Listening to our State of the State address this week and reading about just some of the literally thousands of bills being proposed for the now in session 2025 legislative buffet, I somehow feel Oklahoma lawmakers are missing the point about leading our state forward. We have to get our public schools on a path […]
Commentary
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New Year’s resolutions for Oklahoma
Heading toward the 2025 Oklahoma legislative session, lawmakers can reflect on last year’s session, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” After seeing over 3,000 potential bills filed for consideration, the session boiled down to a handful of meaningful issues and scored few real points for Oklahoma. The good: progress on grocery taxes for seniors […]
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A fair election process for all
I’m a lifelong Oklahoman and a former educator. I also had the privilege of serving in our State Senate for six years. I believed then and now that people should always come before politics. Unfortunately, I had a front-row seat to how our current election system is failing voters. In fact, our closed primary system […]
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The aftermath (glow)
Nov. 5 has come and gone, and now an extremely polarized citizenry has the difficult task of re-unifying the country around not a president, but the founding ideals that have bolstered the American democracy for more than 230 years. This election year was unprecedented: two assassination attempts on a party nominee and former president, the running of […]
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OCPA: A stink tank
It was born in a corporate board room in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in 1992 and became organized and active in 1993. Since that time, it has endorsed every effort to shrink Oklahoma’s ability to educate her children, provide health care, protect the environment or preserve the civil rights of its citizens. It has promoted every effort […]
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Israel’s 9/11
In the unfolding horror of the last three weeks, many Israelis have called the horrific attack from Hamas “Israel’s 9/11.” If that’s true, let’s hope they handle it better than we did. Unfortunately, it looks like they will not. In fact, it looks like they are following our playbook of revenge, wanton destruction, […]
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Black Sky Affair
Anticipation is riding high as Saturday’s annular solar eclipse approaches, with millions across North America looking forward to the second to last such event for the next two decades in our part of the world. Ideal viewing conditions are forecast by the National Weather Service for the duration of the eclipse, with clear and sunny […]
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Violence begets violence
Word came this morning that Palestinian militants launched the largest surprise attack on Israel since Yun Kippur in 1973 and the two sides are now at war. More than 2,000 rockets have been launched into Israel, and communities bordering the Gaza Strip have been invaded and occupied. By the time you read this, Israel […]
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Is God a Christian nationalist?
The rhetorician Kenneth Burke is best known for his theories of human communication as drama, but perhaps his most famous quote is about the essence of the human species itself. This is pre-inclusive language, but otherwise it’s a masterpiece: Man is the symbol-using, symbol-making, symbol-misusing animal, inventor of the negative, separated from his natural […]
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No wonder people hate religion
I have spent my life working on the inside of organized religion, even though my love/hate relationship with most God-talkers makes me an outsider. A quick reminder for those who still go to church: Jesus was permanently — and lethally — on the outside of the religion of his time, and his denunciations of […]