Un-parallel universes
Last fall, Gov. Mary Fallin, to her credit, announced an initiative to increase the number of college graduates produced in Oklahoma to 50,900 annually by 2023. That's a 67 percent increase over the...
View ArticleHear ye, hear ye
For three days starting Monday, the fate of health-care reform in America will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Proceedings will not be televised, an anachronism in an era when everything from ...
View ArticleHome Alone
On a sweltering, dead-still night, the sound of someone outside her window awakened my mother, alarming her enough to call an older neighbor. Roused from a dead sleep, he told her he didn't have a gun ...
View ArticleFrisky business
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court told Americans they must submit to the indignity of a jail-required strip-search if asked, even if those unfortunates are held on minor offenses.
View ArticleA wow moment: The aging of Oklahoma's prison population
So, how's it going to end up for 73-year-old Darlene Mayes, the retired Department of Human Services worker turned Craig County drug suspect, who's old enough to be Paul McCartney's wife?
View ArticleReview: 'Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed - And Why It Still...
Seventeen years is a long time to wait for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the worst act of domestic terrorism on U.S. soil.
View ArticleWinning the 'lottery': State gambles on storm shelter safety
Five hundred Oklahomans won the 'lottery' in January. Their bonanza didn't go toward new cars or trips to Paris; winners instead threw their winnings down a hole.
View ArticleWhat you won't see on the graduation card
Those graduation cards with the checks inside are stacked up ready to mail out - cards with chirpy challenges such as 'Reach for the stars,' 'Follow your dream,' 'If opportunity doesn't knock, build ...
View ArticleMothers and children
In time for Mother's Day, the human rights group Save the Children released its annual report on the status of mothers and children worldwide. The United States ranked an inexcusable No. 25 among 164...
View ArticleMoving against arthritis
On May 9, 1863, only 10 months after enlisting in the Missouri Militia, Cpl. James N. DelCour lost his job as a wagon driver supplying Union troops in southeast Missouri.
View ArticleSesquicentennial
If there's a symbolic sound track for Memorial Day ceremonies in Oklahoma and elsewhere, it surely would be 'Taps,' the baleful bugle call that is celebrating its sesquicentennial year.
View Article49th is not OK
In the late 1980s, before passage of the historic House Bill 1017, Oklahoma swam with the bottom-feeders nationally in per-pupil spending.
View ArticleTax on soft drinks a hard sell
The U.S. government rationed sugar during part of World War II, distributing the number of 'Sugar Buying Cards' based on the size of a family. Most Americans considered their shared sacrifice to be for...
View ArticleCarrie's stand
The detractors are out there, on the airwaves, on the Internet, behind the pulpit, arguing that Carrie Underwood's forward-thinking stand on same-sex marriage is all wrong.
View ArticleMonsters among us
Two weeks ago, on the outskirts of Shiner, 'The Cleanest Little City in Texas,' a young father killed a ranch hand moments after he found Jesus Mora Flores raping his 5-year-old daughter behind a barn ...
View ArticleSmoke in our eyes
You could virtually smell the smoke simply by watching or reading reports out of the Colorado Springs area, which recently has experienced the most destructive wildfire in its history. That raging,...
View ArticleOklahoma: Next criminal justice success story?
Oklahoma House Speaker Kris Steele is thinking big. He almost sounded like a Texan in an interview last week when he predicted that 'Oklahoma might well be the next national criminal justice success s ...
View ArticleHuge jobless rate
The comedy of errors started with the colonel rearing back his chair and bumping me. That caused a tossed salad to catapult off my serving tray and slide down the spine of his wife, who was decked out ...
View ArticleChanneling Dorothea Lange
Accompanying this column about Oklahoma's long-running battle to improve child well-being is an unflinching portrait taken 76 years ago, during the depths of the Great Depression, by famed Farm...
View ArticleCowardly lions
Oklahoma Sens. James Inhofe and Tom Coburn consider themselves lions of the U.S. Senate, men standing on principle, men willing to take an unpopular stand whether it be earmarks or global warming,...
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