Commentary
Rep. Joe Dorman
Forty-seven lives were lost during the storms that hit our state last month. The death toll could have been lower if suitable shelters were widely available.

Commentary
Robin Meyers
I handed my driver’s license to the Transportation Security Administration agent in the Manchester, N.H., airport, and she said, “Oh, my God! Oklahoma? My condolences to your state.”

Commentary
Brandon Dutcher
Startling but true: Growing up in a stable, two-parent family is the exception, not the rule, for Oklahoma teenagers.

Commentary
Mickey Hepner
It’s just a little tax cut. It can’t hurt anything, can it?

Commentary
Andrew Rice
In April 2010, I attended an Oklahoma City Thunder playoff game against the Los Angeles Lakers and stood the entire game, along with 18,000 others. Our young team made a furious comeback to win. I did not lose my voice that night from cheering; I lost it from screaming.

Commentary
Nicole Hill
Do you know what it takes to be an Oklahoman? You probably don’t, because to be an Oklahoman is to be balls-to-the-wall crazy.

Commentary
U.S. Rep. James Lankford
Cash Western Store has been a fixture in the thriving community of Seminole since 1939. Now owned by Mr. Bob Berry, it is a small shop, specializing in work boots, Western attire and things people who work on, say, an oil pipeline might be interested in.

Commentary
Nathaniel Batchelder
Oklahoma City residents Nancy Zorn and Stefan Warner are among several members of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance arrested for nonviolently protesting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Opposition to the pipeline and development of the Canadian tar sands is based on a long-range view of tar sands development and its threat to sustainability on earth.

Commentary
Mike Brake
The delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention conducted their deliberations in secret. These were thoughtful men who realized that the decisions they faced — how to design and construct a form of government to maximize the freedoms only recently won in the American Revolutionary War — required a great deal of give-and-take.

Commentary
Vince Orza
When I was a kid attending college, the general rule was it would take four years to complete a degree.

Commentary
John Thompson
Being an educator has become like drinking water from a fire hose. Oklahoma City administrators and teachers barely have the time, money or know-how to tackle challenges that must be met, such as improving early childhood education, ensuring that students read for comprehension by third grade and evaluating teachers with rigorous new observations.

Commentary
Joe Siano
Young students do connect-the-dot worksheets to learn numbers. Students draw lines from a dot to another dot in numerical order and a true picture is revealed. When they don’t, there is no picture, or it’s distorted.

Commentary
Cal Hobson
With the exception of that most beloved Republican activity — the buying, selling, exchanging, concealing, cleaning, carrying, showing, stroking and shooting of guns — members of the party once led by Lincoln are now best known for their genetically driven obsession: cutting taxes anytime, anywhere, any size, for any reason or excuse.

Commentary
Jonathan Fowler
Oklahoma City needs its own Cain’s Ballroom.

Commentary
Rep. Jason Nelson
In the cult movie classic The Princess Bride, Vizzini repeatedly uses the word “inconceivable” as his efforts to evade pursuers fail. Inigo Montoya finally replies, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”