Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles, that he turned down the Nebraska job and stayed at Arkansas. It was probably the best thing that could have happened to Husker fans. After a couple of sub-par seasons following the offer, Arkansas rebounded this year, rising as high as sixth in the national polls before losing their final three games to LSU, Florida, the eventual national champions, and their bowl game to Wisconsin.

Darren McFadden, the premier Arkansas running back, was second in the Heisman Trophy balloting and is the odds-on favorite to win the award next year. In addition to McFadden, Arkansas also had the 2005 national high school quarterback of the year, Mitch Mustain, along with his three top receivers from high school and his high school coach, who was hired as offensive coordinator. After a season that looked to propel Arkansas back to the national stature it had enjoyed under Frank Broyles, Lou Holtz, and Ken Hatfield, the wheels began to come off. Gus Malzahn, Mustain's high school coach and the Razorbacks offensive coordinator, resigned to take a similar job with the University of Tulsa.

One of the wide receivers who played high school ball with Mustain and had originally committed to the University of Florida before changing his mind and enrolling at Arkansas, asked for and was given his release and has transferred to USC.

Earlier this week, Mustain himself asked for and was given his release as well and appears to be headed either to the University of Oklahoma or the University of Louisville. Reading the fan forums on different Arkansas sports sites, along with the columns of prominent sports writers in Arkansas, Nutt and Broyles are receiving all the blame for the implosion of the team and most Arkansas fans are clamoring for the resignation or firing of both. Maybe this is one deal Nebraska didn't make that ended up in their favor.

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It looks like another weekend of snow according to the forecasts. If we have frozen precipitation this weekend, it will be the fifth weekend in a row. Trying to figure out if it IS going to snow and how much we're going to get, however, is a difficult task. I have taken the National Weather Service in Goodland to task before for not publicizing storms that are coming in, especially on the weekend. This causes problems for people who plan on traveling when bad weather may be moving in. The National Weather Service is responsible for issuing watches, warnings, advisories, and hazardous weather statements (all called "highlights" in meteorological nomenclature) to advise the public of possible upcoming inclement weather.

Once again, as this is being written at the noon hour on Friday, the NWS in Goodland, which releases forecasts and highlights to our area, is erring on the side of caution once again.

For those of you with computer access, if you go to www.nws.noaa.gov/, you will find a weather graphic of the United States with all the watches and warnings highlighted in a variety of colors. Then you just click on a particular point on the map to receive details about the weather for that area. As of this writing, we are surrounded by color. There are Winter Storm Warnings, Winter Storm Watches, snow advisories, heavy snow warnings and hazardous weather condition statements to our north, south east and west but the counties covered by the Goodland NWS has absolutely nothing posted except a forecast.

For many of the areas mentioned above, watches and/or special weather statements were posted two days ago for possible inclement weather as a way of warning people to stay tuned to the latest forecast. However, if all you know about the weather is the forecast you hear on the radio, you have no idea of the potential severity of the approaching storm and its massive influence from Northern Nebraska through Kansas, Oklahoma, and all the way to the Texas/Mexico border to our north and south and to western Arkansas, western and central Missouri and western and central Iowa to the east. Joe Bastardi of AccuWeather.com is calling for a major winter storm reaching all the way from Interstate 40 to Interstate 80.

 

Maybe we will only get the one or two inches that is being forecast for our area and maybe we won't get anything at all. But if you're not aware of the magnitude of this storm that is in close proximity to us, you might drive off on a journey totally unaware of what you might be driving into. To be unaware is to be unprepared and being unprepared is courting disaster.

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My heart is with RH wherever she might be.