April 10, 2008

On The Cover

Homeschool Alibi: No Guarantee Of Quality

By Frosty Troy

Bad law has a bad outcome when an Appeals Court rules that parents wishing to homeschool their children must have a teaching credential.

What’s Inside

Frosty’s Notebook: War No More

By Frosty Troy

They came in wheelchairs, on crutches, some with canes. Oklahoma veterans were in the House gallery for a joint legislative session convened to thank them for their service.

House Dems Still Can’t Get Bills Heard: Heavy-Handed Republicans

Are House Democrats and their bills receiving better treatment under new Republican Speaker Chris Benge?

Senate Staffers Win ’08 Sunshine Award

Freedom of Information Oklahoma, a statewide organization actively supporting organizations and individuals working to open records or provide access to government, has honored the directors of the state Senate Communications Division and Information Systems Department with its annual Sunshine Award.

Subject: Driving In Tulsa Metro Area

If your Tulsa map is more than a few weeks old, throw it out and buy a new one. If you’re in Broken Arrow and your map is one day old, then it is already obsolete.

Most Female Inmates Suffer Mental Illness: Task Force Proposed

The state Senate has approved a bill that would establish a task force to study state agency roles and responsibilities to help ensure that mentally ill women who have been incarcerated are successfully reintegrated into society.

Oklahoma’s Obesity Extracting High Price

By Doug Walton

Serious problems don’t always require complicated solutions. In a state ranked second in deaths due to cardiovascular disease and last in the percentage of adults eating five or more fruits or vegetables a day, it’s not very difficult to conclude that if Oklahomans ate better, they would be healthier.

A Long Muzzled Watchdog Threatens To Bite

Only time will tell whether the sorriest act of the 2008 Legislature was the death of legislation to adequately fund the Oklahoma Ethics Commission.

Old Myth, New Reality For Gun Rights?

By Danny M. Adkison

The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments over a case that may be one of the most watched cases of this current court. It deals with the Second Amendment: the right to keep and bear arms.

Public Forum

Kern Forgets To ‘Love Neighbor As Self’

By Loyce Newton-Edwards

Archbishop Desmond Tutu once observed that, “You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.”

Kern Makes Oklahoma Laughingstock

By Ted Eudy

An open letter to Rep. Sally Kern: It was another sad day for Oklahoma when you again made a good state the laughingstock of the nation.

A School Bus Driver Pleads For Seat Belts

By Everett J. Sweeney

In Indiana recently, another school bus was involved in a collision and overturned, resulting in injuries to children. This is especially alarming because Indiana, like Oklahoma, does not require seat belts for children on school buses.

Observations

Bad Bills

The press release said they were “Republican education reforms.” We have lost count of the crimes committed in the Legislature under the rubric of “reform.”

Whoopee

There are some surveys we would just as soon skip, such as the new one from France. It notes that French women simply don’t suffer from the same dramatic, post-40s slide into sexual obsolescence as American women.

Merit What?

This first nationwide report card is in and the news is that so-called merit pay plans are not performing as the authors claimed they would. Check the findings in the March 12 issue of Education Week.

Sold!

Have any doubt that our senior U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe is owned body and soul by the oil industry?

Reforms Die

The Republican state senators, a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry, have killed vital reform bills.

Looking Up!

With Democrat Bill Foster winning former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s old seat in a special congressional election in Illinois, the future of the Democratic Party looks good.