Stefan Warner Credit: Mark Hancock Before dawn on Feb. 11 in the Seminole County town of Schoolton, Stefan Warner, youth pastor at Church of the Open Arms in Oklahoma City, suspended himself high above the ground to construction machinery used to build the Keystone XL pipeline. “I ascended a side boom and attached a platform […]
Obama
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Flatlined
Hundreds of Oklahomans in need of free dental care packed the Oklahoma Mission of Mercy in Lawton last month. Photo: Clifton Adcock On a cold February evening at the Comanche County Fairgrounds in Lawton, a steady stream of people entered the building and walked between the cattle gates erected on either side herding them to […]
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What about the public good?
Corporate executives were once proud that their enterprises produced jobs and wages for employees as well as products and services. Today, the system seems to consider labor a commodity to be purchased at the lowest price. And whereas CEOs once averaged salaries equal to 60 times what their hourly workers made, today’s CEOs commonly earn […]
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Embracing early childhood education
In contrast to previous mandates for bubble-in quick fixes, the administration now endorses collaborative and coordinated efforts emphasizing socio-emotional interventions and diagnostic data so that children read for comprehension by third grade. He now heeds the wisdom of generations of scholars, including Nobel Prize winner James Heckman, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and many […]
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Here comes the judge
President Barack Obama selected Bacharach in January 2012 to fill the position vacated by Robert Henry in 2010. Despite widespread bipartisan backing, the nomination languished as Senate Republicans slow-played it in hopes that the GOP would take the White House in the presidential election and subsequently allow a President Romney to make such appointments. Even […]
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Cars and guns
U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee, told a Tulsa radio station that he is working with some Senate Democrats on legislation that would require background checks for people buying a gun — the idea being to keep weapons out of the hands of convicted criminals and the mentally ill. That news, of course, has excited the easily […]
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Hurri-can’t
Credit: Brad Gregg Or not. Oklahoma freshmen congressmen Jim Bridenstine, R-Tulsa, and Markwayne Mullin, R-Westville, voted last week against a bill to provide $10 billion in emergency relief for flood victims of Hurricane Sandy, which caused an estimated $70 billion in damage in New York and New Jersey. Fortunately for the victims of Sandy, the […]
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Game Change
If Sen. McCain’s choice of the largely unknown Alaska Gov. Palin as his veep choice seemed out of nowhere then, there’s good reason: Because it pretty much was. McCain, here played by Ed Harris (Man on a Ledge), wanted Sen. Joe Lieberman, but was talked into someone “more transformative” by hired gun Steven Schmidt (Woody […]
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Cliff hanger
“He was pilloried by many within his own party who said that taking Cole’s approach amounted to surrendering before the fight had even started. More than a month later … it turns out that Cole was, in the main, right,” wrote The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza. “It’s the difference between tactics (a series of one-off […]
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Bearing arms
Credit: Shannon Cornman But that wasn’t all. Miles Hall, owner of H&H Shooting Sports Complex in Oklahoma City, said public demand for firearms, ammunition and gun safes came quickly following the news. The rush to buy guns was partly provoked by comments from President Barack Obama, who hinted at renewed guncontrol policies at a Dec. […]