Recently in Oklahoma::Politics Category

American Majority's Tulsa candidate training seminar, originally scheduled for just before Christmas, will be held in two Saturdays, on February 20, 2010, from 8:30 to 4:00. It will be at the Tulsa Technology Center Lemley Campus, in the Career Services Center, at 3638 S Memorial. There is a registration fee (see below).

There will also be an American Majority activist training seminar in Tulsa this Tuesday night, February 9, 2010, 6:30 - 9 p.m., at St. James Methodist, 111th & Yale. This event is free of charge.

Here are the details for the activist training event:

American Majority Oklahoma together with OK for Tea is pleased to announce that an Activist Training will be held on Tuesday, February 9th in Tulsa, OK for citizens looking to make a difference in their community, state and nation.

The seminar will be held at St. James United Methodist Church located at 5050 E. 111th Street in Tulsa. Registration for the event will begin at 6:15 pm, with the first session beginning at 6:30 pm. The seminar will end at approximately 9:00 pm. This cost for this training is FREE and open to the public.

American Majority Activist Trainings are designed specifically to educate and unite liberty-minded activists from around the state by giving them practical ideas for successful activism and equipping them with creative ways to be more effective in their communities.

Topics for the seminars include: "Building Coalitions and Organizing Events", "Hitting the Campaign Trail", and "Holding Elected Officials Accountable through Effective Communication"

Upon completion of the seminar, participants will receive complimentary continuing education materials, communications curriculum, and a list of recommended reading materials to become better equipped and stronger activists in their communities.

To RSVP for the event or for more information, contact Trait Thompson with American Majority Oklahoma at 918-289-0159 (e-mail: trait@americanmajority.org).

Here are the details for the candidate training event:

Every elected official, from school board member to state legislator to the President of the United States plays a vital role in shaping the policies and direction of our communities, states, and nation. These offices deserve men and women who are grounded in the principles of liberty and individual freedom.

American Majority Oklahoma is hosting a Candidate Training on Saturday, February 20 at Tulsa Technology Center (Business and Career Development Training Center) located at 3638 S. Memorial in Tulsa. The training will run from 8:30am to 4:00pm with registration beginning at 8:00am.

Regardless of campaign experience, American Majority's Candidate Training Program makes running for office easier! American Majority Candidate Training Seminars are designed specifically to educate candidates on every level how to run effective and victorious campaigns and prepare them to become successful elected officials.

The Candidate Training Program includes:

• Lectures* from campaign veterans, including:
• "Your Campaign Plan to Win: Planning for the Time, People and Money to Win."
• "Dollars and Sense: Fundraising for What You Need, Not What You Can Get."
• "New Media Engagement: The New Ways to Talk to Voters and Engage Supporters."
• "Grassroots Action: How Ordinary People can get Extraordinary Results."
• "American Majority's Core Principles."
• Personalized communications training.
• Interaction with individuals thoroughly involved with the issues confronting your state.
• The opportunity to network with other liberty-minded candidates.
• A complimentary resource guidebook full of material designed to further assist candidates.

Upon completion of the seminar, candidates will receive continuing education materials, access to podcasts and other presentations, communications curriculum, and suggestions to help them utilize think-tank resources.

The cost is $50 per candidate/first attendee in advance or $75 per candidate/first attendee at the door, and $25 for each additional attendee (spouse, campaign staff, campaign volunteers, etc.) in advance or $40 for each additional attendee (spouse, campaign staff, campaign volunteers, etc.) at the door. Space is limited.

Please click here to use our online reservation system and secure your place now! If you have any questions, please contact Trait Thompson at Trait@americanmajority.org or call (918)-289-0159.

American Majority is a non-profit and non-partisan organization whose mission is to train and equip a national network of leaders committed to individual freedom through limited government and the free market.

*Lectures are subject to change

(Sorry to be so late in posting this.)

The Tulsa County Republican Party is holding an open county-wide meeting at the Tulsa Technology Center Lemley Campus, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010, 9 a.m. Party officials will give an update on local party activities, and many candidates running in 2010 will be there. Speechifying, I am told, will be kept to a minimum. Here are the details:

The Tulsa County Republican Party will hold a county wide meeting and rally this Saturday, February 6, 2010 beginning at 9:00 am. There will be numerous GOP primary candidates in attendance allowing voters time to meet and speak with the candidates. This event will be held at the Tulsa Technology Center; Lemley Campus located at 3420 S. Memorial in Tulsa and should be completed by 11:00 am. A short survey will be conduced asking GOP voters what they think about national, state and local issues involving government and the Republican Party in general. Included in the survey will be a straw poll involving open seats in 2010 at the national, state and local levels. The meeting will include information on the progress of the Tulsa County Republican Party over the past year and on plans for the remainder of 2010. 2010 is a BIG year for Republicans and we encourage everyone to attend this important meeting.

Mike Ford has a timely word:

ATTN: CONSERVATIVES

The email FWDs won't change policy.

Talk radio is not community participation.

The GOP cannot be blamed for ignoring our values if we do not show up and promote them.

Time to get plugged in and active.

Save the Party, Save the Nation.

The Citizens in Charge Foundation has issued its 2010 report card on voter initiative rights in each of the states. (The full state-by-state report is an 8.2 MB PDF. The flag pictures are pretty -- I always like to see the old-fashioned font, with the arched A, used for OKLAHOMA, instead of the Star Trek original series font -- but they make the document much bigger than necessary.)

Oklahoma was given a C+: Oklahoma gets high marks constitutional guarantee of the right to propose constitutional amendments and ordinary statutes by petition, and to petition for a referendum to repeal a statute, and for including all political subdivisions under its constitutional provisions.

But Oklahoma loses points for an insufficient period for gathering signatures (only 90 days -- second shortest) and a high signature requirement (15% of the last general election for constitutional amendments -- the nation's highest requirement); both provisions make it difficult for grassroots initiatives to make it to the ballot. The report card recommends increasing the signature-gathering period to at least 9 months, reducing the signature requirements to 8% for constitutional amendments and 5% for simple statutes, and tying the signature requirement to the last election for governor, rather than the last general election.

Oklahoma ranks among the toughest states to qualify an initiative for the ballot, with the nation's highest signature requirement and second shortest circulation period. A proposed expansion of the petition period overwhelmingly passed the state legislature in 2009, but was vetoed by the governor. That same year a bill passed that moves the process for challenging the ballot title for an initiative to before signatures are collected, instead of afterward. Additionally, legislators placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2010 allowing voters to decide whether to tie the number of signatures needed to the last election for Governor. Currently the number is tied to the highest office in the preceding elections, which resulted in a 37 percent increase in the number of signatures needed after the 2008 presidential election.

I'm surprised the report didn't mention the controversy over TABOR and the Oklahoma Three, which had to do with the use of out-of-state petition circulators for the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights proposal. The issue of out-of-state circulators is mentioned in several other states' report cards. The need for paid circulators would diminish if a longer signature period and lower signature requirements were adopted.

I'm happy to see that the opportunity to challenge an initiative's ballot title has been moved earlier in the process. It would be frustrating to go through the trouble of collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures, only to have the measure struck down by a court.

(Hat tip to Bob Weeks at WichitaLiberty.org, who reports that Kansas received low marks -- Kansas has local initiative and referendum, but not at the state level.)

UPDATE: Jason Carini informs us in the comments that there is a state question on the ballot that will improve matters some what. It doesn't change the percentages, but it does eliminate presidential election turnout as a basis for the number of required signatures. If SQ 750 passes, only turnout in the last governor's election will be used to determine signature requirements. This PDF shows the amendment to Article V, Section 2 of the Oklahoma Constitution proposed by SQ 750. Here is the approved ballot language for SQ 750:

This measure amends a section of the State Constitution. The section deals with initiative petitions. It also deals with referendum petitions. It deals with how many signatures are required on such petitions. It changes that requirement.

"Initiative" is the right to propose laws and constitutional amendments.
"Referendum" is the right to reject a law passed by the Legislature.

The following voter signature requirements apply.
8% must sign to propose law
15% must sign to propose to change the State Constitution.
5% must sign to order a referendum.

These percentages are based upon the State office receiving the most total votes at the last General Election. The measure changes this basis. The measure's basis uses every other General Election. General Elections are held every two years. The Governor is on the ballot every four years. The measure's basis only uses General Elections with the Governor on the ballot.

The President is on the ballot in intervening General Elections. The measure's basis does not use General Elections with the President on the ballot.

More votes are usually cast at Presidential General Elections. Thus, the measure would generally have a lowering effect on the number of required signatures.

You can read all the state questions on the Oklahoma Secretary of State's website.

Jamison Faught has caught the Muskogee Phoenix newspaper in an interesting omission. It's in an Associated Press story (originating in the Oklahoman) on two Democratic Oklahoma state senators, Earl Garrison and Kenneth Corn, intervening on behalf of a Muskogee highway contractor named Craig Glover. Glover had been rejected by the pre-qualification committee of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT). According to a Dec. 7, 2009, story in the Oklahoman, a company owned by Glover's father had been banned from ODOT work. Glover's father, George Paul Glover, "pleaded no contest in early 2007 to conspiring to use prohibited road material and intimidating a state grand jury witness." After the senators' intervention, ODOT approved the younger Glover's company to bid on ODOT projects, and the company has been awarded $35 million in state highway work.

The curious omission? Only one of the two state senators is mentioned by name in the Phoenix's version of the story, and the one that isn't mentioned is the local legislator, Earl Garrison.

Read the whole story at Musings of a Muskogee Politico.

Via NewsFifty's Oklahoma news page: State Rep. Jason Murphey (R-Guthrie) is considering proposing legislation to reform the structure of county government in Oklahoma. In an Edmond Sun op-ed, Murphey sets forth his concerns. At the heart, the lack of adequate separation of powers when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars:

In the past, I have expressed that I feel it is important for a governing board which approves a budget to not have the ability to specifically direct where that money goes. The chances for politicians to engage in corruption and self-serving political pork appropriations are greatly enhanced when the board's ability to set policy and to specifically direct that spending are combined. In past updates, I have written about how Oklahoma legislators are becoming experts at getting around the constitutional prohibition of this type of conduct.

During the course of my years as a public official, I have observed that county government is a significant area in Oklahoma governance where these two responsibilities are not sufficiently separated. This blurring of the policy and expenditure power results in county governments that are extremely susceptible to "good old boy" politics where county officials can exert strong political influence over employees and vendors in order to create a small political empire funded by taxpayer dollars.

His solution:

County government should operate much like the governance model used in city government. A largely uncompensated board of elected citizen county commissioners should have oversight over a professional county manager who has the same education and qualifications as a city manager. This person would be responsible for hiring the county department heads, thus providing for employees a level of protection from political pressure. Much like a city council, the Board of Commissioners would set policy and budget, but have no ability to direct specific expenditure of funds outside of a competitive bid process.

I approve the idea of limiting the ability of public officials to handpick contractors, but I'll need to be convinced that Murphey's proposal is appropriate for every one of Oklahoma's 77 counties. In fact, the one-size-fits-all structure of Oklahoma county government is a problem that reform should address. In some counties, most of the territory is unincorporated and the few municipalities are small and not in a position to offer a complete slate of basic municipal services. In such places, county government may be the only effective way to deliver those services to residents. In Tulsa and Oklahoma Counties, only a few small areas are unincorporated, and many of those are within the fenceline of a municipality.

During the debates over county home rule in the late '80s and early '90s, there were calls for consolidation of less populous counties. But the relative stability of Oklahoma's county boundaries -- only two new counties since statehood and a handful of boundary adjustments -- is a boon to record keeping and comparisons over time. By contrast, Britain has been tinkering with its local government boundaries for over a century with two major overhauls over the last 35 years. Now there are historic counties and ceremonial counties and administrative counties, which may or may not coincide.

Any county activity that has to do with land records and court records -- county clerk, county assessor, county treasurer, court clerk -- should remain with the 77 counties. But we may want to consider another, more flexible approach to providing municipal services.

One possibility: Create a special class of municipalities incorporating the remaining unincorporated territory in each county. These new entities would be responsible for law enforcement, roads, parks, and other municipal services. They would be governed by some adaptation of the existing "statutory charter" -- the default form of government established by state statute for cities and towns that have yet to adopt a charter of their own. For some services, they may wish to enter into compacts with incorporated cities and towns. Some thought would need to be given to unincorporated areas within an existing municipality's fenceline. i suspect we would want to make it easy for areas within these special county-municipalities to attach themselves to a city or town or to form a new town.

Oklahoma's laws makes it difficult to create new municipalities, particularly anywhere near an existing city or town. Perhaps we should make it easier, so that rural residents could incorporate to protect themselves against annexation, so they can protect their ability to raise livestock, shoot off fireworks, and generally live without the constraints of city ordinances. Berryhill residents might jump at the opportunity.

Whatever the solution, the discussion is worth having, and Rep. Murphey is to be commended afor raising the issue.

New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich traveled to Sen. Tom Coburn's Muskogee farm for a profile which appears in today's edition:

As the health care overhaul heads to the Senate floor, Mr. Coburn is preparing for what he considers a career pinnacle of havoc. Enacting the proposal, he says, would be catastrophic, and so if precedent holds, he will try to hinder it with every annoying tool in his arsenal: filing amendments (he has done that 508 times since joining the Senate, second only to John McCain's 542 in that period), undertaking filibusters and objecting strenuously.

"When it comes to obstructing bills, he is part of a very tiny pantheon in the history of the Senate," said Ross Baker, a Senate historian at Rutgers University.

To Mr. Coburn, charges of obstructionism are a mark of honor he will wear as proudly as ever in the coming weeks.

"My mission is to frame this health care debate in terms of the fiscal ruin of this country," said the 61-year-old Mr. Coburn, who recently railed on the Senate floor that the federal debt was "waterboarding" his five grandchildren. "I have instructed my staff to clear my schedule for every minute that bill is on the floor."

After inflicting migraines in Washington, Mr. Coburn goes home on weekends to Muskogee, where he treats patients on Mondays. He says he does his best thinking aboard his John Deere mower, which can run 20 miles an hour and slash through pretty much anything on his seven-acre meadow. Mr. Coburn dons earplugs, stares straight ahead and cuts a determined swath, just as he does in the Senate.

And now for the story behind the story, from Politico:

While in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Leibovich was gamely listening to Coburn coo over how much he loves mowing his fields with his beloved John Deere tractor. At the end of the interview, we hear, Coburn bravely attempted to teach the scribe just how to use his John Deere. (Apparently, it's quite the machine, with different protruding levers and what not. For clarification, please imagine the chicken scene in "Footloose.")

Leibovich, a city kid at heart hailing from the Boston suburbs, became instantly overwhelmed and in front of a photographer and the fine senator, wound up driving the tractor straight into Coburn's barn....

Coburn's office shared some more info on the whole ordeal. Spokesman John Hart explained, "In act of heroism, a New York Times reporter on a high performance John Deere tractor narrowly avoided colliding with Senator Coburn who was decapitating a water moccasin that was slithering toward his barn. The reporter instead grazed the Senator's barn, missing the Senator with room to spare. An armadillo meandering through the field was not so lucky, however."

RELATED: A vivid illustration of the rate of growth of the national debt over the last 100 years:

You have likely heard about the lawsuit by abortion advocates seeking to halt implementation of Oklahoma's newly enacted abortion reporting legislation, due to go into effect on November 1, 2009. Here is a news release from Oklahomans for Life debunking a number of claims made in the lawsuit:

NEW OKLAHOMA ABORTION-REPORTING LAW DESIGNED TO HELP WOMEN Abortion advocates, news accounts misrepresent law

TULSA - Abortion advocates, aided by several recent news accounts, continue to misrepresent a new Oklahoma law strengthening abortion reporting in the state. The Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act, set to go into effect on November 1, 2009, was passed by large majorities in the Oklahoma House and Senate and signed into law by Governor Brad Henry in May. It is being challenged in a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

"Abortion advocates either don't understand - or else are intentionally misrepresenting - Oklahoma's new abortion-reporting law," said Tony Lauinger, state chairman of Oklahomans For Life. "It is not true, as alleged, that reports about individual women's abortions will be posted online, nor will reports about individual abortions contain personal identifying information: no name, no address, no hometown, no county of residence, no patient ID number. To say otherwise is clearly false and misleads the public."

The Center for Reproductive Rights has persistently misrepresented the Oklahoma law, claiming that it requires doctors to provide information about where women live. These assertions are absolutely false.

As written, the new law requires that a report for each abortion be sent to the Oklahoma State Department of Health. The questionnaire gathers demographic information including age, race, marital status and educational level and gathers information on the method of abortion used. Numerous states have similar reporting requirements, and the abortion industry collects and publishes similar information through annual surveys by the Guttmacher Institute (formerly the research arm of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America).

The new reporting form also asks for the reason the abortion is being sought. The reasons for the abortion listed on the questionnaire are adapted from the September 2005 report, "Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives" published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health by the Guttmacher Institute.

Contrary to claims of abortion activists, the new law actually protects a woman's privacy more extensively than current Oklahoma law. The current reporting form asks for the woman's county of residence. The new law, however, repeals the existing law and any identifying residential information has been eliminated in the new reporting form.

Reports gathered in Oklahoma's three abortion facilities would be submitted on a monthly basis to the Department of Health which will "ensure the security" of the reports. Further, reports may be "accessed only by specially authorized departmental personnel" who will not be able to identify the woman or know in which of Oklahoma's 77 counties she lives. The Department of Health will then produce an annual statistical analysis of the demographic information. Individual abortion reports will not be published.

"It is hoped that the information gathered will make it possible in the future to address some of the underlying societal problems, such as absence of child support or lack of childcare, which lead some women to seek abortions." Lauinger noted.

Abortion complications will also be reported under the new law. Abortion advocates frequently refer to abortion as being "safe, legal, and rare." However, very little data exist regarding abortion complications. When a lawsuit is filed over a botched abortion, there is typically an out-of-court settlement, so there is very little statistical data about the extent of the damage that abortion inflicts on women.

"Abortion is the most under-regulated, under-investigated, and under-researched procedure done on American women today, yet it is the most common and most potentially dangerous to their health and well-being," noted National Right to Life Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D., in a September 29 release. "If a state can get a handle on the reasons women have abortions, it can lead to better programs that will make it easier for women to have their children rather than resort to abortion."

"Reducing the number of abortions is a goal that even abortion advocates claim to support. This legislation could help achieve that objective by identifying the problems that lead Oklahoma women to seek abortions. Important public-health benefits will be achieved by Oklahoma's Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act," Lauinger added.

The text of the law is available here: http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/2009-10bills/HB/HB1595_ENR.RTF.

The case is Davis v. W.A. Drew Edmondson.

Oklahomans For Life is the state affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee. The National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest pro-life group, is a federation of affiliates in all 50 states and 3,000 local chapters nationwide.

# # #

A computer abandoned in ACORN's Oklahoma City office contains files that indicate a close working relationship between the leftist community organization and the Oklahoma Democratic party, according to State Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City. ACORN's former landlord gave the computer and files to Reynolds after the office was abandoned by ACORN last fall. A file on the computer plans to target two State Senate districts and three State House districts.

According to a story on the McCarville Report Online, the computer also contained a letter apparently from State Sen. Andrew Rice -- or at least written for his signature -- urging the U. S. Customs and Immigration Service to expedite the processing of citizenship applications.

MORE: BigGovernment.com, home to the hidden camera investigation of ACORN offices around the country, is watching the Oklahoma City ACORN story. Here is BigGovernment.com's full ACORN archive. And Andrew Griffin has more detail at Oklahoma Watchdog.

Anita MonCrief shows how ACORN's tactics look suspiciously like a protection racket.

PLANiTULSA's draft vision, developed by Fregonese Associates in response to the PLANiTULSA scenario survey, will be available after 2 p.m. today, September 15, 2009, at PLANiTULSA.org. City of Tulsa planners are seeking feedback on the draft, which is not a detailed comprehensive plan, but a first step in that direction, defining in broad terms what kind of development is desired and where. An open house on the vision and small area concepts will be held at the Greenwood Cultural Center a week from Wednesday, September 23, 2009, from 4:30 to 8 p.m., with formal presentations at 5:30 and 7.

It will be interesting to see if the draft vision emerges as an issue in the ongoing City of Tulsa elections.

Also, tonight (September 15, 2009), the Oklahoma Department of Transportation will hold a public meeting about Tulsa's place on a high-speed rail corridor tonight at 6 p.m., at the Aaronson Auditorium at Central Library in downtown Tulsa. Meanwhile, last week, ODOT began demolishing the platforms and rail yard of Oklahoma City's Union Station. Oklahoma rail activist Tom Elmore comments:

If "High Speed Rail" and an Oklahoma hub are important enough to ODOT that it would seriously apply for "2 billion federal dollars," then why isn't saving the OKC Union Station rail hub at 300 SW 7th an even greater priority? (ODOT contractors started destroying the rail yard there last week -- the "week of 9-11-09.")

ODOT's clear message? If Oklahomans are going to have advanced surface transportation, they're going to have to pay ODOT's favored contractors for it "at least twice..." (We're being forced to pay those contractors to destroy magnificent, 8-block-long OKC Union Station yard -- and we'll be forced to pay to build a new one, of predictably lower quality, if they ever actually get around to that!) ... or are they just using an "alleged interest" in High Speed Rail to cover their crimes at OKC Union Station?

Time for Oklahomans to demand answers!

If you're a candidate for city office or a staffer or volunteer for said candidate, you probably shouldn't sacrifice one of your last three Saturdays before the primary for this, but if you're looking at running in a future election or helping someone who will be running....

American Majority will hold a Candidate Training Seminar at the Tulsa Select Hotel (the old Hilton/Holiday Inn Select) at I-44 and Yale this Saturday, August 22, 2009, in the Navajo Room. Registration begins at 9 a.m., and the seminar will conclude at 5:15 p.m. The price is $40 per candidate and $20 for each additional staff or family member.

The seminar will include 1-on-1 media training and lectures by Chris Faulkner of Faulkner Strategies, a nationally renowned political consulting firm that works with candidates and organizations here in the United States and globally in such places as Indonesia, Venezuela, and Canada.

To RSVP, phone 405-605-6338 or follow this link to register online.

Monday evening I attended a reception welcoming Congressman John Sullivan back from his month at the Betty Ford Center. Sullivan checked himself into the center for rehabilitation for alcoholism. Since his return, he has made himself widely available for interviews with print and broadcast media about the impact of alcohol on his life and his reasons for dealing with the problem proactively. (See below for links.)

Sullivan has said that he sought treatment because of the effect alcohol was having on his relationships with his family, and in particular that he wanted to set a better example for his oldest son, who is now a teenager.

The event was attended by his three Oklahoma Republican colleagues in the U. S. House -- Frank Lucas, Tom Cole, and Mary Fallin, each of whom spoke briefly in appreciation of Sullivan's work in Congress.

I've heard negative comments from a number of Republicans, in person and via e-mail, suggesting that it's time for Sullivan to step aside or expressing an intention to support a primary challenge against him.

If someone has a beef with Sullivan over his vote on the bailout last fall, I can understand. It was a significant lapse for him and for Sen. Tom Coburn, and I think that time has shown that the bailout was the wrong move for our economy. But I have to weigh that against Sullivan's consistent record as the most fiscally conservative of Oklahoma's House delegation, as a solid social conservative, and as someone willing to take a stand in support of genuine and effective enforcement of laws against illegal immigration, a position that puts him at odds with the Chamber of Commerce types. While I think his record is overwhelmingly positive on balance from the conservative perspective, it's certainly a conservative voter's right to decide use the bailout vote as a litmus test, although I think that's short-sighted.

But it would be wrong to push John Sullivan out the door because he sought rehabilitation for alcoholism. If Sullivan is punished at the polls for seeking treatment, it will encourage others in public life who are dealing with a personal problem like substance dependency or marital strife to keep hiding, instead of seeking help, until the problem blows up into a huge career-ending, family-wrecking scandal. Sullivan has been open about his decision to seek help for his problem with alcohol in hopes that others who need help will find the strength to seek it out.

It's telling that, of all John Sullivan's most vocal political enemies, on the left and on the right, not one has come forward with a damaging rumor alleging scandalous behavior on his part. If something were out there, it would have surfaced on one web forum or another. As I wrote in late May, when he announced that he had admitted himself to the Betty Ford Center, "I had never seen anything in his behavior even hinting at a problem and had never even heard rumors of a problem."

Some have complained about Sullivan's being on leave during the House's vote on the "Cap and Trade" bill. The margin was wide enough that Sullivan's lone vote would not have made the difference. The Democratic leadership's last-minute substitute bill made it obvious that they would keep rewriting the bill until they persuaded enough of their own members to vote yes for something. What passed was a 300-page substitute that isn't even complete. An entire section -- the heart of the plan -- hasn't even been written, much less approved. The Senate will pass a different version (maybe -- Sen. Jim Inhofe says it's dead in the water), there will be a conference committee, all sorts of unholy, corrupt provisions will be quietly inserted into the bill by the conferees and their staffers, and then it will go back to the House and Senate for approval. There are plenty of opportunities yet to kill this thing, and once the teeth are in the bill, there will be some substance that Sullivan and others can use to convert yes voters to no voters. Sullivan will be there when it matters.

Congratulations to John on seeking help when he needed it and on his successful completion of rehab. I'm happy to have Congressman Sullivan back in Washington representing Oklahoma's 1st District.

MORE:

KTUL: Sullivan Got Sober for Family

Sullivan will tell you drinking did not hurt him that much. Even when he was drinking, he said he worked-out regularly and got his job done. It was his loved ones who paid a price.

"They wanted to do things, and I wouldn't the next day when I'm hung over or don't feel too good. I wasn't there for them either, and might be snappy with them, and tell them, 'Get outta here.' I'd argue with my wife, and I feel terrible about that. It's not the way I want to be." explained Sullivan.

For Sullivan failing his kids started with drinking when he was a teenager. He began by sharing some Coors Light with his high school buddies. He would drink on and off, binging and then giving it up for years. But abstinence was never permanent, so after breaking promises to quit he said he finally decided he had to put his family first.

KTUL: Sullivan: "People Or Things Didn't Make Me Drink"

"People or things didn't make me drink," he says. "That's not what it was. It wasn't like things were stressful. I just did. I'm an alcoholic ya know? And if I start drinking I want to drink more, not every time but eventually that does happen."

Sullivan says over time, the occasional binge evolved from light beer to vodka and a strain at home. He says he wants to make it up to his family and his constituents by turning it all into a positive.

"I'm sure some people are disappointed with me," he says. "But it's hard to apologize because I needed to get help and I did. And I wanted to come forward and do this in a way that was public because I want to help other people."

KOTV: Congressman Sullivan Discusses Time In Rehab

Sullivan said during his month long treatment he learned that he will face a long recovery, but that he can overcome it.

"I can't drink. When I drink, it goes in and I react differently than a normal person. The choice I have is to work hard, and do what I need to do, but also to not to drink the first one. It's not the tenth drink that gets me drunk. It's the first one that starts the process," said Oklahoma Congressman John Sullivan.

KOTV: Experts Say Sullivan's Battle Could Help Others

Sullivan says he appreciates all the support he's received, and pledges to remain honest about his treatment in hopes that others will choose to take the same steps he did.

"That's the reason I'm being so public about it, too. If it can help someone come forward to know that you need to get help, and you can get it. Don't be scared to do it, and you won't be judged or punished. But, come forward and do it," said Congressman John Sullivan.

(Photo above by John Tidwell, taken April 2006.)

This morning an off-duty Tulsa city planner tweeted a link to a "memorial" -- a petition seeking the impeachment of State Rep. Sally Kern. A number of the 150 or so signers commented that they consider Kern, who is, like Pres. Obama, Gov. Henry, and nearly every member of Congress and the State Legislature, an avowed opponent of same-sex marriage, an embarrassment to the state of Oklahoma.

Here's the text of the petition, which is intended to reverse the damage that the petition alleges has been caused by Kern to the state's image and reputation (emphasis added, but spelling and punctuation left as is -- consider the whole thing [sic]):

To the Honorable House of Representatives of the great State of Oklahoma

The petition of _____________________, a citizen of the State of Oklahoma, and of the United States, respectfully showeth:

That, Article III, Section 1, of the Constitution of the State of Oklahoma, sets forth the article for impeachment and that in such article it states "The Governor and other elective state officers, including the
Justices of the Supreme Court, shall be liable and subject to
impeachment for wilful neglect of duty, corruption in office,
habitual drunkenness, incompetency, or any offense involving
moral turpitude committed while in office."

That, Jefferson's Manual section LIII, 603, states that impeachment may be set in motion by charges preferred by a memorial, which is usually referred to a committee for examination; and

The memorial goes on to set forth that, Sally Kern has displayed to the citizens of her district and of the great State of Oklahoma incompetency while holding the office of State Representative; and

The memorial goes on to set forth that, the actions, public address, legislation, views of Sally Kern have had a negative impact on recruiting and retaining businesses to the State of Oklahoma; and

The memorial goes on to set forth that, Sally Kern has committed acts of moral turpitude while in office; and

The memorial goes on to set forth that, Sally Kern's primary agenda is insight hate and rage towards the citizens of the State of Oklahoma; and

The memorial goes on to set forth that, Sally Kern has violated the convent of the seperation between Church and State; and

The memorial goes on to set forth that, Sally Kern has wasted taxpayer dollars pening legilsation that has added no value to the great State of Oklahoma; and

The memorial goes on to set forth that, Sally Kern has shown support to repress the freedoms, rights, and privliges afforded to the citizens of the great State of Oklahoma by states constitution and the constitution of the Unites States of America.; and

The memorial goes on to set forth that, In all of this Sally Kern has acted in a manner contrary to her trust as State Representative, subversive of constitutional government to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury and oppresion of the people of the State of Oklahoma.

In conclusion the memoralist says:
Having thus submitted to your honorable body the facts of his case, your petitioner begs leave to observe that it appears from those facts:

First. That said Sally Kern is no longer viewed as a representative of the people of the great State of Oklahoma.

Second. That said Sally Kern has in the view of these people displayed incompetency in her ability to perform, enact, and carry out the duties of a Representative for the State of Oklahoma.

Third. That said Sally Kern has displayed poor judgement and moral turptitude in the her actions thus far as a Representative for the State of Oklahoma.

Wherefore, and inasmuch as the said Sally Kern has violated the most sacred and undoubted rights of the inhabitants of the State of Oklahoma, your petitioner prays that the conduct and proceedings in this behalf, of said Sally Kern, may be inquired into by your honorable body, and such decision made therein to impeach, to appoint managers to conduct the impeachment trial in the Senate, and to inform the Senate of these facts by resolution (Manual Sec. 607; Deschler Ch 14 Sec. 9) for trial and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the State of Oklahoma;

And your petitioner, as in duty bound, will pray.

Sincerely, We The Undersigned;

As serious as the allegations against Kern are -- violating "convents," moral "turptitude," "insights" of hate and rage, and "pening legilsation" (an act that looks awfully turptitudinous) -- someone needs to hold the authors and signers of this petition accountable for an assault on the English language. All y'all are making us look like a bunch of ignorant hicks.

BREAKING NEWS: Gov. Brad Henry has vetoed HB 2246, the initiative petition reform bill to which Rick Carpenter alludes in the essay below, despite near unanimous support from the legislature. According to an e-mail press release from Oklahomans for Responsible Government late last night, "[Henry] claims that the provision that protects petition circulators from harassment is a violation of free speech."

Rick and I were primary- and middle-school classmates, and his passion for politics was evident at an early age. (There are a couple of stories I could tell....) That early passion has endured.

After the legislature failed to approve Taxpayer Bill of Rights legislation, Rick led the effort to pass it by means of initiative petition. The number of required signatures combined with the short window of time to gather them makes it difficult to get a petition circulated without the help of paid circulators, particularly if your volunteer circulators are subject to harassment from members of groups that feel threatened by the petition. TABOR supporters hired a firm with previous success circulating petitions in Oklahoma. They brought in circulators from out of state, just as supporters of the ban on cockfighting had done in 2002.

But TABOR and a companion petition against eminent domain abuse were unpopular with those groups and businesses dependent on government funding and with the government officials who enjoy the power of doling that funding out. TABOR petitions were disqualified on the grounds that some of the circulators were not bona fide residents of Oklahoma. The State Supreme Court ruled against the petition but refused to hear oral arguments, and the TABOR initiative was thrown off the ballot. That would be enough of a setback, but officials went further and sought indictments of Rick Carpenter, Susan Johnson, head of the petition circulating firm, and Paul Jacob, a consultant on initiative campaigns.

The Oklahoma 3 were indicted and handcuffed in court, just for the cameras. At length, the Federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 1969 law, under which the Oklahoma 3 were the first to be indicted, violated the 1st and 14th amendments to the Constitution. After first announcing plans to pursue the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, Edmondson dropped the charges on January 22, 2009, the day after the 10th Circuit refused Edmondson's appeal.

Rick has written a powerful essay on his experience and its significance for democracy in Oklahoma, and with his permission, it's appearing here on BatesLine. An excerpt:

The Attorney General, his political cronies, bigwig CEOs and labor unions, the Oklahoma axis of evil, were not content to defeat these two petitions. They wanted to make people fearful to participate in the petitions process. They knew the issues were popular among voters and it was just a matter of time before another petition got on the ballot. Clearly, the opposing long-term strategy was to make examples of us so Oklahomans would think twice before asserting their free speech. They want to intimidate citizens, like me, from sponsoring future petitions and out-of-state consultants, like Paul and Susan, from daring to do business in Oklahoma.

While they would never be able to remove initiative petition rights from the Constitution, they can use the law to make life very difficult on anyone who chooses to circulate a petition that the power structure does not like. I found myself the target of an angry and vengeful government, determined to tell the people of Oklahoma, "Don't you dare come between the government and your money or property".

By filing charges and threatening us with 10 years in prison, the Attorney General knew he would cause a chilling effect on petitioning in Oklahoma. All petitions face validity questions: some people sign more than once, some people sign who are not eligible, some people sign up under a name like "Clark Kent". The verification and challenge process is supposed to weed out those occurrences. If petition proponents fear facing criminal charges at each instance, nobody will be willing to sponsor a petition. Edmondson, the corporate CEOs funding his governor's campaign and labor unions endorsing him, would maintain control of ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer money and unfettered ability to seize private property.

Following our arraignment we were all three curiously handcuffed together, I suppose to keep us all in camera frame, and "perp walked", Rudy Giuliani style, out of the courtroom before a crush of cameras and reporters. The message was clear; this is what happens to you if you dare to circulate a petition that challenges the status quo.

By now you've seen the statement, released Friday afternoon by Oklahoma 1st District Congressman John Sullivan, that on Thursday he checked himself into the Betty Ford Center for treatment to deal with his addiction to alcohol. The announcement was a surprise, as I had never seen anything in his behavior even hinting at a problem and had never even heard rumors of a problem.

I don't know what stresses are underlying his problem with alcohol, but there's a reason they call it the Betty Ford Center. Being in the public eye as an elected official or an elected official's spouse makes it much harder to deal with the trials of life. John has had two significant personal setbacks since his first run for congress: The death of his infant daughter and the loss of sight in one eye, the result of a security barrier striking a car in which he was a passenger. As hard as it is to bear up under such circumstances, it's harder when all eyes are on you, and when half of those eyes belong to people who would love to see you humiliated and driven from office.

I admire his proactive decision, and he and his family will be in our prayers.

There's been a lot of discussion about the vote in the Oklahoma House of Representatives on whether to ratify "Do You Realize??" as the official rock song of Oklahoma. The resolution received only 48 votes in favor, three short of the required majority. Gov. Brad Henry signed an executive order making the choice of the Flaming Lips tune official.

An online poll last fall picked "Do You Realize??" over nine other finalists, getting about 51% of 22,000 cast. I can't find a reference, but I seem to recall some suggestion at the time that Flaming Lips fans were stuffing the virtual ballot box. As an active band with a devoted, tech-savvy following, they're more likely to generate that kind of support than a musician prominent in an earlier era, like Hoyt Axton, Leon Russell, Wanda Jackson, or The Ventures. In my opinion, the Lips tune rocks least of the 10 songs. (The full list of finalists is here, along with a player that lets you listen to all of them.)

In March, the Flaming Lips were invited to appear at a legislative session. On that occasion, bassist Michael Ivins (any relation to Molly?) wore a red T-shirt emblazoned with a large yellow hammer and sickle, the symbol of international communism, a source of offense to many of the legislators who voted no on Thursday's resolution. It should have been a source of offense to every legislator.

Lead singer Wayne Coyne seems to think that only "small-minded" people should be offended by a hammer-and-sickle T-shirt:

"Me, I just say look, it's a little minority of some small-minded religious wackos who think they can tell people what kind of T-shirts and what kind of music they can listen to, and the smart, rational, reasonable people of Oklahoma are never going to buy into that," frontman Wayne Coyne told Tulsa World in an interview Friday.

State Rep. Corey Holland, R-Marlow, voted against the resolution. His reply to Coyne:

The great thing about this country is he has the right to make whatever statement he wants to make.... I have the right to be offended by that.

Gabriel Malor, a former Oklahoman who blogs regularly at Ace of Spades HQ, headlined his post on the controversy, "I'm Not Entirely Convinced We Shouldn't Just Lock Them In and Set the Building on Fire," referring to the legislators who voted against the resolution.

Steve Lackmeyer, writer and blogger for the Oklahoman, likens the State House vote to county government corruption. (UPDATE: Steve's comment has prompted me to look again at how I summarized his entry, and I think I oversimplified in my haste. It would be more accurate to say, "For Steve Lackmeyer, the State House vote brought to mind legislative resistance to county government reform after the corruption scandals of the 1980s." But just read his entry for yourself.)

Oklahoman editor Ed Kelley slams the legislature in a catchall video condemnation that is ignorant in multiple dimensions, and I don't say that lightly. He claims that the legislature wants to punish hardworking immigrants, implying the word illegal by his reference to "their children who are American citizens," but not using the word. (The legislature, and an overwhelming majority of Oklahoma citizens, welcome legal immigrants, but support sanctions against employers who use illegal labor and support cooperation between local law enforcement and Federal immigration authorities.) He refers to Ivins's T-shirt as bearing a "symbol of the old Communist Party, which went out of business with the old Soviet Union almost two decades ago." Hey, Ed, tell the oppressed people of China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam that the Communist Party "went out of business." Tell that to Chinese civil rights attorney Gao Zhisheng, still missing after being taken from his home by Chinese security forces on Feb. 4.

For that matter, Ed, does the fact that the Nazi Party has been "out of business" for over 60 years mean that no one should be offended by it any more? Had Ivins shown up in a red T-shirt with a white circle and a foot-wide black swastika, we wouldn't be talking about the legislature's vote. We'd be reading about venues canceling Flaming Lips tour dates, about their record sales plummeting, about denunciations by civil rights groups. It would have been a career-ending move, and rightly so.

Hey, Ed: Timothy McVeigh has been permanently out of business for about eight years now. Would it have been OK by you for Ivins to show up at the State Capitol with a McVeigh T-shirt? God help us if there's ever a day when that would be considered the latest in ironic hipster wear.

Tens of millions have been killed and billions have been enslaved in the name of Communism over the last century. Billions still suffer under its yoke.

The most disturbing aspect of this fuss is the realization of how little Americans realize the inherent inhumanity of Communism. It can be summed up in a single image, from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: "a boot, stamping on a human face -- forever."

With May Day coming up -- the traditional holiday for the international Communist movement -- it's as good a time as any to refresh our memories and educate the younger folks about those who suffered and died as a result of Communist policies -- not torture and imprisonment simply employed in the name of Communism but inherent to the Communist worldview. Look for several posts on the topic here at BatesLine this week. I hope other bloggers will join me in raising awareness of how deeply evil Communism was and still is.

MORE: Brandon Dutcher weighs in:

Now, I know nothing about Mr. Ivins. It appears that at the very least he needs some education on the matter, and indeed I suspect it goes deeper than that. My guess is that (to borrow from another band) he still hasn't found what he's looking for. In any case, for now I think it would be useful simply to juxtapose Mr. Ivins' silliness with the seriousness of the great man himself:

Click through to hear Ronald Reagan calling on the Communists to stop treating their citizens as prisoners.

Brandon also links to The Black Book of Communism, the definitive catalog of the devastation wrought by this evil philosophy:

The authors, all distinguished scholars based in Europe, document Communist crimes against humanity, but also crimes against national and universal culture, from Stalin's destruction of hundreds of churches in Moscow to Ceausescu's leveling of the historic heart of Bucharest to the widescale devastation visited on Chinese culture by Mao's Red Guards.

As the death toll mounts--as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on--the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression. An extraordinary accounting, this book amply documents the unparalleled position and significance of Communism in the hierarchy of violence that is the history of the twentieth century.

When BC Lee (whom I met at the Oklahoma Republican State Convention on Saturday) said he looked forward my opining about the weekend, this is what I posted on Facebook in reply:

My opining in a nutshell: Very happy about Gary Jones winning re-election, unhappy at the defeat of the caucus proposal, even more unhappy at the tone of the debate on both sides of the issue, and perplexed that I had an easier time bending the ear of a Democratic legislator at a coffeehouse on Friday than in having a substantive conversation with any Republican legislator at the Republican convention on Saturday.

The caucus proposal was sound and well-thought-out, but it wasn't promoted well. I was very annoyed by the speech that one opponent gave -- a tall thin man with white hair, didn't catch his name or his county. His speech was filled with mischaracterizations of the proposal, and his tone communicated disrespect toward caucus supporters. But then I was so embarrassed by caucus supporter Tom Roach's overly emotional rebuttal that I walked out of the hall.

I wish in hindsight that I'd spent some time setting out the case for returning to the caucus here, but I was most concerned about getting Gary Jones reelected, and I hadn't seen all the specifics of the rules amendments.

There was another proposed rule change, coming from the Woodward County convention. The proposal seemed to add a convention in 2010 and a standing rules committee to propose changes that would be considered at that convention. The proposal did not specify which state rules were being amended or provide the new language that would go into the state rules. (The caucus proposal was very thorough in that regard.)

There were some issues (specifically State Sen. Tom Adelson's anti-SLAPP legislation) that I'd hoped to discuss with my friends in the legislature, but I didn't get the chance. The convention was an intense event, not quite as high stakes as last year, but there were a couple of big decisions to be made and a governor's race to get launched, and that may explain why people spent more time in the convention hall and less time schmoozing in the lobby, which in turn would explain why I didn't have much contact with legislators beyond a quick handshake. It didn't help that I got there at 9:10 and spent the next 40 minutes in line to register. I would have had more time to talk with people if I'd gotten there earlier. Unlike years past, I opted not to drive down the night before. The ticket price for the gala plus the cost of a hotel room was more than I wanted to pay.

Earlier I posted my Twitter feed during the convention. This link leads to my photos from the convention.

Here's Michelle Byte's commentary on the convention. She has a good summary of the caucus debate. She also reveals why she banned John Wiliams, husband of state chairman candidate and former vice chairman Cheryl Williams, from the GetRightOK forum. John Williams was engaged in a bit of sockpuppetry on the forum and inadvertently gave himself away. (I can't look at that photo without thinking, "How about a nice Hawaiian Punch?")

I wholeheartedly agree with these comments:

There is one elected official, however, that stands above the rest. One who is willing to pitch in and help, and doesn't think of herself as above doing work. That person is Corporation Commissioner Dana Murphy. What a wonderful lady! She worked with us in registration getting people's name badges for them on Friday night, and then on Saturday helping to control the line and again fetching name badges. I don't think you would see many any other elected officials serving others in that way. In fact, I didn't. So, Dana Murphy is awesome....

I wasn't able to see any of the speakers in the morning, but I did see Randy Brogdon's speech on youtube. It was excellent!...

I LOVED John Wright. He was a great convention chair and he made it fun.

The Oklahoma House voted Tuesday to prohibit state government funding for the destruction of embryos for the purpose of stem cell research in the state. (The legislation does nothing to hinder the many other forms of stem cell research -- marrow, cord blood, various forms of adult tissue -- which do not require the destruction of a human life.)

SB 315 passed by a wide bipartisan majority of 85-13. The version passed by the House now goes back to the Senate for final approval. If a business is involved in "nontherapeutic research that destroys a human embryo or subjects a human embryo to substantial risk of injury or death," that business does not qualify for any Oklahoma income tax credits or incentive payments. The bill prevents tax dollars from directly or indirectly funding the destruction of human life.

The 13 naysayers were Auffet, Brown, Cox, Hoskin, Kiesel, McAffrey, McDaniel (Jeannie), Nations, Renegar, Roan, Scott, Shelton, and Smithson. Christian, McPeak, and Morrissette were excused from the vote. Everyone else voted yes.

The Tulsa Metro Chamber and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce have been lobbying Gov. Brad Henry to veto any such legislation when it reaches him. In response, pro-life legislators boycotted a legislative event hosted by the two chambers.

State Rep. Pam Peterson (R-Tulsa) said today, "The idea that Oklahoma should condone the destruction of innocent human life in the name of 'economic development' is indefensible. Our law clearly states that human life begins at conception. Now the chambers are advocating the destruction of a legally recognized life in exchange for research dollars, saying the state should determine the best use of a person's life for the state's purposes. That's a huge paradigm shift that runs contrary to the basic values of our nation."

I'm happy that pro-life legislators are voicing their objections to the Chambers' crass and callous stand on this issue.

But if you're a Chamber member, and you oppose the destruction of innocent human life for the sake of economic development, you need to take a stand, too. You need to e-mail Gov. Henry, tell him to sign the bill, and tell him that your Chamber of Commerce doesn't speak for you on this issue.

Then you need to make some calls and do some legwork to find out who authorized your Chamber to speak on this issue. Find out when the board voted on it, which board members voted which way, then make your displeasure known to the executive director (Mike Neal here in Tulsa) and the pro-killing members of the board.

Finally, the pro-life majority on the Tulsa City Council should refuse to continue to give millions in city tax dollars to an organization that advocates using tax dollars to kill people for profit. The Council has the power to end the City's exclusive deal with the Tulsa Metro Chamber for economic development and convention and tourism promotion. Put the contract up for bids in a full and open competition and use our City hotel tax dollars to hire a more competent outfit -- that needed to happen anyway.

Here is the full statement from Rep. Pam Peterson (R-Tulsa):

OKLAHOMA CITY - The Oklahoma City and Tulsa chambers of commerce support for embryonic stem cell research, which requires the killing of human embryos, will damage Oklahoma 's reputation as a state that values life, state Rep. Pam Peterson said today.

"The chambers' support of embryonic stem cell research as an 'economic growth' tool is a shocking violation of the public trust and basic moral values," said Peterson, R-Tulsa. "The chamber is effectively advocating the worst kind of discrimination based on age, size and place of residence."

In the past week, both chambers have urged Gov. Brad Henry to veto legislation that would make embryonic stem cell research illegal in Oklahoma . Both groups argue the ban will hinder economic development, be an embarrassment for the state and make it hard to attract "researchers."

"The idea that Oklahoma should condone the destruction of innocent human life in the name of 'economic development' is indefensible," Peterson said. "Our law clearly states that human life begins at conception. Now the chambers are advocating the destruction of a legally recognized life in exchange for research dollars, saying the state should determine the best use of a person's life for the state's purposes. That's a huge paradigm shift that runs contrary to the basic values of our nation."

The ban was supported by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both the state House and Senate.

Even as they have worked to outlaw embryonic stem cell research, state lawmakers have also voted to provide millions for adult stem cell research. Unlike embryonic stem cell research, adult stem cell research does not require the destruction of human embryos.

Adult stem cell research also has a proven track record of results - there are more than 70 research treatments that use adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cell research has been plagued with failure.

"If the chambers were serious about economic development and growing Oklahoma 's biotech industries, they would only support research with a proven track record requiring no moral compromise - our adult stem cell plan," Peterson said. "It's clear that these organizations care more about catering favor from radical groups than improving our economy."

As a result of the chamber's call for vetoing the embryonic stem cell ban, Peterson and other pro-life lawmakers will not attend a legislative event tonight jointly hosted by the Oklahoma City and Tulsa chambers.

MORE: HB 1326, which has similar language, was passed by large majorities in both houses last week (82-6 in the House, 38-9 in the Senate) and is on the governor's desk. This morning, State Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-Owasso) called on pro-life business owners to express their support of this legislation:

State Senator Randy Brogdon called on the Pro-Life members of the Tulsa and Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce to join with him in support of HB 1326, which outlaws embryonic stem cell research.

"It's simple," said Brogdon. "HB 1326 says that we won't let Oklahoma businesses profit from the destruction of human life."

Brogdon, a co-author of HB 1326, continued, "And it's a travesty that the Oklahoma City and Tulsa Chamber leadership are more concerned about profit than the protection of human life."

"And I'm sure if the Pro-Life members of the Tulsa and Oklahoma City Chamber knew what HB 1326 entailed, they would not be happy knowing that their leadership was lobbying for Governor Henry to veto this bill," said Brogdon.

"That's why I am calling on the Pro-Life business owners of the Tulsa and Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce to join with me in support of this bill and call on their leadership to halt their lobbying against this Pro-Life legislation," said Brogdon.

Tomorrow is the 2009 Oklahoma Republican Convention in Oklahoma City. It should be an exciting day. We'll be voting on whether to re-elect as chairman a proven servant-leader, Gary Jones, and we'll be hearing from some of the folks who want to carry the GOP banner for governor next year, including State Sen. Randy Brogdon, who is expected to make his formal announcement tomorrow.

While I don't plan to tote my laptop around, I will be able to post brief updates to the BatesLine Twitter account. You can also see my latest five tweets near the top of the right-hand column on the BatesLine homepage. Several other folks plan to Twitter about the convention as well, and the consensus is that we'll tag tweets about the convention with #okgop. Follow that link, and you'll see the latest bulletins from the Oklahoma Republican Convention.

UPDATE: My #okgop tweets:

(To clarify one of the entries below -- not all anti-caucus speakers were rabble-rousers, but a couple -- people I didn't recognize -- were, and their tone was unhelpful to the debate. Chairman Gary Jones spoke against the caucus, but he did so respectfully, although I disagree with his position. I didn't hear Tom Coburn's speech, in which he opposed the caucus, but I assume he too was respectful in opposition.)

1. Greg Hill: Caucus gives voters incentive to participate in caucus & convention process #okgop
   3:09 PM Apr 18th from txt
2. Disappointed in anti-caucus rabblerousers - disingenuous and insulting #okgop
   3:05 PM Apr 18th from txt
3. Excellent point from Tom Roach - pres cmpgns will drive people to caucuses, build grssrts rolls #okgop
   2:59 PM Apr 18th from txt
4. LaPlante vice chair by acclamation #okgop
   12:48 PM Apr 18th from txt
5. Williams did not submit nomination for vice chair - ruled out of order #okgop
   12:47 PM Apr 18th from txt
6. Anthony Platt, Tulsa Co Ron Paul backer, wants Williams to stay as vice chairman #okgop
   12:47 PM Apr 18th from txt
7. Jones 1282.4 Williams 461.6 #okgop
   12:45 PM Apr 18th from txt
8. Alfalfa Coal Roger Mills Kiowa Choctaw Johnston Okmulgee Ottawa Pushmataha not here #okgop
   12:43 PM Apr 18th from txt
9. Corrected Tulsa Co Jones 104-59 #okgop
   12:41 PM Apr 18th from txt
10. Split leaning Jones Canadian 32-27 Wagoner 11-7 #okgop
    12:36 PM Apr 18th from txt
11. Logan Cty Jones 14-11 #okgop
    12:35 PM Apr 18th from txt
12. Split delegations Creek Rogers Cherokee #okgop
    12:33 PM Apr 18th from txt
13. Okla Cty Jones 141-64 #okgop
    12:33 PM Apr 18th from txt
14. Cleveland co Jones 66-40 #okgop
    12:32 PM Apr 18th from txt
15. Williams best counties LeFlore Texas Hughes
    12:31 PM Apr 18th from txt
16. Jones winning rural counties almost unanimously #okgop
    12:26 PM Apr 18th from txt
17. Tulsa Co prelim count Jones 103 Williams 59 #okgop
    12:22 PM Apr 18th from txt
18. Fran Moghaddam loves Cheryl Williams! #okgop
    12:03 PM Apr 18th from txt
19. Jones big standing O - Williams maybe 20% #okgop
    12:03 PM Apr 18th from txt
20. Corrected total 1208 delegates. #okgop
    11:48 AM Apr 18th from txt
21. Official count: 1197 delegates! #okgop
    11:09 AM Apr 18th from txt
22. Reese for Labor Comm: priority to open up Labor Dept for public scrutiny - well received #okgop
    10:33 AM Apr 18th from txt
23. Brogdon 2/3 standing O on finishing + loud chanting & cheering #okgop
    10:31 AM Apr 18th from txt
24. Brogdon intro stdg O from about 1/3 of crowd. #okgop
    10:21 AM Apr 18th from txt
25. Coffee gets warm standing O #okgop
    10:20 AM Apr 18th from txt
26. Anthony: We're supposed to follow the law and listen to the evidence. #okgop
    10:14 AM Apr 18th from txt
27. Anthony: I've been opposed by metro dailies - we're not supposed to listen to the bosses. #okgop
    10:14 AM Apr 18th from txt
28. Bob Anthony cites Dana as example of what grass roots can do. #okgop
    10:12 AM Apr 18th from txt
29. Dana Murphy - thx to delegates for helping her overcome money and millionaires in Corp Comm race #okgop
    10:06 AM Apr 18th from txt
30. finally in the convention hall - fallin speaking #okgop
    9:54 AM Apr 18th from txt
31. Had to park 3 blocks away #okgop
    9:07 AM Apr 18th from txt
32. Headed to #okgop - last outpost of civilization #QT in rear view mirror
    7:22 AM Apr 18th from txt

I didn't make it to any of the Tulsa Tea Parties. I had a quick lunch so I could get home in time to have a nice dinner out with my wife on her birthday -- just the two of us. (We went to Bangkok at 33rd and Harvard. It's a Thai buffet. Wonderful, spicy, tasty food and a wide variety of choices. No MSG, everything is clearly labeled, they put small portions of each dish out at a time so it stays fresh.)

Here are reports from the various Tea Parties around Oklahoma, Tulsa first and in chronological order:

Chris Medlock on the 11-1 downtown event with talk radio host John Gibson (with photos):

Reasonable estimates for the event place the peak attendance at between 750 to 1000.

Chris has also posted a Washington Post graphic that explains at a glance why Obama's budget has engendered so much more grassroots unrest than Bush's budgets.

KFAQ's website has photos of the downtown event. Bland Bridenstine has more photos here, including photos of the 5 - 7 pm event at Veterans Park.

The Tulsa Tea Party blog has a thorough report with photos.

Joe Kelley on the 12-2 LaFortune Park event with Congressman John Sullivan (with video):

The Tulsa Police put the crowd size at 3200 and a petition that was passed gathered in excess of 3000 signatures.

Joe Kelley has also posted some helpful links about the Tea Party movement and resources for taking further constructive action, including the After the Tea Party website.

Here's Jenn Sierra's report and photos of the Veterans' Park event.

Muskogee Politico says there were 220 at that city's event (video and photos to come).

Tyson Wynn has audio of the Claremore rally (and explains the cool way he was able to post it live using his iPhone).

The Red Dirt Reporter was at the State Capitol for the Oklahoma City event:

Well over 5,000 people crowded onto the south plaza of the Oklahoma State Capitol Wednesday, taking part in the Tax Day Tea Party movement that has swept America, with 2,500 Tea Parties reportedly taking place nationwide.

This grassroots gathering was amazing in that it drew people from all walks of life and political backgrounds. All agreed that the federal government has taken things too far in regards to taxing the American people and bailing out Wall Street and the banks.

NewsOK.com has video and photos and quotes an Oklahoma Highway Patrol estimate of between 4,000 and 5,000. (Via dustbury.com.)

Kick the Anthill has more photos of the Oklahoma City event. Videos are here on the OKC Tea Party website.

RELATED: Randy Brogdon, who may have been the only prospective candidate for Governor at any of the Tea Parties, succeeded in raising $15,000 in a single day today for his exploratory committee.

MORE: CNN reporter Susan Roesgen drops any pretense of objectivity in her coverage of the Chicago Tea Party. Michelle Malkin compares Roesgen's reporting today to Roesgen's coverage of an anti-Bush rally.

And to those who claim that Tea Party-goers are just out to attack Democrats, Michelle Malkin reports that the Sacramento Tea Party organizer acknowledged the California GOP chairman, who was present at the event, then denounced him for "waffling on massive tax hike ballot measures."

Will this make the MSM coverage? It doesn't fit the narrative. But it's yet another demonstration that this movement is not partisan and equal opportunity when it comes to holding politicians' feet to the fire for fiscal irresponsibility and fecklessness.

Of recent note in local blogs:

At Choice Remarks, Brandon Dutcher salutes State Rep. Jabar Shumate (D-Tulsa) for his efforts to expand school choice with a bill that will allow tribal governments to sponsor charter schools.

Tulsa Chigger has posted a 1934 Chicago Tribune cartoon lampooning the New Deal, headlined "Planned Economy or Planned Destruction." In the corner of the cartoon, a Trotsky-esque fellow writes a placard: "Spend! Spend! Spend under the guise of recovery -- bust the government -- blame the capitalists for the failure -- junk the constitution and declare a dictatorship." Chigger writes, "Strangely similar to our situation now, isn't it?"

Chris Medlock writes about State Sen. Randy Brogdon's upcoming announcement as a candidate for governor and the impact of a Scott Pruitt candidacy on the race.

Owasso blogger James Parsons wonders about the conservative credentials of another GOP gubernatorial possibility, former Congressman J. C. Watts, who has spent the last seven years as a corporate lobbyist.

Yogi gets quote of the week honors: "I love little 'creases' in time and space." Me, too. He's referring to unexpected places like an Italian mining community in southeastern Oklahoma named Krebs that boasts legendary Italian food. Yogi recounts a recent visit to Pete's Place -- it's been too long since my last meal there.

OKDad is working on a mystery: A statue of a farmer, erected for the American Bicentennial in 1976 and currently under restoration, turns out not to be a bronze after all, but "some sort of hardened concrete-plaster hybrid." "He was planned as a bronze. Molds of him were made in preparation for a bronze. Funds were apparently raised for him to be cast in bronze. The papers from July 4, 1976 (the day he was dedicated and unveiled) clearly state he is a statue of bronze stature. So, where's the bronze?" The mystery is still unsolved, but here's the latest development.

Rod Dreher has posted an 1999 article by Russell Hittinger about how a Benedictine monastery came to be established in Cherokee County. (Driving directions on the monastery website include prayers to St. Jude and St. Benedict in the event of high water. Irritated Tulsan might advise prayers if you decide to follow the restaurant recommendation on the same page -- I've eaten at said restaurant three times and never had a problem.)

Irritated Tulsan's Tulsa Tuesday post last week on The Lost Ogle: Tulsa's Worst Remodels, including a Pizza Hut turned adult novelty and lingerie shop, a Wal-Mart-to-church conversion and a KFC (complete with bucket on the sign) turned chiropractor's office. (I wonder if you can still get a chicken wing there -- either the food kind or the wrestling kind.)

Down the turnpike:

Steve Lackmeyer has posted a series of videos featuring urban planner Jeff Speck's comments on downtown Oklahoma City. The latest segment hits a harsh reality in Speck's comments: When you optimize a street for moving cars at high speeds, you inherently make it hazardous for pedestrians. Here are the three earlier entries in the series:

Jeff Speck Video No. 1 on urban parking
Jeff Speck Video No. 2 on giving people what they want
Jeff Speck Video No. 3 -- outlook for downtown

JenX67 has a gorgeous photo of nightfall in OKC's Plaza District.

Nick Roberts has an interesting chart showing Oklahoma City's population by decade since its founding. Noting the massive growth the city experienced in the 1920s and 1950s, he wonders whether, despite great rankings in a variety of categories, OKC will ever again be a place to which people flock.

Finally, congrats to Blair Humphreys and the MIT design team for their victory in the 2009 Urban Land Institute design competition. The design is for a transit-oriented development to replace big-box and strip-mall retail in Denver.

No time to analyze or comment, but you need to be aware of Red Dirt Report's series on Adair County and a discord on the county commission, centering on Republican newcomer Russell Turner and his efforts to ensure that the county fulfills its functions in accordance with state law. So far three stories have been published. They involve allegations of arson and intimidation, questionable handling of road funds, and county paving of non-governmental roads.

RDR: Adair County Blues - Part 1 in a series

RDR: Adair County Blues - Part 2 in a series

RDR: Rep. Auffet says folks are frustrated by dispute in Adair County

Andrew Griffin is doing some very thorough reporting. Keep an eye on Red Dirt Report for future installments.

Last September, the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce won approval under that city's downtown design guidelines for a new headquarters building at 4th and Gaylord, where Gaylord jogs left to connect to Broadway. Approval was controversial, because of the suburban site plan -- the building sits back from the street, and a good deal of the site is devoted to surface parking. An opportunity was missed to reverse an urban design mistake from the '60s and restore a street grid that would make pedestrian movement through the area easier than it is today: Six-lane Gaylord acts as a barrier between the downtown core and the Flatiron District.

The project is not yet under construction, and one quiet critic of the plan, Blair Humphreys, is now speaking up in hopes of urging a rethink of the plan. Back before the project came before the Downtown Design Review Board, Humphreys wrote a critique of the plan, but decided to keep it under wraps:

At the time, the proposal was still weeks away from initial urban design review and I hoped to contribute to the dialogue, or more accurately, initiate a dialogue about the proposal and the constraints placed on the project by the flawed planning of the I.M. Pei Plan. But then, after receiving advice that it would damage my future job prospects in OKC, I chose to stay silent.

Humphreys is studying urban planning at MIT. I started to write that it's stunning to think that someone with his name and education could hurt his job prospects by uttering some constructive criticism, but it really isn't. Although OKC has been more forward-thinking in its urban policy than Tulsa, its social structure is not that different from Tulsa's. Telling the emperor that his clothes are somewhat transparent, even if it's said in the most polite way, is never appreciated by the emperor.

His decision to remain silent gnawed at him:

It is a tough deal because I love Oklahoma City. I have always dreamed of helping to shape the future of the city and want to make it great - that is why I left development to pursue a career in planning. As a student of history I appreciate and respect the vital role the Chamber has played - and continues to play - in Oklahoma City's rise from train depot, to State Capitol, to Big League City. However, I have never felt right about the way I stayed quiet on this issue. From now on, I will not back down from contributing my thoughts on contentious issues, but I will try to do so in the most respectful manner possible.

In a later entry, he posts his critique of the Chamber's proposal.

One of my frustrations over the last decade or so of active involvement in local issues is how many Tulsans, active in community affairs, will tell me their concerns or objections to some public plan privately but don't dare speak out publicly. To speak up might alienate a potential compliant, might cost their non-profit a major donation, might get them ostracized from their social circle. (I wrote about this frustration at length last June.)

I can understand their reluctance. Criticizing the plans of the powerful doesn't earn you praise, position, or riches.

But being willing to speak has its rewards as well as its costs. You give others who share your opinion the reassurance that they aren't alone, which may give them the courage to speak up, too. If you're a well-trained urbanist like Blair Humphreys, your words can give laypeople a vocabulary for expressing their gut feelings about neighborhoods and buildings and places. Eventually, you may have the satisfaction of seeing your ideas become the conventional wisdom.

You can't shape the public debate unless you're willing to debate publicly.

Because of the road conditions, Tulsa County Republican Chairman Joy Mohorovicic has waived the requirement for Republicans to attend their precinct meeting tonight in order to become delegates to the county convention. Tulsa County registered Republican voters will be able to sign up for the county convention online at tulsagop.org.

Precinct chairmen have the option of holding the precinct meeting tonight as planned, meeting on another night, or participating in a central precinct meeting next Tuesday night, February 3, at 7 pm, at the county HQ, 5840 South Memorial, Suite 333.

The GOP HQ is likely to be closed today. Any queries should go by e-mail to chairman AT tulsagop DOT org.

As if the pride of Oklahoma weren't sufficiently wounded:

Oklahoma's junior senator in Washington soon will be belting out a rendition of the Elton John hit "Rocket Man" after losing a bet with a colleague from Florida.

Sen. Tom Coburn and Florida Sen. Bill Nelson placed a wager on Thursday's night's BCS National Championship game between the Oklahoma Sooners and Florida Gators.

Since Florida won, Coburn agreed to sing the song during Nelson's next constituent coffee, a traditional weekly meeting between a senator and residents of his home state.

Had Oklahoma won, Nelson would have had to sing "Oklahoma!" during Coburn's next constituent meeting.

"Rocket Man" was selected because Nelson was an astronaut who traveled into space in 1986 aboard the shuttle Columbia.

Although Coburn's daughter, Sarah, is a well-known opera soprano, Coburn himself "doesn't profess to have a tremendous singing gift," his spokesman, John Hart, said Friday.

Hart said no date has been set for Coburn to make good on his bet.

"He's a man of his word," Hart said. "And I'm sure Senator Nelson won't let him forget."

You don't have to be a singer to perform "Rocket Man," as William Shatner proved in this unforgettable performance at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards (introduced by Bernie Taupin, the song's co-writer):

Maybe Dr. No should have just bet some Oklahoma steaks against some Florida oranges.

Earlier today Sen. Tom Coburn spoke to a blogger conference call in connection with the release of his 2008: Worst Waste of the Year" report. It was a wide-ranging, on-the-record discussion. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a good synopsis.

Toward the end of the call, Dan Riehl asked about getting Coburn more allies for his efforts. Coburn said that, "We need a different farm team, and I'm working hard on that." He didn't offer any specifics, but he said that we need to "recruit people who get it, not just people who say they get it." He said that we need to elect officials who will be willing to sacrifice position for principle and asked, "How do you call people to service?"

I'm happy to see that Coburn is focusing on this challenge. Our primary safeguard against excessive and unconstitutional spending are the people who make the decisions about spending. But I wonder if it's possible for us to create the kind of "farm team" Coburn wants. To elect a principled fiscal conservative to office, you have to fight against two powerful forces -- entrenched special interests that want access to public money, aided by their allies who run the mainstream media, and a voting public with a low level of understanding about economics, the proper role of government in general and the proper roles of each level of government.

There is this idea that every problem is one that government can fix. Voters want to believe it because it relieves them of personal responsibility. Politicians are happy to promote the idea because they then get credit for doling out the goodies to favored groups and businesses, and that translates to longevity in office and a golden parachute in the form of a lobbying job with the favored groups and businesses they helped while in office.

Here in Oklahoma, at least, we have enough voters who don't buy into that idea that we can elect principled officials like Tom Coburn, Randy Brogdon, Dana Murphy, Pam Peterson, and John Eagleton (to name just a few among many). But even here, good men and women get blocked from climbing the political ladder by a hostile media and a well-financed opposition.

Recruiting good men and women is only half the battle. You need to give them the financial and logistical support they need to get elected and to advance their legislative agenda once in office.

Why are the Oklahoma Senate Republicans putting their caucus's lone HB 1804 opponent, an outspoken opponent of enforcing immigration laws, in charge of the Business and Labor Committee?

Catching up with links -- I had two pieces in last week's Urban Tulsa Weekly.

My Cityscope column dealt with E-Tickets -- why the Tulsa Police Department needs the electronic citation system advocated by Councilor John Eagleton, and what's the hold up to getting it funded.

Here are some earlier stories about E-Tickets:

• August 1, 2007: Councilor Crusade by Brian Ervin
• September 26, 2007: Safer Streets with E-Tickets? by Brian Ervin
• January 16, 2008: Somebody Should Be Cited by Brian Ervin (on the mysterious cancellation of the bid request for the system
• November 5, 2008: News Updates, which mentions the Council's October 30 decision not to fund E-Tickets from the 2006 Third Penny fund.

Also in last week's issue was a feature story with my post-election analysis, covering the Tulsa County Commission District 2 race, the Republican successes in the State Legislature and Corporation Commission, and the re-election of Sen. Jim Inhofe (while noting the strange undervote in the U. S. Senate race) and Congressman John Sullivan. I took a look at the swath of counties, stretching from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma, that gave more votes to the Republican presidential nominee this year than in 2004, and noted the connection to the lands of Ulster-Americans, aka the Scotch-Irish. I closed by suggesting that Republicans may want to adapt the British Conservative Party's Campaign North, their successful effort to rebuild their party in the north of England, where they had been nearly wiped out by the Labour Party.

A few links related to that last point:

• January 2007 memo from Francis Maude to Conservative MPs describing the creation of Campaign North


• Guardian story on the formation of Campaign North


• Videos about the campaign centers in the North East, the North West, and Yorkshire.

People ask me how they should vote tomorrow. Here's the short version:

Vote for all the REPUBLICANS.
Vote FOR all the State Questions.
Vote AGAINST all the judges.

On the street tax, I plan to vote FOR the sales tax extension (Prop. 1) and AGAINST the general obligation bond issue (Prop. 2). The sales tax extension includes money (not as much as I'd like) for paving, and the sales tax allows some flexibility, so that the City Council could (via the Brown Ordinance process) move some non-street projects to a later time while moving paving earlier. This approach also avoids raising overall tax rates and leaves the door open to implement the Yazel plan to reduce the dedicated property taxes for overfunded agencies and make that money available for more immediate public purposes.

Some links to my columns on the candidates and ballot items:

My debate with Elaine Dodd, in which we discuss the races for President, U. S. Senate, the 1st Congressional District, the County Commission race, and the Senate District 27 race (I'm supporting McCain, Inhofe, Sullivan, Bell, and Newberry, respectively.)
Dana Murphy for Corporation Commissioner.
Sally Bell for Tulsa County Commissioner, District 2.
State questions and judicial retention ballot
Street tax (October 15)
Street tax (October 29)

Scroll down the home page for more commentary on the election.

Here's some information about voting, with links to the Tulsa County Election Board website, a precinct locator, sample ballots, and how to do early voting (you have until 6 p.m. Monday for that).

Here's the League of Women Voters Tulsa website, with links to voting information and (in PDF format) their voter's guide to the candidates and ballot issues.

Here's the Oklahomans for Life website and their compilation of candidate responses to their survey.

Here's the Oklahoma Family Policy Council website and their compilation of candidate responses to their survey.

All you folks who have been asking me about the state questions and the judicial retention ballot -- here you go. My extra piece in this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly is about Oklahoma's four state questions and retention votes for some of our supreme court and appeals court judges. In a nutshell, vote yes on all the state questions, and vote no on all the judges, particularly Civil Appeals Court Judge Jane Wiseman.

The Cityscope column proper is about the City of Tulsa street tax again, with a summary of the responses I received from the Tulsa Public Works Department, a summary of the case the Papa Bear proponents are making against the Mama Bear plan, and how County Assessor Ken Yazel's proposal fits in with all this.

New city reporter Brandon Honig debuts in the current issue, with a solid story about the Tulsa Development Authority and its problems with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. And Natasha Ball has a lovely story about the Remingtons, a couple who adopted a family of five siblings early this year.

Later, I'll add links to this entry to background info on the judges and state questions. But this'll have to do for now.

This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I return to the topic of the November 4 City of Tulsa street sales tax and bond issue vote, raising some questions I hope can be convincingly answered between now and election day.

In an extra op-ed, I explain why voters of all political orientations should choose the eminently qualified Dana Murphy for the two-year term seat on the Corporation Commission over appointed incumbent Jim Roth, whose personal connections and campaign finances indicate a far-too-cozy relationship with Chesapeake Energy, one of the businesses he regulates. For good measure, here's my editorial endorsing Dana Murphy in the Republican primary.

Until recently, Democratic 1st District Congressional nominee Georgianna Oliver proudly boasted the endorsement of ACORN, the left-wing organization in the news recently in connection with fraudulent voter registration activities in numerous swing states. It was the top of her "professional endorsements" page. Mad Okie noticed that that endorsement had vanished for some reason, but he was able to capture a screenshot from Google's cache. He was also able to capture the PDF directly from the website before it was removed from the oliverforcongress.com website, a brief, unsigned and undated memo on ACORN VOTES letterhead from Patricia Walker, "North Tulsa Chapter Chairperson, ACORN Votes." The PDF file has a creation date of September 16.

The Red Dirt Report recently received an exclusive peek at an abandoned ACORN office in southern Oklahoma City:

Left hurriedly and in a shambles, the small office, coated in a layer of plaster dust, still housed computers, documents, registration forms, I-9 employment info and boxes with an IRS return address and others with a return address for an ACORN office in New Orleans.

The person working at this office, Adam Carter, had reportedly skipped town in June, according to the landlord. and in August, an ACORN representative from Tulsa came down and took more items, leaving behind what was found by Red Dirt Report. ACORN never fulfilled it's year lease for the property and never paid a dime in rent. The landlord told Red Dirt Report that the ACORN workers seemed to attract trouble and that there was something not quite right about what they were doing. The landlord also said that the aforementioned Tulsa ACORN worker, named "Brittany," said ACORN didn't have any money to pay for the rent and that Carter had depleted the South Oklahoma City ACORN account....

In fact, the evidence discovered in the abandoned office on South Robinson revealed maps of Oklahoma City broken down in House districts. Districts where a Republican won, but just barely, were highlighted. Papers related to the 2006 election results for Oklahoma were also noted.

Oklahoma City radio station KTOK reported Thursday on ACORN's brief tenure in Oklahoma City, where they attempted to get taxpayer funding for their activities:

The city received a request for the HUD money from a Matthew Eaton who represented ACORN. Internet searches reveal a Matt Eaton is the South West Development Coordinator for ACORN who described himself as an experienced grant writer and resource development coordinator. He also claimed to be 'well versed in various forms of fund raising. "I aspire to help raise enough money so ACORN offices in the Southwest will be able to establish Tax Access and Benefit Centers in each of its neighborhood locations and to register 300,000 new voters," wrote Eaton in a website description of himself and his goals.

But less than a year after asking for the HUD money,Eaton and the ACORN office in Oklahoma City were history. The city denied the funding request and other neighborhood agencies indicated they too had similar 'empty' relationships with ACORN. A spokeswoman of one such group said when they asked an ACORN official about the group's funding, they were told it could not be discussed.

(Via Green Country Values.)

MORE: In 2007, ACORN was found to have submitted more than 1,700 fraudulent voter registrations in King Co., Washington.

RottenACORN.com has a list and map of fraud prosecutions involving ACORN. They seem to be fond of swing states.

Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit provides a "complete guide to ACORN voter fraud" on Pajamas Media.

At a campaign stop in Ohio, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called for the Obama-Biden campaign to disclose all communications between that campaign and ACORN. Hoft notes:

Barack Obama worked as a former trainer with the scandal-plagued ACORN organization. He also has a long history with the Far Left group and the group has canvassed for him this year. He represented ACORN in court. And, Obama donated $800,000 to the radical group just this year for their get out the vote efforts.

Earlier this week Palin told Obama to rein in this group of radical supporters.

In response, the Obama campaign is trying to pressure the FBI into dropping its investigation into voter fraud. The McCain campaign has fired back:

After a week of shifting stories and clumsy corrections regarding Barack Obama's connections to ACORN, the Obama campaign resorted to their now-customary heavy handed tactic of attempting to criminalize political discourse. Today's outrageous letter to Attorney General Mukasey and Special Prosecutor Dannehy at the Justice Department asking for a special prosecutor to investigate Senator McCain and Governor Palin's public statements about ACORN's record of fraudulent voter registrations (including in this week's Presidential debate) is absurd. It is a typical time-worn Washington attempt to criminalize political differences. For someone who promises 'change,' it is certainly only more of the same.

The letter's request that the Department of Justice investigate 'recent partisan Republican activities throughout the country' is almost a parody of the Obama campaign's attempt to intimidate their political opponents. In case Sen. Obama's lawyer did not notice, we are in the midst of a political campaign, not a coronation, and the alleged criminal activity he calls 'recent partisan Republican activities' are what the rest of us call campaign speeches and debates. All of this is unfortunately reminiscent of the Obama campaign's recent creation of a 'truth squad' of Missouri prosecutors and sheriffs to 'target' people who criticize Sen. Obama. Rest assured that, despite these threats, the McCain-Palin campaign will continue to address the serious issue of voter registration fraud by ACORN and other partisan groups, and compliance by states with the Help America Vote Act's requirement of matching new voter registrations with state data bases to prevent voter fraud.

Today at 5 p.m. is the deadline for Oklahoma residents to register to vote for the November 4 general election. While the election board will accept registration forms by mail that have been postmarked by today, the safest way to be sure that you will get to vote on November 4 is to go to your county election board and register in person before 5 p.m.

The Tulsa County Election Board is located at 555 N. Denver Ave., Tulsa, OK 74103. The phone number is 918-596-5780.

The Oklahoma State Election Board website has a complete list of county election boards, with the phone number, address, and hours of operation for each. Please note that election boards in some rural counties close as early as 1:30 p.m.

UPDATE: Tulsa County Election Board will stay open until midnight tonight to accept last-minute registrations.

Here's the video of KJRH's debate between U. S. Sen. Jim Inhofe and his challenger State Sen. Andrew Rice, from last night. Russ McCaskey moderated with Joe Kelley of KRMG, Wayne Greene of the Tulsa World, and Karen Larsen of KJRH on the panel.

Oklahomans for Life, the organization that advocates at the State Capitol for the sanctity of human life, has published the responses to its survey of candidates for the November 4 general election in the October 2008 issue of its newsletter. There are separate surveys for federal and state candidates; both surveys ask about concrete policies and bills that are likely to come before Congress and the Oklahoma Legislature. Topics include abortion and abortion funding, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia. The federal survey includes a couple of questions about rationing of federally-funded medical care:

10) Some hospitals have implemented formal policies authorizing denial of lifesaving medical treatment against the will of a patient or the patient's family if an ethics committee thinks the patient's quality of life is unacceptable, even though the patient and family disagree. The federal Patient Self-Determination Act currently requires health care facilities receiving Medicare or Medicaid to ask patients on admission whether they have an advance directive indicating their desire to receive or refuse lifesaving treatment under certain circumstances. Would you support preventing involuntary denial of lifesaving medical treatment by amending the Patient Self-Determination Act to provide that if failure to comply with a patient's or surrogate's choice for life-saving treatment would in reasonable medical judgment be likely to result in or hasten the patient's death, a health care provider unwilling to respect the choice for life-saving treatment must allow the patient to be transferred to a willing provider and must provide the treatment pending transfer?

11) Would you vote against any bill that imposes price controls or otherwise limits the right of older Americans who choose to do so to add their own funds on top of the government contribution in order to obtain Medicare health insurance that is less likely to ration medical treatment and prescription drugs?

The same issue of the newsletter includes a response by OfL director Tony Lauinger to Jerry Riley, husband of State Sen. Nancy Riley (D-SD37), who took exception to OfL's characterization of Sen. Riley's voting record. Lauinger points out that the votes a legislator casts trumps the position a legislator claims, and Nancy Riley's two no votes on SB 714 in 2007 made the difference in the legislature's attempt to override Gov . Brad Henry's veto. Lauinger reminds that Sen. Riley's votes on SB 714 contradicted her responses to the Oklahomans for Life survey in 2000 and 2004 (as a Republican candidate for State Senate) and in 2006 (as a Republican candidate for Lt. Governor).

Lauinger's letter addresses the matter of the rape and incest exception, and why the consistent pro-life position permits abortion only when the life of the mother is in jeopardy. (Riley cited the lack of a rape and incest exception as the reason for her opposition to SB 714, but she failed to offer such an exception as an amendment, either in her committee or in the Senate as a whole.)

Ethel Waters, the revered African-American vocalist of blues and spirituals, had occasion near the end of her life to recount its beginning: "My father raped my mother when she was twelve years old, and today they've named a park for me in Chester, Pennsylvania." Recounted in her autobiography, His Eye is on the Sparrow, her life is but one of many of children conceived in rape who went on to make great contributions to this world.

She might wonder how it makes sense, in logic or in law, to execute a child for the crime of his or her father? Abortion does not erase the trauma of a rape. Abortion compounds the first tragedy with a second tragedy - one for which the woman herself is responsible.

It is not valid to assume the best thing for a victim of rape or incest is to abort her baby. For society, abortion might seem to "solve the problem." But for the woman herself, it does not. Abortion often leads to psychological anguish and emotional devastation. Britain's Royal College of Psychiatry issued a warning in March that women may be at risk of mental health breakdowns if they have abortions. They advised that women should not have an abortion until they are counseled about the possible risk to their mental health.

There are more than one million unborn babies being killed by abortion in our country every year. One could rely on the absence of a rape exception as an excuse for opposing all manner of bills that seek to reduce abortions and save the babies we can. Or one could support these reasonable, modest regulations which, while not making abortion illegal, at least give some unborn children - and their mothers - a chance to avoid catastrophe.

That's why Nancy's votes against SB 714 were so disappointing. When the opportunity to help these babies came, she didn't give the benefit of the doubt to life.

Sen. Tom Coburn was on with 1170 KFAQ's Pat Campbell this morning explaining his decision to vote for the $700 billion bailout. It was strange to hear Coburn acknowledge that this bill might not work, that this bill didn't address the underlying causes, but that we had to do something. He compared it to using a defibrillator on a heart attack patient; you deal with his high cholesterol levels after you've saved his life.

But how did Tom Coburn become persuaded that the current situation is a financial heart attack and that the bailout is a financial defibrillator?

Coburn mentioned that he heard from the heads of all the biggest banks in Oklahoma. He specifically mentioned, by title but not by name, the chairman of the Bank of Oklahoma. (That's George Kaiser, if you didn't know.) He heard that banks won't lend to each other, that people with 650 credit scores couldn't get car loans, that businesses were having their loans called by banks who needed the money on their books.

A couple of days ago, while folding laundry, I was struck by similarities between the mortgage bailout and the BOk / Great Plains Airlines bailout. In both cases, I have the sense that the bailout is not to stave off dire consequences for the general public, but dire consequences for big shots who made bad decisions.

Recall that in the Great Plains situation, BOK made a bad loan after two initial refusals, based on private assurances from then-Mayor Susan Savage that the City of would make the bank whole if the loan went bad. That's according to former Councilor Jim Mautino:

In another video on that same entry, Jim Mautino mentions being called to the office of Stan Lybarger, president of BOk. Mautino took city attorneys Larry Simmons and Drew Rees with him to the meeting. Lybarger told them that he had twice turned down the Great Plains loan, but relented because then Mayor Susan Savage gave him "assurances." This would be the same Savage who gave "assurances" to the City Council at the time that transfering AFP3 to the Tulsa Industrial Authority would not expose the City to any liability in the Great Plains financing deal.

Tulsa city councilors were warned that the city's credit rating would suffer if the city didn't pay back the loan. I suspect that the real worry was that some BOk executives would suffer legal consequences if this bad debt hadn't been paid off before a certain deadline. A federally-insured bank isn't allowed to make risky loans for political reasons.

In the current "crisis," we're hearing from a lot of Wall Street types of impending doom, but we're not seeing an unreasonable tightening of credit on Main Street. My suspicion is that this bailout is really about protecting fat cats from the consequences of their bad decisions, and the fat cats are doing a fine job of spooking Congress into a stampede.

I think Coburn was sincere in stating the rationale for his vote. It may be that the bank officials were shooting straight with him. Then again, he was taking his cues from someone who supports bigger government and higher taxes and is a bundler for Barack Obama.

MORE: Whom did Coburn convince? (Emphasis added.)

Just talked to a Republican leadership aide. Here's what he had to say about the big margin today. He cited three factors:

1) Up to the point of the Monday vote, members were only hearing from people adamantly opposed to the bill. After the vote, that changed. They began to hear from employers, bankers, and opinion leaders back in their districts who told them how much it would hurt the local economy if they didn't act to try to calm the credit markets; 2) The strong Senate vote helped. Members could say to themselves, "Well, both my state's senators voted for it." And Sen. Tom Coburn's strong support for the measure carried a lot of weight with House conservatives; 3) The inclusion of the FDIC increase gave members something positive and easy to understand to talk about in explaining the bill. The purchase of illiquid assets isn't easy to explain, and if you can explain it, doesn't sound very appealing to anyone. The FDIC provision was easier to portray as a proposal to help "Main Street," with local bankers complaining and worrying about large withdrawals.

This coming Saturday, October 4, the Tulsa County Republican Party will hold its annual fall fundraiser out at the old barn on the McGraw place, 10900 S. Louisville Ave.

It's a great opportunity to meet fellow Republican activists and elected officials. Councilor John Eagleton will be providing the barbecue: chopped beef, pulled pork, ribs, chicken, seasoned with a dry rub and smoked for hours. It's always delicious.

The entertainment is a band called the Rockin' Acoustic Circus, a group of talented young string musicians who play a mix of bluegrass, swing, and country.

It should be a beautiful fall day, and the McGraws' place is a delightful slice of country in the city. The festivities begin at 11:30. The cost is $10 per person, but just $20 for an entire family. There will also be a silent auction, and McCain-Palin T-shirts and buttons will be for sale.

Hope to see you there!

By now you've heard about the KFOR-SurveyUSA poll of 652 likely Oklahoma voters from September 5-7. The poll shows Republicans with substantial leads in statewide races:

President: McCain/Palin over Obama/Biden, 65% to 32%.
Senator: Jim Inhofe over Andrew Rice and Stephen Wallace, 56% to 34% to 6%.
Corporation Commissioner (long term): Jeff Cloud over Charles Gray, 52% to 34%.
Corporation Commissioner (short term): Dana Murphy over Jim Roth, 54% to 36%.

The links above will take you to the crosstabs for each poll, showing how the candidates when the sample is broken down by race, gender, party affiliation, age, education, ideology, church attendance, income, and abortion views.

Keeping in mind that the smaller the subsample, the bigger the margin of error, it's still striking that McCain has the support of 42% of Oklahoma Democrats.

I'm happy to see my friend Dana Murphy doing so well. She is the most qualified candidate for Corporation Commissioner that I have ever seen on the ballot. If Oklahoma voters can look beyond party affiliation, she ought to win by a landslide.

I had been hearing about this famous/infamous ad-man for years, a native Tulsan and the nephew of Sen. Jim Inhofe, but I had never met him and had no idea what he looked like until I was on the convention floor Wednesday night and spotted Neil Munro of the National Journal next to the Oklahoma delegation. (Neil, Stephen Spruiell of National Review, Kate Hunter of Congressional Quarterly, and I comprised the entire press corps covering the Committee on Rules and Order of Business last Friday.)

I went over to say hello, and Neil called my attention to someone with luxuriantly flowing blond hair standing behind the delegation, next to Inhofe. He told me it was Fred Davis, McCain's attack ad man.

Neil had a profile of Davis in Tuesday's convention edition of National Journal:

Television ads are the background rhythm of a presidential campaign, and Republican Sen. John McCain's drummer -- ad man Fred Davis -- is already accelerating the beat and playing his signature riffs.

He has in the works a television ad that contrasts Democratic nominee Barack Obama's life as a politician in Chicago with that of his half-brother in Kenya, who lives in a shack on an unpaved street. Davis, chairman of Strategic Perception, McCain's advertising firm, said that the images are meant as a sharp-edged counterpoint to a theme in Obama's acceptance speech last week, in which he declared, "I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper."...

Davis sketched out his advertising strategy for a breakfast at the Minneapolis Hyatt Hotel recently, revving up the crowd with a selection of his past spots and an anti-Obama ad that was pulled before it could be run. The ad portrayed an Obama supporter in Texas being asked to cite an Obama accomplishment; he remains open-mouthed and silent for several seconds -- as if to suggest that he could think of nothing Obama had ever done.

Ultimately, the ad was discarded because it also showed a similarly nonplussed Democratic legislator who has since died. "There's plenty more in the can, soon to come," Davis promised.

MORE: Here's a 2006 National Journal Q&A with Davis, in which he talks about his first major race, his uncle's 1994 run for Senate. I don't recall Inhofe being as much of an underdog as Davis suggests, but I could be misremembering. That was a big year for Republicans across the board and a near sweep of statewide offices in Oklahoma.

And a couple of weeks ago, Townhall's Matt Lewis had this:

I'm hearing that tensions were high recently when veteran actor Robert Duvall was taping a voice-over for a video to be played during the Republican National Convention. Apparently, the veteran actor objected to the direction he was receiving from Republican media guru Fred Davis. According to my sources, Duvall said something along the lines of: "F-you Fred! If Scorsese couldn't give me direction, what the hell makes you think you can?" Though this blow-up is actually recorded on tape, my guess is it's in everyone's best interest for this to not leak out ...

If memory serves, Davis was responsible for Bob Sullivan's attack ads in his 2006 Republican Governor's campaign against Ernest Istook. Here's the one featuring Gailard Sartain:

In a 5 min. interview with BatesLine, Muskogee Mayor John Tyler Hammons, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and at 19 years, 364 days old America's youngest mayor, talks about trying to meet Rudy Giuliani, how he became interested in politics, the challenges of serving as mayor, and the amount of worldwide media attention focused on him this week.

(The embed doesn't seem to be working, so here's a link to the video's page.)

Two Tulsa area legislative seats are up for grabs today. Term limits have ended the legislative careers of State Sen. Jim Williamson (R) and State Rep. Darrell Gilbert (D). The two seats are heavily partisan -- the winner of the runoff is guaranteed the Senate 35 seat and all but guaranteed the House 72 seat. (Lawrence Kirkpatrick, a perennial candidate, will be on the general election ballot as an independent.)

In Senate 35, former Tulsa City Councilor Cason Carter received 45% of the primary vote to 41% for Tulsa resident and Jenks school board member Gary Stanislawski. Three other candidates finished in single digits. Stanislawski has been endorsed by Sen. Jim Williamson and the Tulsa Area Republican Assembly. Carter has outraised and outspent Stanislawski, but both candidates have had ads on radio, something of a novelty for a state legislative race. As I said before the primary, I'm voting for Gary Stanislawski. (Having already decided to support him, I had the opportunity to do some computer work for him early in the campaign.)

Stanislawski's campaign manager Josh McFarland was on the Chris Medlock show on 1170 KFAQ yesterday, answering the negative ads being mailed out by Cason Carter. Medlock, like me, lives in Senate 35. He says this is a race between a candidate driven by principle (Stanislawski) and one driven by the bottom line (Carter), which would explain why the grassroots are lining up behind Stanislawski and the Chamber / Money Belt types are backing Carter.

In House 72, Seneca Scott finished first in the primary with 42% of the vote; Christie Breedlove finished second with 28%. That's a tough gap to overcome in a runoff, but Breedlove has the advantage of being not only a lifelong resident of the district, she lives in a more typical part of the district. (Scott, a Jenks High School graduate, lives near TU, in the small section of the district south of TU.) She has been endorsed by State Sen. Judy Eason-McEntyre and City Councilor Jack Henderson and former Councilor Roscoe Turner.

Runoffs often have rotten turnouts. If you live in either of those districts, please be sure to turn out to vote.

Scroll down for an update to this entry.

Robert N. Going likes what he sees in Oklahoma's junior senator:

I think I have a new hero, a United States Senator who believes in requiring politicians to justify their spending of your tax dollars, who kept his term limit pledge when he went to Congress, who intends to do the same in the Senate, doesn't ask for or get earmarks, is beholden to no one and votes his conscience, Senator Doctor Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

The man has tied the Senate in knots by following their rules. He's put holds on every questionable bill he can get his hands on. See David Keene's background piece in The Hill.

At the time Keene wrote, he fully expected that the good old boys of both parties would squash Coburn like a bug when the "Coburn Omnibus Bill" (designed to logroll enough pet projects to guarantee 60 votes) came to the floor. Lo and behold, the Republicans stuck together and only 52 Senators voted "Aye".

What Going and other limited-government conservatives love about Dr. Tom are the very qualities that frustrate his colleagues:

Tom Coburn's Senate colleagues don't know quite what to make of the doctor from Oklahoma. Many of them find him personally likable, but they can't understand why he seems to want to change the way the exclusive club to which they all belong has been doing business for so long.

And what's worse, they have no way of controlling the man. Coburn (R) left the House in 2000 after three terms there because he had voluntarily term-limited himself, and he says that he'll retire from the Senate after two terms there to go back to practicing medicine in Oklahoma. What that means, of course, is that he won't be around quite long enough to chair an important committee even if the GOP should retake the Senate at some point -- and that, therefore, he doesn't have to watch his manners lest party leaders squelch his ambitions.

Moreover, since he finds earmarks morally objectionable, his colleagues can't control him by cutting off funds for a library or parking garage back home and instead have to either confront his arguments or find a way around him. That was a lot easier in the House because there isn't all that much a lone congressman can do to derail spending programs there, but the Senate actually empowers folks like Coburn, who are willing to forsake the comity of the club and rely on the body's rules to get their way.

We need more people like Coburn in government, people who aren't bound by ambition or fear or social ties from doing what's right. If District 2 voters have the good sense to elect Sally Bell to the County Commission, we'll be closer to that goal here in Tulsa County.

Watch Sen. Coburn's blog to follow his crusade against indefensible federal spending.

MORE: Via Jill Stanek, The Hill reports that the Senate Ethics committee is pressuring Coburn over continuing to deliver babies pro bono. The pretext is that, now that the formerly public Muskogee Regional Medical Center is a private institution, Coburn delivering babies there constitutes an endorsement of that particular hospital.

Coburn spokesman John Hart agreed to discuss the issue only after The Hill contacted his office several times over the past two weeks. He called the Ethics panel's logic "absurd" and its argument "inane."

"Just as parents don't choose him hoping to sway his vote, parents don't choose to receive his services at a particular hospital because Dr. Coburn has somehow endorsed that hospital because he is a senator," Hart said in a statement e-mailed to The Hill. "The committee has shown us zero empirical evidence to back up its flimsy claim.

"Has Sen. Leahy provided an improper endorsement to Warner Brothers for appearing in Batman?" Hart asked. "Will millions of Americans now see Batman not because it features stars like Christian Bale or the late Heath Ledger, but because Patrick Leahy, a distinguished United States senator, has offered his illustrious endorsement to this motion picture?

"If Sen. Coburn can only deliver babies for free at a public hospital, shouldn't Sen. Leahy only be allowed to donate his notable thespian skills to a public entity like PBS?"...

Hart estimates that Coburn has delivered dozens of babies since last receiving an ultimatum from the Ethics panel in 2005. Coburn has received no compensation for his work and paid "tens of thousands of dollars" out of his own pocket for medical malpractice insurance and other costs related to his medical practice, Hart said.

Other physicians in the Senate, such as former Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a heart surgeon, voluntarily gave up their medical practices when they joined the Senate.

Coburn, however, wants to remain a true citizen-legislator and has long argued that the Senate should allow him to keep serving his patients because he plans to return to the practice when he leaves the Senate in 2016, consistent with his pledge to serve only two terms. He would like to keep up his medical skills if he is going to continue being able to earn a living in his chosen profession.

Frist, by contrast, had no plans to return to his practice when he retired from the Senate. ...

"The parents of babies Dr. Coburn delivers don't choose him hoping to sway his vote, and they never have," Hart said. "In the 10 years Dr. Coburn has provided free healthcare to his neighbors while serving in Congress, the Ethics Committee has never pointed to a single conflict of interest. No lobbyist or any individual has ever attempted to infiltrate his medical office under the guise of an invasive medical exam to discuss Senate business."

Coburn's work as an obstetrician was controversial during his House career, but the House allowed him to continue to practice and make enough money to cover his medical bills. When he joined the Senate, the Ethics Committee issued him a letter prohibiting him from practicing medicine.

Hart also made note of the timing of the press's interest in this story. The Ethics Committee sent a memo to Coburn in May, but it has only become public in the past two weeks during the battle over the Tomnibus bill.

Stanek writes, "Were Tom Coburn aborting babies free instead of delivering them free, there would be no investigation; there would be an awards ceremony. This is ridiculous on so many levels, not the least of which is the Democrats' disregard for the poor, unless they control the dole so as to get the credit."

Most elections I'm used to a mixed bag of results -- some encouraging, some discouraging. Once in a great while -- 1980, 1994 come to mind -- everything goes the way I hope.

This comes close to being one of those nights.

82% of Republican voters said yes to Sally Bell and "enough already" to County Commissioner Randi Miller. While I expected a win, my guess was 57%. There's a certain constituency who will vote for the incumbent no matter what. Bell's win is certainly due to disgust with Miller, but the size of the win demonstrates that voters see Bell as a credible prospect for County Commission. That ought to help her raise money and volunteers for the November general election, which will be tough, but it's looking more and more feasible.

We're nearly at 100% of the vote, and it looks like Dana Murphy has won a close Republican primary against State Rep. Rob Johnson for the right to challenge appointed Corporation Commissioner Jim Roth, a Democrat. Dana is a wonderful person, she is extremely qualified for this job, and she has the integrity to do the right thing regardless of the pressure from special interests. A cynic would say that combination is political poison, but it's nice to see a good guy finish first for once. Again, it'll be tough to beat an incumbent, but Murphy is more qualified than Roth for the job (she worked for the OCC for five years, he's been there less than one), and she has been in three statewide elections. Roth has never run statewide.

In District 35, we're headed for a runoff, as expected, between Cason Carter and Gary Stanislawski. There's only a 268 vote gap between the two -- Carter 44%, Stanislawski 40%. It's likely that Jeff Applekamp and Janet Sullivan took more support from Stanislawski than from Carter -- Applekamp comes from the southern end of the district, and Sullivan, like Stanislawski, attends Victory Christian Center.

No surprises in the Republican primaries for U. S. Senate and the First Congressional District: Jim Inhofe and John Sullivan prevailed easily over perennial candidates.

I was surprised that the anointed Democratic challengers to Inhofe and Sullivan won by relatively slim margins over very underfunded opponents. Georgianna Oliver beat Mark Manley by only 55% to 45%, and Democratic turnout in the 1st District was half of the Republican turnout, which reveals a lack of enthusiasm for the recently relocated Mrs. Oliver. State Sen. Andrew Rice managed less than 60% against a perennial candidate.

I was pleased, but not at all surprised, to see Dan Newberry win his Senate District 37 primary by such a large margin. He's been walking the district for a year or more. He's got a good headstart on reclaiming the district for the Republican Party.

John Trebilcock won over his primary challenger by a two-to-one margin. I'm told the over-the-top attacks by his opponent turned off a lot of voters.

Elsewhere in Oklahoma, the Chambers of Commerce and the old Cargill machine attempted to defeat State Reps. Randy Terrill and Mike Reynolds. Terrill won renomination with 75% of the vote. Reynolds's race was closer -- 55-45. Disgraced former Speaker Lance Cargill was a consultant to his opponent's campaign.

In Oklahoma County, District 2 County Commissioner Brent Rinehart got a bigger percentage of the vote than Randi Miller -- all of 21%, and that in the face of financial scandal and national notoriety for his amateurish cartoon campaign piece. But he still lost big, and Brian Maughan came close to winning outright with 47% of the vote. Maughan will face J. D. Johnston in a runoff. I know Brian through state Republican Party events, and I'm happy to see him well on his way to a seat on the County Commission.

My take on the two Northside Democratic House primaries: All of the candidates are pretty far to my left on state issues, none of them are pro-life, and none of them will have a Republican opponent in the fall, so in a sense, it doesn't matter who wins. But Christie Breedlove, running in HD 72, has been a tireless worker for Roscoe Turner, one of the good guys on the City Council, and we're often on the same side of local issues, so I'm happy to see her move forward to a runoff.

I was also happy to see Jabar Shumate prevail in a tough primary against Kevin Matthews in HD 73. Nothing against Matthews, but I appreciated Shumate and Sen. Judy Eason-McIntyre taking the political risk to support the New Hope Scholarship program, which would have given partial tax credits for donations to scholarship funds to pay for at-risk students to attend private schools. It was a modest school choice bill, but one opposed by a core Democrat constituency -- the teacher's union and other elements of the education establishment -- so Shumate and Eason-McIntyre deserve praise for putting their constituents' best interests above political expedience.

It's just really nice to know that I don't have to take down any yard signs tomorrow, because all my candidates made it to the next round.

MORE:

I thought I heard a big flushing sound yesterday.

Irritated Tulsan has a career possibility for the soon to be former commissioner.

740 KRMG's Joe Kelley has video of the real reason Randi lost in a landslide.

Michelle is OK with low voter turnout, and she has some advice for John Trebilcock's opponent:

John Newhouse found out tonight that you should run on something besides a mistake your opponent made over a year ago, and has asked forgiveness for. Trebilcock won with about 65%.

This post will remain at the top of the blog until the polls close.

I'll have five choices on my ballot in the 2008 Oklahoma primary election; here's how I plan to mark it:

U. S. Senator: Sen. Jim Inhofe
U. S. Representative, District 1: Rep. John Sullivan
Corporation Commissioner, Short Term: Dana Murphy
State Senator, District 35: Gary Stanislawski
Tulsa County Commissioner, District 2: Sally Bell

If you're a Republican in Senate District 37, I encourage you to vote for Dan Newberry, a solid conservative and a hard-working campaigner. I think he has the best shot at recapturing the seat for the GOP in November.

If I lived in House District 98, I'd be voting for John Trebilcock. John has hit a few bumps in the road, but he's been a solid legislator, and I appreciate his courage in standing up to the Cargill machine at the Capitol.

Here are some links that may be helpful as you go to vote:

Oklahoma State Election Board website
Complete list of candidates for state and federal office
Unofficial election results

Oklahoma Ethics Commission
OEC public disclosure system
Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports and data

Tulsa County Election Board website
Complete list of Tulsa County candidates
Precinct locator
Sample ballots by party and precinct

League of Women Voters Tulsa 2008 election information and voters' guide
Oklahomans for Life candidate survey

MORE: Irritated Tulsan has a motivational poster for voters in County Commission District 2. (Also, he reports that Yaw Eno has been cut down in its prime.)

Gary Stanislawski is not at all bothered that his principal rival in the SD 35 Senate race received a certain endorsement:

The Whirled editorial board endorsed former City Councilor Cason Carter.

Stanislawski, a financial planner and Jenks school board member, has been endorsed by incumbent Sen. Jim Williamson, who is leaving the legislature because of term limits, and by the Tulsa Area Republican Assembly. Stanislawski is an ORU alumnus, an active member and sometime Sunday School teacher and officer at Victory Christian Church, and served 8 years in the US Air Force.

Here's what I had to say about Mr. Carter about a year ago, right after the vote on buying One Technology Center as a new City Hall:

Taylor's over-the-top speech should have been greeted with howls of derision. Some councilor should have told her, "Madame Mayor, come back to talk to us when you can do so without insulting our intelligence."

Taylor claimed that the consolidation of city government offices at OTC would be the "key that will unlock the revitalization of downtown."

Four years ago, we were told that the new downtown sports arena was going to be the key to revitalizing downtown. Before that, we were told that the key was the Inner Dispersal Loop, the Williams Center, the Civic Center, putting the pedestrian mall in, and taking the pedestrian mall out.

It's as if we have a junk drawer full of house keys, skeleton keys, car keys, diary keys, piano keys, and plastic baby toy keys, and our civic leaders are trying them at random until they find one that works.

Taylor also told the Council that the OTC purchase would accomplish "transformation for our souls." I kid you not -- she really said that. Maybe it's because OTC looks like a crystal. Or perhaps Taylor has been reading The Secret.

Our current City Hall is ugly, and moving to OTC would give a boost to the Blue Dome District, but the deal isn't all that. Only the very gullible would buy the fake-it-'til-you-make-it hucksterism in Taylor's claim that going into debt to buy OTC would "change the trajectory" of our city.

And speaking of Cason Carter, he too professed faith in the transformational power of One Technology Center. I'm not sure whether he said that because he truly believes it or because he was trying to please Mayor Mommy by echoing her words.

Carter plans to run for State Senate District 35 next year, but anyone who spouts such nonsense doesn't have any business handling taxpayer dollars at City Hall, much less the bigger bucks at the State Capitol.

Cason is intelligent, a likable guy, and conservative on social issues. Many people I respect are supporting him. But he played it safe during his two years on the Council, taking care never to offend people who might be able to finance his next step up the political ladder. If someone isn't willing to take political risks and offend powerful special interests at City Hall, it's hard to believe he'll suddenly develop that level of courage at a higher level of government.

DISCLOSURE: Early in the campaign, having already decided by process of elimination that I would not be supporting Mr. Carter or Mr. Applekamp, I did some paid computer work for the Stanislawski campaign. This blog entry is at my own initiative, prompted only by a mention of the flyer on Chris Medlock's show. (Medlock was endorsed by the Whirled in his first State House run in 1994, which he lost to Fred Perry, another conservative who was proud not to be endorsed by the Whirled.)

MORE: This endorsement won't help Cason in Brookside:

"As a private developer looking to invest in Tulsa, Cason Carter was extremely helpful. He put me in contact with neighborhood leaders and was able to help facilitate a project that will be a great benefit for Tulsa."

John Gilbert
Senior Vice President Bomasada Group, Inc.

This post is a reminder to me to write a check to the ethics commission and get it mailed.

When the Oklahoma Ethics Commission called me back about my request for scans of the Tulsa County District 2 Commissioner race contributions and expenditures reports, I was told to mail a check for $1 for each page requested, and when they received the check, they would mail me the copies. I pointed out to Merlyn Rios, the clerk who handles these requests, that the purpose of filing these forms was to inform the public of the contributors to a candidate and to do so early enough to provide the media and the voters time to analyze the list and take it into consideration come election day. Waiting on the US Mail would slow the process down considerably and might mean voters wouldn't get the information in time to make use of it.

I asked to speak to Merlyn's boss about a waiver of fees or e-mailing the information to me. She transferred me to Patti Bryant. Patti agreed to authorize Merlyn to fax the information to me on the promise that I would mail a check. The fact that I am in media did not entitle me to a fee waiver. The fee is set by the Ethics Commission.

Given the history of county courthouse corruption in Oklahoma, I understand why the ethics law doesn't make a county official the repository of ethics filings, although it would be easier for voters to access the information if they could see it at the county election board.

But it seems to me that the purpose of the law is defeated by the way the commission is handling these documents. They should simply scan these documents upon receipt and post the resulting PDF on their website. Better yet, they should include county candidates in the same searchable database used for state candidates. I could see charging a fee for dredging out and copying old filings, but not for filings in current races.

So far, BatesLine is the only Tulsa media outlet to publish the contributions and expenditures reports for the District 2 County Commission Republican primary. (Here is Sally Bell's report and my analysis. Here is Randi Miller's report and my analysis. Tomorrow I should be able to scan and post Karen Keith's report.) The daily paper doesn't seem interested, and the report filing deadline comes too late for Urban Tulsa Weekly's last issue before the election.

If you appreciate having this information, why not say thanks by helping to defray the cost of acquiring it? In the right sidebar you'll find three ways to become a financial supporter of BatesLine.

1. You can post an ad through BlogAds and get your cause or business in front of the eyes of thousands of politically-aware and active Tulsans. Ads start at $30.
2. You can click the Donate button and contribute using your PayPal account or credit card.
3. Or if you're looking for somewhere to host your website, you can click the Bluehost button. You get a great and reasonably priced web hosting service, and I get a referral bonus.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is mainly devoted to an endorsement of Edmond attorney/geologist Dana Murphy for the two-year term on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Murphy is running against State Rep. Rob Johnson in the Republican primary, and the primary winner will face Jim Roth, who was appointed by Gov. Brad Henry to fill the vacancy left by Denise Bode's resignation.

Dana Murphy (danamurphy.com) served for five years as an administrative law judge for the OCC, presiding over more than 5,000 cases, weighing evidence and testimony and making judgments, and acting as a gatekeeper over the issues that would be decided by the three commissioners. If elected, Murphy would have no need for on-the-job training.

In addition to her time at the OCC, Murphy has worked as a petroleum geologist and an oil and gas attorney. She did her undergraduate work in geology at OSU then went on to get a law degree at Oklahoma City University....

I first got to know Dana Murphy during the 2002 campaign. Impressed by her credentials, I was glad to have the chance to serve in a very minor role on her team. I became even more impressed by her character, as I saw how graciously she dealt with slimy attack ads and a slim runoff defeat.

I'm proud to call Dana a friend, and in the intervening years, I've come to have an even greater appreciation for her character....

It's just under two weeks until the state primary election, and a number of organizations are out to help you make up your mind by asking candidates for their positions on key issues.

Oklahomans for Life has responses from state and federal candidates to a 12-question survey dealing with the issues of abortion and euthanasia, and in ways that are likely to come before Congress and the State Legislature.

It's disappointing that so few Democratic candidates bothered to respond to Oklahomans for Life. The usual excuse is that the survey responses will be used against them by Republican opponents, but that doesn't explain why Democrats don't respond even when no Republicans are running -- e.g. House Districts 72 and 73.

Via Green Country Values, I learned that the Oklahoma Publishing Company, which publishes the Oklahoman, has launched a website with information on elections for federal and state offices called ElectOK.com. Enter your address, and get a list of federal and state races on your ballot, with a page for each candidate to outline a platform, and post blog entries, photos, and video. As far as I can tell, it's a free opportunity for candidates to reach the voters.

At the bottom of the "about" page is an informative disclaimer that spells out OPUBCO's wide reach:

ElectOK is a product of OPUBCO Communications Group, a division of The Oklahoma Publishing Company, a 104-year-old privately held corporation based in Oklahoma City, with current interests in media, hospitality, minerals, communications, technology, securities and real estate development, among other ventures. OPUBCO Communications Group publishes a statewide daily newspaper, The Oklahoman, with distribution in all 77 Oklahoma counties. In addition to The Oklahoman, and the state's most trafficked local websites, including NewsOK.com, Wimgo.com, JobsOK.com, HomesOK.com, CarsOK.com and BedlamNation.com, OPUBCO Communications Group owns and operates The Oklahoman Direct, the largest full-scale standard direct mail provider in Oklahoma. OPUBCO Communications Group is also the publisher of many free distribution publications and magazines including: LOOKatOKC, a young reader tabloid; Viva Oklahoma!, a Spanish-language news tabloid; Make and Model, a car buyers guide; Central Oklahoma Homes Magazine, an upscale homebuilders magazine; HomesOK Extra, a real estate tabloid; JobsOK Extra, a recruitment tabloid; and most recently Recreational Rides, a monthly niche product that focuses on outdoor recreation.

(Wouldn't it be interesting to know details on, e.g., OPUBCO's involvement in real estate development? And whether that affects the Oklahoman's coverage of, e.g., zoning issues?)

Mike McCarville helpfully reminds us of convicted felon Lori McMahan's defense of her husband, convicted felon and disgraced former State Auditor Jeff McMahan, during McMahan's re-election campaign against Republican nominee Gary Jones:

"But I'm not going to sit by and let Jones drag a courageous, honest public servant through the mud with appalling lies and outlandish innuendoes. It would be almost impossible for me to respond to them all, but here are Gary's five most shameful lies, along with the truth."

McCarville notes that those shameful lies "formed the basis of the federal charges against her and her husband, and their convictions on conspiracy and bribery counts."

McCarville also has a poll on his homepage, asking whom Gov. Brad Henry should appoint to replace McMahan. Jones is leading the pack with 50%, followed by Robert Butkin with 17%.

Butkin, a former State Treasurer and a Democrat, left to head up the University of Tulsa's law school, then resigned from that post last year to help out with his family's oil and gas business. Butkin cleaned up an extremely tarnished State Treasurer's office and built a reputation for competence and integrity. He would be an excellent choice to finish out the Auditor's term. But Butkin and his wife have three small daughters, and it's unlikely he'd be willing to go back to commuting between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, even if only for two years.

If the Governor is set on appointing a Democrat, another possibility for a caretaker to finish out the term would be Tulsa's own City Auditor, Phil Wood. Wood set a standard for openness, taking the initiative to launch the first website for city government documents and information on his own dime and doing his own web programming. Although he's a loyal Democrat, he operates his office in a non-partisan fashion. As with Butkin, the big question is whether he'd be willing to commute to Oklahoma City.

Jones remains the best choice to complete McMahan's term -- he has demonstrated strong popular support in two elections and is willing and able to do the job.

McCarville reports rumors that Antlers banker Steve Burrage is a leading candidate for appointment as Auditor. I know nothing about Mr. Burrage, but my first thought was, Didn't Gene Stipe and Steve Phipps have an abstract company in Antlers?

Michelle Byte has started a blog to track the auditor appointment: appointgaryjones.blogspot.com.

In 2002, Gary Jones, a Certified Public Accountant, ran for State Auditor. He received 48.5% of the vote, losing to Jeff McMahan, a man with no education in accounting, by about 30,000 votes. We now know that Jeff McMahan won that election in part because of massive amounts of illegal campaign money, including $157,882 from Steve Phipps, a business partner with Gene Stipe in abstract companies regulated by the State Auditor's office.

In 2006, Jones ran again, receiving almost exactly the same share of the vote. In the weeks leading up to the election, Jones not only called into question McMahan's competence, but he began to sketch out the connections between McMahan, Steve Phipps, Gene Stipe, Francis Stipe, a dog food factory, and grants and loans orchestrated by certain Democratic legislators. It was a complicated story, too complicated to convey to the voters in a way that had impact. (As in 2002, Jones didn't have any coattails from the top of the Republican ticket.)

Jones continued to follow the money, and eventually the Feds did, too. McMahan and his wife, Lori, were convicted in federal court for bribe-taking and conspiracy. The shady dealings that Jones had uncovered were confirmed by Phipps's testimony and affirmed by the jury.

Jones's tenacity in pursuing corruption in state government, at the risk of being accused of sour grapes or obsession, is just the quality we need in a State Auditor.

I've read comments here and there that Jones is a party hack, because he's served for several years as chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party. Chairing a political party is a tough, thankless job, and it's unfair to dismiss someone who has been willing to serve in that role as a "hack."

I remember when Jones first decided to run for chairman. Chad Alexander had resigned following the disappointing 2002 results. As a statewide candidate, Jones, from rural Comanche County, saw how the city-oriented Republican Party had failed to connect with rural voters, despite the conservative values that they share with the GOP. His motivation for seeking the chairmanship was to fix that, and the increasing success of the party in electing legislative and county officials in once-solid-Democrat districts is testimony to his success.

After winning election to a full term as chairman in 2003 and then re-election in 2005, Jones stepped aside to again pursue the State Auditor's Office. Many Republicans, disappointed with the performance of his successor, Tom Daxon, urged him to seek the chairmanship again, and he defeated Daxon at the 2007 state convention.

Gary's bluntness, persistence, and analytical skills have been a great help to the GOP, but those qualities would be put to even better use in the pursuit of waste and fraud in state government. By appointing Gary Jones to fill the vacancy left by McMahan, Gov. Brad Henry would be proclaiming that the era of insider dealing, bribery, and corruption is over in Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma State Election Board yesterday voted 3-0 to deny a challenge to the candidacy of Dana Murphy for Corporation Commissioner. The challenge had been filed by Rob Johnson, Murphy's Republican opponent, on the grounds that Murphy's filing papers were invalid. At the direction of the State Election Board Secretary, Murphy had signed her name as she wished it to appear on the ballot. (She had signed her name the way she normally would on legal papers, with her middle initial.)

Johnson did not appear at the hearing.

In her press release, Murphy addresses another attack launched against her by Johnson:

Republican Corporation Commission candidate Dana Murphy was vindicated by the State Election Board's ruling on Monday morning striking down opponent Rob Johnson's challenge to keep her name from appearing on the ballot.

"This is a victory for common sense government and the people of Oklahoma," said Murphy. "This challenge over such a trivial issue as amending my name to appear on ballot as Dana Murphy instead of Dana L. Murphy is an example of wasting taxpayer money and the Election Board's time. It is disappointing that my opponent would stoop to such political pettiness."

"I trust Oklahoma voters not to be tricked by such political gamesmanship and that they will look at a person's true qualifications and commitment for the job. Instead of touting any meaningful qualifications of his own for this office, he seems to spend his time trying to smear me in the press."

While Murphy has been traveling around the state talking about her exemplary qualifications for a seat on the Corporation Commission and her vision for Oklahoma, opponent Johnson and his campaign aide Trebor Worthen, have resorted to the slimiest of tactics, bringing up Murphy's 1993 divorce.

"They have attempted to use divorce filings from one of the saddest times in my life to contend I'm unethical or worse. I have never been convicted of any of the crimes or unethical acts Worthen and Johnson claim. There is nothing in my divorce decree or any other court decisions that proves their claims," said Murphy.

"As anyone impacted by a difficult divorce or lawsuit understands, what is alleged in various pleadings and what is ultimately ruled on by a judge in a final order are often worlds apart. If Johnson cannot tell the difference between allegations made in a case and evidence needed to prove a case, he clearly didn't learn much in law school nor is he prepared to deal with the complex decisions on utility rate cases or oil and gas cases or other Commission cases."

Murphy challenges Johnson to stop hiding behind his consultants' statements and campaign propaganda and debate the issue at hand--serving on the Corporation Commission.

"In the legislature, laws are passed by a large group, but a Corporation Commissioner stands out as one among three for every decision made. Voters and reporters should be asking him, and any other candidates, what qualifications, experience and attributes make them the candidate best prepared to serve all Oklahomans," she said.

"I will debate Rob Johnson any time and place on the important issues at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission affecting Oklahomans," said Murphy. "I look forward to public opportunities to allow the voters to directly compare our credentials and experience for this very important job."

"My record speaks for itself. I've spent my entire adult life getting the education, developing the skills and gaining the experience and knowledge needed to serve as your Corporation Commissioner. I am the best qualified candidate, Democrat or Republican."

In addition to hearing over 5,000 cases as an administrative law judge at the Commission, Murphy has also testified as a geological witness and presented cases as an attorney before the Commission. Murphy is a fifth generation Oklahoman and currently runs a successful oil and gas law practice in Edmond.

The same attack regarding her divorce filings was attempted by her Republican opponents when she ran for Corporation Commissioner in 2002. There was nothing to it then, and there still isn't.

This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly I considered Oklahoma's just-concluded legislative filing period and the decline in number of candidates filing, explaining the deterrents to running for state legislature.

Steve Fair, a Republican Party official in southwestern Oklahoma, wondered about a related topic, the early departure of many House Republicans:

Why are so many Oklahoma GOP House members leaving office before they are termed out? There are a variety of reasons, but here is my "spin" on why a record number of Republican members are bailing in 2008.

Some Oklahoma House Republican members are leaving because they are young and ambitious. They are chasing the dollar or the next rung on the political ladder. Those members have never been dedicated to helping Oklahoma move forward and their departure will not leave a ripple in the political pond. Their selfishness and "me first" attitudes have not endeared them to the GOP grassroots or to Oklahoma voters as a whole. That may partially account for their early departures, but a more likely factor will be their own selfish interests. Twenty years from now their impact in the legislature will be little more than a notation in the Oklahoma Political Almanac. They ran for office because it looks good on their resume. They could care less about the issues or the average Oklahoman- it's all about them.

Other members are leaving because they have become disgusted with the process. After serving in the minority for the early part of their tenure in the House, optimism was high in 2004 when the GOP gained a majority. These "gray hairs" thought they would be called upon for advice and counsel, but instead many were passed over for newly elected, younger, more aggressive members. The new leadership rebuffed their experience and ability to work across the aisle with their Democrat counterparts in a gracious manner.

The situational ethics practiced by the new "principled" leadership was inconsistent with what was being press released to the public. The older members concerns on how business was being conducted was ignored and berated. The new GOP mandate was not working for the benefit of Oklahoma, but staying in power and increasing the number of "R"s. Any and all campaign methods- right or wrong- was on the table, if it won elections. Seeing no real difference in the policies and actions of the new GOP leadership and the old Democrat leadership, these members opted to leave early. Their departure is not a positive one and their experience will be missed.

He doesn't use the name "Lance Cargill," but the former Speaker and his posse fit the description of the young, aggressive, and ambitious. The Republican caucus and the House as a whole are better off without them.

At the end of my column, I wrote, "Even if we don't raise their pay, we ought to pay our respects to those who are willing to serve us in the legislature. When a candidate comes knocking on your door this summer and fall, give him or her a few minutes of your time, listen, ask questions, and treat the candidate with kindness and respect. It's the least you can do for someone willing to make personal sacrifices for the sake of serving you at the state Capitol."

Fair says that in exchange for their hard work, candidates should be able to expect from the voters engagement in the process, attention to the issues, civility, and the absence of vandalism, harassment, and dirty tricks. Fair points the finger at inattentive voters for the influence of money in politics (emphasis added):

Money and media have always driven politics but in the past twenty-five years that has escalated to new heights. It's not uncommon to see Oklahoma state legislative candidates now raise and spend six figures to run for an office that pays $38,500 annually. Some blame the big donors, the Political Action Committees, the lobbyists, and special interest groups for the infusion of money into the process, but are they really to blame? The real culprit is the average citizen and/or voter who for a variety of reasons have stopped taking equity in his government. Indifference or only causal knowledge of what is going on in your government leads to "defining" by candidates- both of themselves and their opponents. Elections are now won on popularity and not on issues.

In a survey conducted by Harvard University, one candidate describes campaigning in the 21st century like this. "I've been actively involved in politics for over 19 years now. I've even run for public office. Getting voters to even pay attention to government for 5 minutes is a struggle. Most citizens get their information from either sound bites from the propaganda machine that some people still naively refer to as the media and others get it twisted from others without checking the facts. Dealing with the average voter is like dealing with a dyslexic hyperactive kid on drugs." In the same survey, a voter says the greatest cause for voter apathy is people feel politicians promise the world and then forget their promises once elected to office. That's why it's important to know the facts and not just base your vote on a clever jingle, logo or commercial.

I've added three more blogs by and about Oklahoma to my blogroll. You'll see new entries from these blogs pop up on the powered-by-NewsGator blogroll headlines page. (I'm thinking it may be time to break out the Okie blogs to a separate page. What do you think?)

Random Dafydd (that's the Welsh version of David) grew up in Tulsa but now lives in Bartlesville. His blog covers Tulsa history, ancient manuscripts, and many other topics. Here are a couple of his recent historical entries: Tulsa before the railroad: Taylor Postoak Home and Tulsa Architecture, Hooper Brothers Coffee. The latter entry includes photos of the historic building on the edge of downtown at Admiral and Iroquois.

Green Country Values, which covers politics and regional events. Here's an entry about a trip last Saturday to the Lavender Festival and Stone Bluff Cellars. Blogger Jenn also has the scoop on U. S. Rep. John Sullivan's Private Property Rights Protection and Government Accountability Act, which addresses eminent domain abuse in the wake of the Kelo v. New London decision.

Finally, Save ORU chronicles the rebuilding of Oral Roberts University's finances and credibility. reacts to the AP report of declining enrollment:

(I found that last blog via Club Fritch, the blog of two ORU graduates, Ryan and Gillian (Rowe) Fritzsche, who are now in the film industry. They have a category called ORUgate.)

If you have a blog that you think would be of interest here at BatesLine, drop me a line at blog at batesline d0t com.

Speaking of mocking climate change alarmists, Oklahoma voters couldn't do better than to re-elect global warming skeptic Jim Inhofe to the U. S. Senate. His first TV commercial doesn't deal with the issue, except indirectly by celebrating Inhofe's renowned stubbornness and how that quality has served the interests of Oklahoma taxpayers:

I don't know for sure, but I suspect the road he's walking down at the end of the ad is the abandoned, two-mile-long section at the western end of the Will Rogers Turnpike, which was rerouted several years ago to connect with the Creek Turnpike.

Just received this press release from Dana Murphy, candidate for the unexpired term on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Murphy is by far the most qualified candidate in the race, by virtue of her service as an administrative law judge at the OCC and her training as a petroleum geologist and an attorney working on oil and gas matters. Her primary opponent is challenging her filing on some very slender grounds.

Note the reference in the next to last paragraph to campaign consultant Fount Holland. We've noted Holland's unfair political attacks on Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris; Holland was the consultant for Harris's opponent Brett Swab. I am sad to see Holland again using his considerable skills against a solid conservative and highly qualified Republican candidate for office.

(Oklahoma City, OK) Oklahoma Corporation Commission candidate Dana Murphy says the attempt by Rob Johnson and his campaign consultants to challenge her filing for office is nothing more than a desperate attempt to create something out of nothing.

"Rob Johnson and his consultants are grasping at straws because he can't challenge my qualifications. If you watch the video of my filing, you will clearly hear the Election Board clerk ask me if I wanted to be listed as 'Dana L. Murphy' or 'Dana Murphy'. I advised him 'Dana Murphy', he requested that I sign 'Dana Murphy' and I did. The Election Board clerk then scratched out the 'Dana L. Murphy' signature."

Murphy also stated that "In addition to this clarification, he also requested that I add either short or long term with the Commission office to the form and I added short term."

Murphy believes this ploy is just more evidence of the lackluster campaign on the part of Rob Johnson. "He has no hands-on, working experience at the Commission and little, if any, knowledge and background in matters regularly decided by the Commission affecting Oklahomans every day."

Conversely, Murphy possesses the best qualifications of any candidate for this office. She spent almost six years as an Administrative Law Judge at the Commission hearing over 5,000 cases; she owns her own energy law practice and she worked as a geologist in the oil patch for ten years. Murphy has also represented clients before the Commission and testified as an expert geological witness in cases at the Commission.

"Johnson's only apparent claim to fame is that he is a two term state legislator and worked as a congressional aide/gopher. His campaign is already stalling. This is his feeble attempt to cloud the fact that he has no qualifications for this office."

Murphy believes this to be a diversionary tactic used by Johnson's consultants before and currently in use in other races. Johnson, his consultant Fount Holland and former Representative Trebor Worthen, who is working on his campaign, are no strangers to controversy and the use of old guard politician "smoke and mirrors" tactics.

"For me, it's about serving my fellow Oklahomans. They deserve the very best," added Murphy. "What our state doesn't need is more self serving politicians who are more interested in serving themselves than serving our state."

For what it's worth: While we lost massive tree limbs during last Sunday's hurricane-force winds, our Dana Murphy yard sign stayed in place. I've known Dana for six years, and that's an apt metaphor for her character.

UPDATE 2008/06/09: The press release mentions video of the filing. This 12 minute report shows each of the three candidates filing and then speaking to reporters -- first Rob Johnson, then appointed incumbent Jim Roth, then (about eight minutes in) Dana Murphy, showing the interaction with the election board clerk that the press release mentions.

We're now five hours away from the close of Oklahoma's filing period for the 2008 elections, and I'm still seeing way too many seats with unchallenged Democrats; for example, 2nd District Congressman Dan Boren, and Tulsa-area State Reps. Jeannie McDaniel (HD 78) and Eric Proctor (HD 77).

A couple of months ago, as youthful and not-so-youthful Ron Paul supporters were seeking to become delegates to the Republican National Convention, they asserted that they were engaged with the Republican Party for the long haul, and some expressed interest in seeking state and local office. I heard rumors that one young Ron Paul supporter planned to challenge Lucky Lamons in HD 66, but I haven't seen his name on the list of candidates yet.

So far, I've only noticed two RP backers who have filed for office, and both of them have been engaged in the political process for many years. Dr. Mike Ritze, a Broken Arrow physician whose "US out of UN! UN out of US!" sign graced 101st Street for many years, is running for HD 80, a seat being vacated by Ron Peterson. Ritze was chairman of the Tulsa County Republican Party from (if memory serves) 1991 to 1993. And Sally Bell is challenging Randi Miller in the primary for the Tulsa County Commission District 2 seat.

So where are all the young activists who were energized by Ron Paul's presidential run? Challenging a Democratic incumbent would give them a platform to air their issues and an opportunity to build valuable campaign experience, name recognition for future campaigns, and credibility with Republican old-timers. And there's always the possibility that, catching a secure incumbent off-guard, they might win.

Rather than composing a 1000-word comment complaining about this blog entry, why not spend the hour and a half to drive to the State Capitol to throw your hat in the ring?

UPDATE: Gary Casey, 32, has filed to challenge Democratic State Sen. Tom Adelson (SD 33). Casey sought to be a delegate at the 1st District Republican Convention and through the State Executive Committee. Of the Ron Paul supporters seeking to be a delegate, he was one of the most well-received by the non-Ron Paul supporters. I'm happy to see Gary taking up this tough challenge.

UPDATE 2: No RP connection, as far as I know, but Jay Matlock, who sought the Republican nomination for Tulsa City Council District 4, has filed to run against Democratic State Rep. Jeannie McDaniel (HD 78). This would be a better fit for Matlock; his motivating issue was education, and he can do more about that in the State House than he could have in the City Council.

UPDATE 3: Nathan Dahm, 25, a Ron Paul supporter who has commented here on occasion (and at length), has filed for the open HD 75 seat. And Les White, 34, a leading Paul organizer in Oklahoma, has filed for the HD 45 seat in Norman. And "Orat" has posted a 170-word complaint about this blog entry.

Found on the OKDemocrat message board:

RELATED: The official list of Oklahoma's delegation to the 2008 Democratic National Convention, listing each delegate and the candidate to whom each is pledged.

Senator Tom Coburn will hold three hour-long "town hall" meetings today, May 27, in Tulsa:

10:00 a.m., Rudisill North Regional Library, 1520 N. Hartford Ave.

12:00 noon, Tulsa Community College, Metro Campus, 909 S. Boston Ave.

4:30 p.m., Hardesty South Regional Library, 8316 E. 93rd St.

Coburn will be holding town hall meetings in Midwest City and Edmond tomorrow.

From far-off Hoboken, N.J., Mister Snitch! celebrates the landslide election victory of 19-year-old John Tyler Hammons as Mayor of Muskogee with the lyrics from the famous Merle Haggard song, linked to a wide variety of photos -- sweet, nostalgic, and funny, and almost all connected in some way with Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA.

Some of the photos are from the annual Renaissance Festival at The Castle on the north edge of Muskogee. Here are photos from our family's visit to this year's Oklahoma Renaissance Festival.

Congratulations to Tulsa County voters: KTUL is reporting that the TCC bond issue failed 45-55 and the TCC permanent property tax increase failed 43-57.

And congratulations to John Tyler Hammons. The 19-year-old OU freshman poli-sci major won a runoff tonight to become Mayor of Muskogee, defeating the incumbent a former mayor in a landslide. (Hammons said he would transfer from OU to nearby NSU if elected.) Hammons will also be a delegate to the Republican National Convention; he was on the slate approved at the May 3 state convention.

A reaction from "Kiah" to the TCC tax defeat at TulsaNow's public forum:

Can we now officially retire the Chamber/World's cynical approach to local governance (i.e. hide the ball; the fewer voters the better, and the less they know, the better -- in short, don't worry your pretty little head about it, let the grown-ups handle the details . . . .)

UPDATE: Thanks to Jamison Faught for the correct description of Hammons's opponent -- the incumbent, Wren Stratton, didn't seek another term; Hammons defeated a three-term former mayor, Herschel McBride. The final vote total was Hammons 3,703, McBride 1,616.

The Club for Growth's 2007 congressional ratings are out, and Oklahoma Senators Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe and 1st District Congressman John Sullivan were named as Defenders of Economic Freedom for scoring above 90%.

Coburn had a 97, just behind S.C. Sen. Jim DeMint, who had the only 100. Coburn was tied for second with N.C. Sen. Richard Burr. Inhofe's 91 had him ranked fifth in the Senate. Arizona's John Kyl and Nevada's John Ensign were the other two Senate Defenders, Republicans all.

In the House, Sullivan scored a 95, putting him in a three-way tie for 20th with Randy Neugebauer of Texas and Eric Cantor of Virginia. 49 House members scored 90 or better, all of them Republicans.

The highest ranking Democrats were Rep. Nick Lampson of Texas, ranked 193rd with 26%, and Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, ranked 47th with 21%.

The lowest ranking Republicans were Rep. John McHugh of N.Y., close to the median score with 15%, ranked 217th, and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, ranked 66th with 12%.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton flunked out -- goose eggs for both of them. Ron Paul scored 80. John McCain scored a 94, but isn't ranked because he didn't cast enough votes on the specified issues.

The scorecards list the specific votes that were counted. Here is the Club for Growth House Scorecard and the Club for Growth Senate Scorecard. This entry explains how the rankings were calculated.

In the midst of a number of positive developments at the State Capitol over the last two weeks, there's been one grand disappointment, the sort of special deal for special interests that shouldn't happen when Republicans are in control, but all too often does.

So here's the good:

The Oklahoma Legislature overturned the governor's veto to enact an omnibus pro-life bill, SB 1878. The bill includes a provision to ensure that women seeking an abortion have a chance to learn the truth about the life growing within them while there's still time to make a better choice, rather than encountering the truth years later when the only choice is whether or not to feel remorse.

The House Education Committee and House Appropriations and Budget Committee passed SB 2093, which creates the New Hope Scholarship Credit, a tax credit for contributions to funds which give private-school scholarships to economically disadvantaged students in non-performing schools. Speaker Chris Benge and Speaker Pro Tempore Gus Blackwell personally intervened to keep the bill alive, using their position as ex officio members of all House committees to cast the deciding votes in the Appropriations Committee. Their intervention was required because one of the Republicans on the committee, Shane Jett, joined the Democrats in voting against the bill. (Jett is a past recipient of the Oklahoma Conservative PAC's RINO award.) The bill will come to the floor of the House for a vote on Tuesday.

The Legislature passed a constitutional amendment, SB 1987, limiting terms on all statewide officials. Governors have always been term-limited -- Dewey Bartlett was the first governor eligible for re-election in 1970 when governors were first allowed to serve two consecutive terms. Legislators have been term-limited since 1988, finally kicking in with the first forced retirements in 2004. The other statewide officials -- e.g. Attorney General, State Auditor and Inspector, State Treasurer, Corporation Commissioner -- are not currently subject to any limit. SB 1987 would subject them all to a 12-year lifetime limit and would change the Governor's limit to eight years total, not just eight consecutive years. Partial terms served by election or appointment to fill a vacancy wouldn't count against the total.

A voter ID bill, SB 1150, coauthored by Rep. Sue Tibbs and Sen. John Ford, was passed by the House and will come back to the Senate this week. (This link goes to an RTF file of the House amended version.) The bill requires voters to show proof of identity to the precinct judge:

The voter's valid voter identification card, driver license, passport, state identification card, a photocopy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government or tribal document that shows the voter's name and address may be used as proof of identity.

So that's all good and positive. Here's the bad:

The Legislature approved and the Governor signed SB 1819, which extends the Quality Jobs Act to apply to a particular industry: "those activities defined or classified NAICS Manual under U.S. Industry No. 711211 (2007 version)." That means "Sports Teams and Clubs." This is a special deal to pay $60 million in tax rebates to the multi-millionaires and billionaires who own the Sonics.

Usually, if Quality Jobs Act incentives are being paid out, a greater amount of income tax revenues are being paid in, thanks to the salaries being paid to those "quality jobs." But a special provision that applies only to "Sports Teams and Clubs" means the team gets the rebate for salaries even if the salaries aren't subject to Oklahoma income tax.

This wasn't a bill passed by Democrats with a few RINO supporters. This bill had the enthusiastic support of Speaker Benge and Senate Co-President Pro Tempore Glenn Coffee, the Republican leaders of the Legislature. Coffee's support is understandable: He represents Oklahoma City, which will enjoy any economic benefit from the Sonics' move. But Benge is a Tulsa representative, and it's hard to figure why he wants to tax his constituents in Tulsa for something that won't benefit them at all. It's hard to figure why any Tulsa representatives voted yes for this bill.

Benge spoke about how, with an NBA team, Oklahoma's name would be heard each game night as the sports scores are read on TV. Maybe he missed this, but that's been going on for years, as we always have a team in the college football Top 25 and almost always have a team in the college basketball Top 25. A mention on ESPN seems like a poor return on investment for $60 million. Even if it raises Oklahoma City's profile, it's hard to see how that benefits Tulsa or the rural parts of the state.

David Glover, at his Reverse Robin Hood website, has a list of the seven lobbyists who were hired by The Professional Basketball Club LLC (the group that owns the Sonics). Most of them are with CMA Strategies, a Republican firm that grew out of Cole Hargrave Snodgrass, U. S. Rep. Tom Cole's political consulting firm. Former State Rep. John Bryant (R-Tulsa) was also on the list. Sad to see consultants and politicians who once fought for fiscal sanity now lobbying for special deals for special interests.

Here's the final roll call vote in the House, and here's the Senate roll call (PDF).

Some of the same legislators who sponsored and supported the good legislation I list above were also supporters of this wasteful example of welfare for millionaires.

So we take the good with the bad with Republican control of the House and shared control of the Senate. Some of the Republicans who voted for the NBA subsidy are friends of mine and candidates that I've helped in elections past. Most of them are good legislators on balance and deserve re-election.

None of the supporters of SB 1819 are likely to pay come election day -- the benefits are concentrated and the costs are diffuse -- but I will be keeping this vote in mind should any of them seek higher office. How someone voted on SB 1819 is an indication of that legislator's susceptibility to lobbyist pressure and view of the proper role of government in economic development.

Another step forward for the protection of unborn children in Oklahoma, thanks to Republican control of the State House and solid pro-life legislators like my friend Tulsa State Rep. Pam Peterson. Here's the press release from the Office of Speaker Chris Benge.

Omnibus Pro-Life Bill Passes House Committee

OKLAHOMA CITY (March 26, 2008) -Legislation further defending the unborn child passed the House Judiciary and Public Safety Committee today.

Senate Bill 1878, by Rep. Pam Peterson, combines several previously-passed pro-life measures into one bill. The legislation:

• Protects health care professionals' freedom of conscience by affirming their right to refuse to participate in the taking of a human life.
• Expands on pro-life legislation passed in 2006 that required abortion doctors to tell a woman she had a right to a free ultrasound at an off-site location. This legislation would provide an ultrasound at the clinic where the abortion would be performed.
• Bans wrongful-life lawsuits that claim a baby would have been better off being aborted.
• Ensures that a mother's consent to an abortion be truly voluntary and safeguards against coerced abortions. It requires posters to be placed in abortion clinics informing mothers of their rights and requires abortion clinics to verbally tell minors that having an abortion is their decision alone.
• Regulates the use of the chemical abortion pill RU-486, which is used when the unborn child is about two months old.

This omnibus pro-life legislation will have the indirect effect of saving the lives of innocent children, Peterson said.

"This legislation is about giving mothers as much information as possible in advance about this irrevocable, life-altering decision. We must do all we can to ensure every woman has all the facts so she can make the most informed decision possible," said Peterson, R-Tulsa. "The bill also protects the integrity of medical professionals who do not wish to participate in performing abortions."

The bill passed the House committee today and will next be heard on the House floor.

The Republican head of the Oklahoma State Senate is planning a bill that would shovel statewide taxpayer dollars at the billionaire owners of the Seattle Supersonics, but don't expect to read about this in the Oklahoman or the Whirled.

Oklahoma State Senate Co-President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee, R-Oklahoma City, said he'll sponsor a bill offering tax breaks if the team moves.

"I don't have the language yet, but we're working on it," Coffee said. "In general, there are some costs to relocating the Sonics to Oklahoma City."

Coffee said the incentive would likely resemble the state's Quality Jobs Act, which gives rebates to companies for creating jobs, and the cost would be recovered when the Sonics and their opponents pay income taxes for games played in Oklahoma.

Democratic Senate leader Mike Morgan of Stillwater and House Speaker Chris Benge, R-Tulsa, have also been involved in discussions with Coffee. The lawmakers said the Sonics approached them about enacting the tax breaks.

Oklahoma City voters last month approved a temporary 1 cent sales tax to raise $121 million for upgrades to the Ford Center and construction of an NBA practice facility.

[Clay] Bennett's ownership group has not been asked to contribute any money toward that project. The team would receive most of the cash generated by the renovated arena under lease terms spelled out by Bennett in a 16-page letter of intent to Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett. The city would pay the arena's operating expenses.

The Sonics would pay annual rent of $1.6 million for the arena, and $100,000 for the practice facility, increasing the payment with inflation. The city also would receive more than $400,000 a year for arena naming rights, with the team getting any cash above that when an expected new naming-rights deal is struck.

The Sonics could break the agreement after six years if ticket sales fall below certain benchmarks.

As an Oklahoma Republican who hoped that a Republican majority in the legislature would mean an end to a century of insider dealing at taxpayers expense, I'm embarrassed. First, there was Lance Cargill, and thankfully the House caucus forced him to resign as Speaker. Then there was Sen. Harry Coates (R-Seminole), opposing HB 1804 because of certain industries that depend on cheap illegal labor. Thankfully, he's in the minority on the issue. Now, Glenn Coffee, the man who would be the second-most influential politician in Oklahoma if the Republicans take over the State Senate for the first time ever, is saying that taxpayers all over Oklahoma need to foot the bill for massively wealthy Oklahomans to bring an NBA team to a market that serves less than a third of the state's population.

I found this story in the Seattle Times, and I learned about it by reading Field of Schemes, a blog about pro sports teams and how they manipulate local governments to fork over government money for private benefit.

I wonder why we aren't seeing coverage about this in Oklahoma. You don't suppose it's because the ownership group's head is married to a Gaylord, the family that owns the Oklahoman?

Jeff Shaw of Bounded Rationality called my attention to this: The Oklahoma Supreme Court has handed down decree yesterday that, effective immediately, will restrict online access to court records. The stated motive is to limit access to sensitive information that could be used in identity theft.

The decree forbids attorneys to cite certain personal identifiers in pleadings filed with the state court system -- e.g., addresses, SSNs, dates of birth. If this kind of information is essential to a pleading, it's to be provided separately and will be kept under seal. This part of the decree doesn't take effect for three months.

Section IV of the decree deals with online access. It takes immediate effect:

The Clerk of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, each district court clerk, and the Project Manager of the Oklahoma Court Information System are directed to immediately limit internet public access to court dockets only. The individual pleadings and other recorded documents filed of record in state court actions shall not be publicly displayed on the internet. Court documents may be viewed at the courthouse unless otherwise prohibited by law. This policy may be reviewed by this Court in the future.

This appears to mean that you will still be able to call up the docket for a case on OSCN and read through the case history -- when hearings were held, when documents were filed, the resolution of a case. For most of OSCN's history, that's all you would find on a district court case.

More recently, some filings were made available within a case's web page. For example, in researching my most recent UTW column, I was able to read a judge's ruling in a case by clicking a document link on the case's OSCN page. With this ruling, you will only be able to read those documents by going to the County Courthouse and requesting to read the file.

This decree doesn't really protect anyone's privacy. It simply allows convenient access to court records only to the attorneys who practice at a given courthouse; attorneys from other parts of the state or the country and members of the general public won't easily be able to access case information.

One of the other rationales for the change, mentioned in the dissent but not in the decree itself, is that until such information is available for all counties in Oklahoma, it shouldn't be available for any of them.

Open access to court records is essential to a fair and impartial justice system. Justice Yvonne Kauger wrote in her partial dissent:

The Court is obligated to provide the public with access to court records. The judiciary has long recognized that case file documents, unless sealed or otherwise restricted by statute or court rule, are available at the courthouse for public inspection.The common law right and the presumption of public access to court records relate to the public's right to monitor the functioning of our courts, thereby insuring quality, honesty, and respect for our legal system.

The dissent also notes the importance of electronic access to records to blogs and other forms of new media:

With the invention of each new method of conveying information, it becomes more difficult for the courts to seal and protect information without the individual cooperation of litigants and members of the Bar. Whether it is a development we welcome, the simple fact is that the tide of new media may not be ignored or dodged. Instead, we should make policy that contemplates this new reality. Given the public's increasing expectation of governmental transparency and its acclimation to the variety of new media, a strong philosophical distinction between documents available to the public at the courthouse and documents available to the public online becomes harder and harder to maintain. A blanket ban on posting copies of pleadings online, without consultation with the bench, the Bar, or the Legislature is a step too far, especially when in all likelihood we will lift this ban in the near future when we begin operating under a new case management system. If it is intellectually acceptable to post these documents for all counties, how can it be unacceptable to post them for some counties? The ban will not protect the court any further than the new redaction policy and its existing immunity. In fact, this temporary ban will do little more than have the undesirable effect of limiting the public's access to public information to which it has become accustomed ---- and creating a stir.

The worst thing about this policy is that it was handed down unilaterally, without opportunity for comment from members of the Bar, the Legislature, media (old or new), or the general public:

The Court made this decision with input only from the court clerks, others directly affected by the decision -- the bar, the bench, the legislature and the public were not consulted.... This public information which was previously available to the bench, bar, and litigants has been removed from viewing without any consideration for, or consultation with, lawyers and judges who use the information on a daily basis to do their jobs more efficiently or from public litigants attempting to seek legal redress.

I hope there will be enough outcry to reverse this decree, whether the Supreme Court does it or the Legislature does it for them.

UPDATE: Tyson Wynn has more:

In a day and age when we're moving to more and better online access to our government institutions, this step is unnecessary and unwise. Further, if the personal data has been ordered redacted, what is the harm in allowing court documents to be accessible online? Documents in the federal courts are almost all accessible online. Not all of Oklahoma's district courts post actual documents online, but they were advancing toward that end.

Oklahoma is internationally renowned! Here's a comment about the Eliot Spitzer scandal on Samizdata, a libertarian blog based in Britain (emphasis added):

Eliot Spitzer, one of the most nasty power crazed politicos in US politics today, perhaps second only to Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson in authoritarian thuggishness, has just shown that he who lives by the judicial sword, can oh so easily die by the judicial sword.

We're number one! We're number one!

The authoritarian thuggishness to which the writer refers? The threat of imprisonment hanging over the Oklahoma Three: Paul Jacob, Rick Carpenter, and Susan Johnson. From an earlier Samizdata entry by Dale Amon in Belfast:

I was rather surprised to discover that Oklahoma, of all places, is using State power not to just silence critics, but to send them to prison for up to ten years!

I simply never expected this sort of political repression to take hold in America. The Oklahoma government should simply be ashamed of the way they are sullying the American ideal.

The Oklahoma Bar Association is in the process of considering changes to the our state's Canons of Judicial Conduct. Although the subject is challenging for us laymen, the impartiality and independence of our judges is at the heart of the rule of law and the security of our life, liberty, and property.

The OBA committee conducting the review of the judicial conduct standards are being guided by the American Bar Association's model standards. Many Oklahoma attorneys are concerned that the new standards go too far in questioning a judge's outside involvements and associations.

Among many other problems, if adopted the revised canons would, without being reviewed or approved by our elected representatives, create a new protected class in Oklahoma -- sexual orientation -- which is not a protected class under Oklahoma law. Under the new canons, it's conceivable that a judge could be required to recuse himself from a case involving a homosexual litigant merely because the judge attends a church that takes a traditional Christian view of sexuality.

Saturday afternoon on 1170 KFAQ, during the 4 p.m. hour, constitutional attorney Leah Farish will be talking with host Bruce Delay about this issue, why it matters, and what we ordinary citizens need to do about it. Be sure to tune in.

Farish knows the ugly reality of judicial bias and has actually had a case reversed in her client's favor on grounds of the judge's bias. She believes that current remedies for bias are sufficient and that the new canons would cause scrupulous judges to withdraw from outside organizations and involvements, the kinds of interactions that keep a judge connected with the people they serve and grounded in the reality of the world shaped by their decisions.

UPDATE: Added a link to the proposed revision of the canons, provided in the comments by attorney Greg Bledsoe.

MORE: Here's the podcast from Bruce Delay's interview with Leah Farish.

You know that uneasy feeling when you've got a stomach virus? When your stomach is churning and you hope if you lie quietly it'll go away and be spared a disgusting and messy situation?

You know that feeling of relief when you finally expel what's been troubling you? That's the way many Oklahoma Republican insiders feel today at the news that State Rep. Lance Cargill has resigned as Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. Better out than in.

The direct cause of the resignation was revelations this week about Cargill's failure to file income taxes and pay property taxes in a timely fashion. This latest scandal was on top of alleged "pay for play" practices that began during his tenure as House Majority Leader, an investigation into the apparent movement of money between campaign funds to skirt fundraising limits, and rumors of immoral behavior at the State Capitol.

While many in the House Republican caucus have long had the desire to oust Cargill, it took a tax violation, just as it did with Al Capone, to force him out.

The honorable Republicans who went to Oklahoma City to change our political culture and help our state move forward saw Cargill endangering that project with his fundraising practices, which served his ambitions more than state government reform.

Last fall we learned that Cargill had raised $250,000 for his re-election campaign in the first six months of 2007. Here's how he did it, an example of the pay-for-play process at work:

Last legislative session, Cargill sponsored an ethics bill to outlaw campaign money from being given to lawmakers inside the state Capitol.

At the same time Cargill was proposing reforms, he was calling lobbyists at 15- minute intervals to the Oklahoma City office of Fount Holland, who conducts numerous Republican political campaigns. Cargill was asking lobbyists how much they would contribute to the House PAC, his own campaign and two other GOP-related entities.

The speaker said at the time that the meetings involved "potential contributors who we meet with all the time to try and raise financial support for our political efforts."

Something I wrote after the 2006 election, about the struggle in the Republican Party between fair-dealers and wheeler-dealers is worth revisiting today:

But there are worrisome signs that Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature are about to travel the same perilous path as their congressional counterparts.

Last Thursday the newly-elected House Republican Caucus reaffirmed Lance Cargill of Harrah as their nominee for Speaker of the House, choosing Cargill over Oklahoma City Rep. Mike Reynolds. Some Republican capitol insiders are worried about the result, seeing the potential for an Oklahoma version of the corrupt "favor factory" that brought down the Republican majority in Congress.

A series of articles in our sister publication, the Oklahoma Gazette, Ok City's alternative newsweekly, earlier this year explored lobbyist complaints that Cargill was running a "pay for play" system via his leadership PAC, Republican PAC to the Future.

Cargill, as House majority leader, controlled the flow of legislation, and the message came through loud and clear that if a lobbyist wanted his client's bill heard, he'd have to bring in some contributions to Cargill's PAC.

Cargill was dumped as majority leader in March. Behind the scenes, it's said that his abrasive leadership style and fundraising tactics were the reasons for the ouster.

Once freed from leadership responsibilities, Cargill, I am told, worked on using his accumulated PAC cash to win friends in the caucus. In June he won an election for speaker-designate, an election marked by irregularities and arm-twisting. Legislators feared losing important committee assignments or drawing a primary opponent in the next election if they openly opposed Cargill.

Already in the last legislature we saw questionable bills--special deals for special people, not sound policy--find their way through the process. There was the attempt to craft tax credits like those used for Great Plains Airlines to benefit someone who wants to redevelop Shangri-La resort. There were attempts by developers to use state law to override local zoning and planning ordinances.

These dodgy bills made it through most of the legislative process before they were discovered by citizens and stopped. They got as far as they did, winning cosponsors and floor votes, because legislators believed their colleagues, who told them, "Don't worry, this is nothing controversial."

It took a last-minute bipartisan public outcry to stop the bills.

Good riddance to Lance Cargill. Let's hope the Republican Caucus chooses a replacement with no ties to Cargill's machine.

MORE: Stay tuned to the McCarville Report for more developments from the State Capitol.

The Oklahoman is reporting that State Auditor and Inspector Jeff McMahan and his wife Lori McMahan have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges which include racketeering, conspiracy, and fraud.

The nine-count indictment alleges Jeff and Lori McMahan received jewelry, trips and excessive contributions to Jeff McMahan's first campaign in 2002.

In return, the auditor granted special favors to former abstract company owner Steve Phipps, according to the indictment.

McMahan's office regulated the abstract industry until Jan. 1. The Legislature last year created a separate agency for that purpose amid reports of McMahan's ties to Phipps.

It's interesting: The Oklahoman story notes that McMahan is the second statewide official to be indicted on corruption charges in recent years -- Insurance Commissioner Carroll Fisher was indicted in 2004 and is now doing time. I find it strange that the Oklahoman doesn't also mention that both of these officials are Democrats.

UPDATE: The Tulsa Whirled didn't name that party either.

While doing some research for my next column, I came across links to the platforms adopted by the Oklahoma Democratic and Republican parties at their 2007 state conventions. Both are in PDF format.

Oklahoma Republican Party Grassroots Platform 2007
Resolutions Committee Report to the 2007 Oklahoma Democratic Party State Convention

The Republican platform is almost twice as long as the Democratic document. Republicans will consider a new platform at their 2008 state convention in Tulsa. Democrats will not act on a platform again until 2009.

Thursday, it was reported that employees at Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU) were banned from using the word Christmas. Here's the latest statement from SWOSU president John Hays on the matter:

Update: No Ban on Christmas December 21, 2007

After the stories about Christmas were published stating that Southwestern Oklahoma State University banned the word 'Christmas' or Christmas decorations, I made inquiries to discover if there was any basis to the reports. The university does not have a policy that bans the word 'Christmas' or Christmas decorations. However, some supervisors or department leaders within the university who meant well may have suggested to employees that caution should be taken with respect to Christmas decorations. One thing led to another and the result was that some mistakenly assumed that Christmas decorations were being prohibited. I have met with various staff members to get to the bottom of the matter and have also had a pleasant discussion with Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel.

The university will continue to follow the law and to respect the right of all its staff members. Thus, the university will follow the general principles set forth by the courts regarding the display of religious symbols and/or Nativity scenes. A publicly sponsored Nativity scene on public property is constitutional so long as it is displayed in the context of other secular symbols of the holiday, like Santa Claus or a Christmas tree, so as not to appear to be endorsing a particular religion. A privately sponsored religious symbol or Nativity on public property where members of the public are permitted to display such symbols does not need an accompanying secular symbol to be constitutional.

In applying this general rule to the university, if a Nativity or other religious symbol of the holiday is displayed in a place open to the general public (like a lobby), the university will include secular symbols of the holiday in the nearby context. However, employees in their cubicles or offices may personally display a Nativity or other religious symbol of the holiday. In such setting, the employee need not include secular symbols of the holiday. Employees have always been and continue to be permitted to greet one another with the greeting 'Merry Christmas' or 'Happy Holidays.' The decision is up to each employee.

I trust that these guiding principles will clarify the matter regarding Christmas for the staff and the general public.

John Hays
SWOSU President

Am I wrong in noticing a bit of a contradiction with his earlier statement?

No Ban on Christmas December 20, 2007

An attempt to be respectful of the diverse religious population at Southwestern Oklahoma State University has been misinterpreted as an attempt to ban Christmas on the Weatherford campus.

The rumor of this ban is not true.

The university attempted to prevent the appearance as a state agency of endorsing any particular religion.

John Hays
SWOSU President

On December 20, he refers to an official university action: "The university attempted to prevent the appearance as a state agency of endorsing any particular religion."

On December 21, he denies that official university action was involved: "The university does not have a policy that bans the word 'Christmas' or Christmas decorations. However, some supervisors or department leaders within the university who meant well may have suggested to employees that caution should be taken with respect to Christmas decorations. One thing led to another and the result was that some mistakenly assumed that Christmas decorations were being prohibited."

I'm happy that they've come around in support of freedom of expression, but it still looks like someone is playing a game of CYA.

Liberty Counsel, the national group which first called attention to the issue, is very pleased with the outcome:

Mr. Hays deserves a big "Thank You and Merry Christmas." His leadership in resolving the controversy over Christmas and the general guidelines he has set forth regarding the appropriate way a state school and its employees may acknowledge and celebrate Christmas serves as an example for others to follow. Christmas is a wonderful time of the year and it can and should be enjoyed by all.

The Oklahoman story adds a detail from the SWOSU spokesman:

Spokesman Brian Adler said employees were asked to keep public areas of the campus free of religious decor because not all students celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday.

Mark Tapscott, who brought the story into the blogosphere, spoke with John Hays by phone:

"We don't have any written guidelines now, but Matt [Staver of Liberty Counsel] tells me the court cases are pretty clear that when you do have something like a nativity scene on public property, like on City Hall, you also have to have some secular items with it," said John Hayes, SWOSU's president. Staver promised to provide Hayes with materials on court cases on the issue that would be useful in writing guidelines for the school's existing policy, the SWOSU official said.

Hayes said his university doesn't have "a new policy, there has just been a big mis-understanding. One of the offices told somebody they couldn't do something and it was over-emphasized." An employee had placed a snowman in a public area of an office that said "Merry Christmas," according to Hayes. The snowman was then moved to a different area, he said.

It has been reported that Southwest Oklahoma State University officials banned SWOSU employees from using the word Christmas on the advice of Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson. The story has appeared on a number of websites and blogs around the country today, along with reports of denials from spokespeople for SWOSU and Edmondson. The original story has since been confirmed by other sources, but many of the blogs that picked up the denials missed the later confirmations and additional details.

Confused? I was, too. Let's try to sort it all out, but here's the bottom line: SWOSU officials did ban their employees from using the word Christmas in emails, memos, or decorations. What's not clear is whether the AG's office had anything to do with that decision.

I received an email about this late this morning from Erick Erickson, editor of RedState.com, but didn't have a chance to post anything about it because of a lunchtime meeting. I'm glad I had to wait.

Here's the original alert from Erickson (highlights his):

Dear RedState Reader,

Drew Edmondson is the Oklahoma Attorney General.  Recently he rounded up conservative activists and threw them in jail for circulating petitions to get conservatives on the ballot.

Now, however, Oklahoma Atty Gen. Drew Edmondson has done something even nuttier.  He has issued an advisory opinion from the Attorney General's Office directing universities and public employees in Oklahoma to refrain from using or writing the word "Christmas."

Mark Tapscott with the Washington Examiner has the details.  Mark notes, "Edmondson issued an advisory opinion to officials at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford advising them that the word "Christmas" should not be spoken by any employee of the state school, not written in any official holiday decorations."

Attorney General Edmondson can be reached at 405-521-3921.  Please call and wish him a Merry Christmas and ask why he banned Christmas.

All the best and

Merry Christmas to you,

Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com

This alert was sent to a number of bloggers who posted the story, including Ace of Spades HQ, Hot Air, and Captain's Quarters.

Mark Tapscott, an Oklahoman who writes for the Washington Examiner, has updated his original post several times, reporting both the denials from Edmondson's office and the university, and an on-the-record confirmation from a university employee, admissions coordinator Connie Phillips:

A veteran administrative employee of SWOSU confirmed that she and her colleagues in her department were told by their boss "to take the word 'Christmas' off of our email signatures and not to use that word in any official correspondence."

Connie Phillips, SWOSU's admissions coordinator, said she refused to comply. "I told them they could write me up but I was not going to take it off my signature."

Other SWOSU employees were resisting the orders as well. "The people in the business office had a decoration up with the word 'Christ' in it and they were told to cover it over. They did but then they took it off. It's been on and off about three times now, I think."

Phillips said others in her office agreed and that a number of SWOSU employees came to work today wearing buttons saying "Merry Christmas" as a protest. "We just can't believe this is happening, this is  supposed to be America."

Asked if she was concerned about reprisals, Phillips said "I don't know, I guess we'll see. I've been here 24 years and I've got just four more years to retirement, so I hope not."

Weatherford, OK - Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU), has issued a disturbing policy which requires all employees to refrain from using the word "Christmas" in oral or written form. This directive was given by the university upon legal advice of the Oklahoma Attorney General, W.A. Drew Edmondson. Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to SWOSU following a complaint from a university affiliate.

David Misak, the Director of Human Resources, recently visited various university departments and employee groups and informed everyone that any decorations featuring the words "Christ" or "Christmas" in any work or public areas of the university must be immediately removed. He also instructed everyone to discontinue the use of the term "Christmas" in their speech while on the job. This censorship specifically includes exchanging email greetings of "Merry Christmas" among employees or with nonemployees, whether initiated by a nonuniversity employee or not. Christmas remains a legal holiday for state employees, including those at SWOSU. The directive does not include any other legal holidays such as Thanksgiving or New Year's.

The announcements made by Misak are in direct violation of the United States Constitution and other federal law. The First Amendment prohibits government from being hostile to religion. Selecting one legal holiday for negative treatment and special restrictions solely because it has religious aspects clearly demonstrates hostility toward religion. Moreover, the free speech rights of employees at the university are infringed when their speech is censored solely because of a religious viewpoint or perceived religious viewpoint. A public employer like SWOSU also violates the Civil Rights Act when it prohibits its employees from using the words "Merry Christmas."

Liberty Counsel's demand letter requests an immediate reversal of the university's unconstitutional policy. Liberty Counsel's Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign educates and, if necessary, litigates to insure that Christmas is not censored.

Mathew D. Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: "Of all places, a public university should foster free expression. How can public university officials honestly believe that the state can prohibit its employees from wishing each other 'Merry Christmas?' After all, Christmas is a state and federal legal holiday."

After the rash of denials, Liberty Counsel issued a second release explaining how the story came to them:

Earlier today we informed you in a Liberty Alert about a ban on the word "Christmas" by Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford.

We believe that your emails and phone calls are making an impact. We are hearing more details from our sources including some within the university.

When public officials start to feel the heat of public scrutiny, they often try to make excuses or deny that events took place. Some staff members who are answering the phone are even telling people that the incidents we are reporting never happened!

We decided to go on the offense and release some additional details on this situation.

After Weatherford City Commissioner Warren Goldmann heard from a constituent that the word "Christmas" was banned by the university, Goldmann contacted the Provost of the university, Dr. Blake Sonove. Dr. Sonove confirmed the "Christmas" ban policy and indicated that the university was relying on an opinion from Attorney General Drew Edmonson. Commissioner Goldmann then reported the information to Liberty Counsel.

Connie Phillips, an Admissions Coordinator, reported that David Misak, Director of Human Resources, entered the registrar's office with Tom Fagan, Vice President of Finance. They ordered the words "Christ" and "Christmas" covered up in decorations and instructed that there could be no use of "Merry Christmas" in emails!

A records coordinator verified that her department was told they could not use "Christmas" in email or voice mail.

The same action occurred in the business office where someone asked for the directive in writing and was told that the written policy is still being drafted. Another person provided Misak with written information showing that using "Christmas" is constitutional, but Misak would not change his stance. 

Additionally, the ITS department was told to change the introduction page of the university's campus-wide database. The page has been edited since yesterday to remove a statement that said: "Have a very Happy Holiday ... Merry Christmas ... Happy New Year."

This censorship of Christmas is a trend that must be changed!

Now that you have these specific details, don't let the university play games with you on the phone!

The university president, John Hays, has the authority to change university policy. Call or email him and urge him to reverse the ban on the word "Christmas." 

His contact information is: Telephone (580) 774-3766, Fax (580) 774-7101, email president@swosu.edu.

Thank you for your help. If you are aware of similar situation, let us know. You can also download a copy of our Legal Memo on Christmas in the Workplace at www.LC.org. If you cannot open the document from our web site, contact us and we will mail you a copy.

SWOSU president John Hays has a non-denial denial on the school's website:

An attempt to be respectful of the diverse religious population at Southwestern Oklahoma State University has been misinterpreted as an attempt to ban Christmas on the Weatherford campus.

The rumor of this ban is not true.

The university attempted to prevent the appearance as a state agency of endorsing any particular religion.

John Hays
SWOSU President

No one was saying that Christmas was banned at SWOSU, only that employees were banned from using the word "Christmas." Hays's mention of "an attempt to be respectful of the diverse religious population" at SWOSU and that the "university attempted to prevent the appearance as a state agency of endorsing any particular religion" acknowledges that an official action was taken. Hays's statement is entirely consistent with the alert from RedState, the story by Mark Tapscott, and the press release by Liberty Counsel.

What remains a mystery is the involvement, if any, of Attorney General Drew Edmondson. Given his support for New Jersey's lawsuit trying to force the Boy Scouts to allow homosexual men to be scoutmasters and his handcuffing of three leaders of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights petition drive, it wouldn't surprise me if he had weighed in on the side of the anti-Christmas Grinches. He has three years until the next election, and his soft-spoken and folksy manner seems to erase any memory Oklahoma voters have of his leftish antics.

We'll keep you posted about any developments.

UPDATE: Mark Tapscott reviews the events of the day and comes to a complementary conclusion:

Second, it's clear somebody at SWOSU got the idea that employees there should be told to stop using such terms as "Christmas" and "Christ."  I have no doubt that Edmondson personally didn't provide SWOSU "legal advice" in a formal advisory opinion. The man isn't dumb. But AGs and their staff provide informal advice every day, sometimes in person, sometimes in email, sometimes on the telephone. Sometimes even to journalists!

Maybe that somebody mis-understood something that was said to them by the AG or his staff. Or maybe that somebody simply took it upon themselves and informally advised SWOSU managers to spread the word among the troops. That somebody ought to come forward and clear up the confusion.

If they do and it turns out Edmondson had absolutely nothing to do with anything here, I will promptly retract the assertion in my original post that he was "banning Christmas" or had "issued an advisory opinion" to that effect.

But "Okie Napoleon" stays. Even if he's not the Grinch who banned Christmas, he's more than earned the sobriquet.

Tapscott says he tried to call SWOSU Provost Blake Sonove, but the call was returned by a spokesman instead. Seems like Dr. Sonove is the person who can solve the mystery of where school administrators got the idea they needed to have employees stop saying "Christmas."

Did you know there was a property tax election northeast of Tulsa on Tuesday? Neither did the voters involved, the county officials, or the area's leading property taxpayer, according to a story in the Oologah Lake Leader.

Northeast Technology Center, an Oklahoma vo-tech school district with campuses in Pryor, Afton, Kansas (the town, not the state), and Claremore, is holding a special property tax election on December 11, and according to the Oologah Lake Leader, they've been trying to keep it below the public radar. A legal notice was filed, but only in the smaller of the two papers that serve the city of Pryor, and nowhere else in the far-flung district, which covers most of Ottawa, Craig, Delaware, Mayes, and Rogers Counties, plus parts of Wagoner, Nowata, and Cherokee Counties.

One of the two ballot items would increase the building levy from 1 mill to 5 mills and the other item would make the new levy permanent. The district's overall levy, which includes 10 mills for operations, would increase from 11 to 15 mills. The increase would raise $4.4 million per year.

Via Tyson Wynn, who has more to say on the matter.

UPDATE: Tyson Wynn reports this morning that his IP was blocked by the Northeast Technology Center website:

Get this. I visited the NTC website via your link last night. I went back to look at the press release this morning and it says I don't have permission.

Tyson had no trouble accessing the site via another IP address. He said he'd then called NTC and was told they had no way to block an IP address, which is baloney. They're running Apache 1.3.34, and it's a simple matter of adding a line to the webserver configuration file. Amazingly, he was able to access the site again shortly after he spoke to them.

Why don't they want anyone to know about this election?

MORE: MeeCiteeWurkor has some thoughts on the NTC's stealth tax:

If you live in one of the counties listed above, be sure and hit the polls on Dec. 11th and shut down these people trying to take your money. Before you go, email this guy: garyfox@netechcenters.com Let him know exactly how you feel about his press release. He's the NTC marketing and communications director. I'm sure as a communications director, he'd love to communicate with you about this. Perhaps he could also explain his involvement with this sneaky little scheme.

On November 1, Survey USA conducted a poll of 500 Oklahoma voters for KFOR in Oklahoma City regarding the issues behind HB 1804. Here is a summary of the poll, and here are the full crosstabs, showing how the responses varied according to ethnicity, sex, age, and other factors.

(I really appreciate Survey USA's willingness to share the crosstabs and the exact wording of their survey questions. You can find many more interesting surveys on their blog-like homepage.

When given a description of the major provisions of HB 1804, 76% of those surveyed said they support the law, and 19% oppose it. Support was about equal between men and women, greatest in the 35-54 age group.

The survey shows an almost equal amount of support for the bill among Hispanics as among whites, but it should be kept in mind that Hispanics made up only 4% of the sample, or about 20 respondents. The margin of error (at a 95% confidence level) for such a small sample is nearly 22%.

RELATED: HB 1804 author State Rep. Randy Terrill spoke to Gwen Freeman and Chris Medlock on Monday giving a simple, brief, and straightforward explanation of what HB 1804 does and doesn't do, with particular attention to the exemptions that address most of the fears I hear. Terrill explains what business owners, landlords, social services provider, educators, and law enforcement officials need to do to comply with HB 1804. You can download the MP3 of Terrill's interview here.

Brandon Dutcher has hit the nail on the head:

Conservatives favor low taxes, fiscal restraint, minimal regulation, and serious respect for private property rights.

Business leaders and chambers of commerce, on the other hand, often want higher taxes, lavish government spending (to pay for pet corporate-welfare projects), extensive regulation (to thwart competitors), and the ability to take other people's property (for purposes of development).

And that's why Chambers of Commerce, like the one in Tulsa and the one in Oklahoma City, often oppose tax cuts.

But, you say, the overwhelming number of Chamber of Commerce members are small businesses who wouldn't benefit from that lavish government spending, extensive regulation, or eminent domain abuse. These small businesses would benefit as the rest of us do from lower taxes, property rights, and reasonable regulation. So why do Chambers of Commerce wind up working against policies that would benefit all of their members, as well as the public at large?

It's public choice theory in action -- concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. While each small business pays for government overreach, the incremental cost of each piece of pork or new regulation isn't overwhelming enough for a small business owner to distract him from his focus -- getting his own business off the ground.

The bigger businesses in industries that would benefit from a larger, wealthier, and more powerful government have a financial incentive to use their resources to work for those ends. They use those resources to contribute to election campaigns and hire lobbyists. They can also afford to try to dominate Chamber internal politics. They can justify allowing staffers to use paid time to volunteer for Chamber activities or to run for Chamber office.

Gaining influence over the Chamber would have a couple of benefits -- access to millions in city hotel-motel tax funds and the ability to have a neutral-sounding, pro-business-sounding organization advocating (as an uninterested third party) for the program or policy that would make one's own business very prosperous.

Meanwhile, Mr. Small Business Owner writes his Chamber membership check each year, but otherwise doesn't pay much attention to what the organization is saying or doing in his name.

Not much time or energy to write, as I'm getting ready for my speech Friday to Saint Augustine Academy's fall banquet.

I did want to note something that has received little notice in the uproar over State Rep. Rex Duncan's decision to refuse a "Centennial Quran." Most of the conversation has been about Duncan's letter of refusal.

Few people seem to have noticed that these Korans were being offered by an official Oklahoma governmental body, the Governor's Ethnic-American Advisory Council (GEAAC), established by executive order of Gov. Brad Henry in 2004. That link will take you an earlier item I wrote about this group.

Officially the GEAAC "is to be made up of from five to 15 representatives of Ethnic Americans of the Middle East/Near East community of the state of Oklahoma." You may be tempted to take that at face value, to assume that GEAAC exists to serve Oklahomans of any religion and any ethnicity with roots in the "Middle East/Near East."

But every public action this council has taken so far has concerned the Islamic faith -- encouraging schools to grant excused absences for Muslim holy days, asking for rebuttal time on OETA to the PBS series "America at a Crossroads" because, according to the council's chairman, "we thought there were a couple of segments that did not put Islam in a positive light," and now passing out Qurans at the state legislature. While those actions would be reasonable for a private organization representing Oklahoma Muslims, they don't suggest a government-sponsored council seeking to represent the diversity of religions in the Middle East.

Here is an excerpt from the minutes of the GEAAC's February 16, 2007, meeting, held in the Jim Thorpe Building, part of the State Capitol complex:

H. PLANNING GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR 2007.

Chair Seirafi-Pour opened the floor for submission and discussion of goals and objectives. Dr. Hashmi recommended that education be the council's primary focus and priority for this year. He stated that it would be a great achievement if we (the council) could educate our fellow Oklahomans about the Muslim community as well as the immigrant community. He also stated that the council has a great opportunity through the MCOP [Muslim Community Outreach Program] established by the law enforcement community. This should also be an ongoing process in the future.

In order to reach an even broader audience and increase their visibility, it was decided that the council would try to find an avenue through public television to provide community education and visibility.

Chair Seirafi-Pour recommended that the council implement a program that recognizes the outstanding accomplishments of the women and youth in the Muslim community. Dr. Ahmad volunteered to prepare a draft of criteria to be used in a selection process.

Dr. Rana suggested that the council find some means of reporting council activities back to the community. She added that one possible method could be a newsletter sent electronically to all council members. If some members wished to have hard copies to distribute, they could produce those copies individually as needed. Mr. Farzaneh further suggested that the council submit articles to OPM [Office of Personnel Management for the State of Oklahoma], which Ms. Thornton advised could be published in OPM's "HR Exchange" also available electronically on OPM's website.

Ms. Thornton is Brenda C. Thornton, director of the Office of Personnel Management's Office of Equal Opportunity and Workforce Diversity, a public employee assigned to support the efforts of the GEAAC as part of her taxpayer-funded duties.

Earlier this year, legislators were given centennial commemorative Bibles, but these were donated and distributed by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, a private, non-governmental organization.

Imagine the fuss if the Bibles were being handed out by the Governor's Teetotal Southern-American Advisory Council, a group ostensibly constituted to represent the concerns of the rich tapestry of Southern-American culture, but in fact inordinately focused on the special concerns of Southern Baptists.

MORE: A number of left-leaning types have accused Rep. Duncan of deliberately publicizing his refusal to accept a Quran. Not so, says Chris Medlock:

I just got off the phone with Rep. Rex Duncan and asked him a very simple question. Did you call a press conference or directly contact the press with regard to this story?

His answer?

"No, Mick Hinton [Tulsa World reporter] called me."

In fact, I learned through my conversation with Rep. Duncan, Mr. Hinton called him within just a few hours after Duncan had sent an e-mail to Ms. Marjaneh Seirafi-Pour stating his desire not to receive the Koran....

Rep. Duncan had placed a phone call to Ms. Seirafi-Pour on Monday to "opt out" of the gift, as requested by Ms. Seirafi-Pour, and to also inquire as to whether or not tax payer dollars were used to purchase the Korans. She assured Duncan that they were bought with private funds, but asked Duncan if he would send her an e-mail stating he didn't want the Koran "for their records."

This he did. Hours later, he was called by Hinton for the story that ran in the next days' newspaper.

So what did the GEAAC hope to accomplish by publicizing Duncan's attempt to refuse their Quran?

In my reading about public-private partnerships, I had heard about non-compete clauses for privatized toll roads in Texas, where government was forbidden by its contract with the private toll road operators from making any improvements to public roads that might draw traffic -- and revenue -- away from the toll road.

But there's a public-private toll road partnership with a non-compete clause that required local government to make a parallel road more congested. The toll road is E-470 and the state is Colorado:

When E-470 opened in 2002, some people thought it was a strange coincidence that, about the same time, the speed limit on nearby Tower Road, a paved, 2-lane, rural highway, dropped from 55 MPH to 40 MPH. Several apparently unnecessary traffic signals also appeared. This, in spite of the fact that after the toll road opened, Tower Road would have even less traffic than it did before.

Well, it was no coincidence.

The lower speed limit and extra traffic signals, which make Tower Road slower and less convenient to use, are required by a "non-compete" clause in an agreement between the E-470 Public Highway Authority and nearby Commerce City.

The goal is to impede traffic on Tower Road so drivers will decide they are better off using the toll road. This protects the revenue stream from the tolls, thereby protecting the interests of the toll road's investors.

The non-compete clause between the highway authority and Commerce City provides that the speed limit on Tower Road be lowered from 55 MPH to 40 MPH, and that stop lights be installed on Tower Road at 96th, 104th, and 112th Avenues. Also, the City must limit future improvements on Tower Road to shoulder work, turning lanes at intersections, development-specific widening, and normal maintenance. These requirements must remain in effect until January 1, 2008. After that, the speed limit can be raised, the stop lights can be removed, and the City is again free to make improvements to Tower Road.

The other non-compete clause is in an agreement with the Cities of Aurora, Brighton, and Thornton, the Town of Parker, and Adams and Douglas Counties. It provides that, for at least fifteen years, these entities will not construct or improve any road (with certain pre-approved exceptions) that competes with E-470 "in a way that the amount of toll revenues projected by the Approved Plan of Finance to be collected from the users of E-470 would be materially impaired or reduced."

Can we all agree that this kind of practice is just plain wrong? But it's exactly the sort of stipulation that these PPP contracts will have in order to make them profitable and attractive to investors.

Imagine if the City of Tulsa's arena management contract with SMG included a requirement on the city to, say, levy a $10 a ticket tax on movies and concerts at smaller venues, so as to channel pent-up demand for entertainment to arena events and ensure that SMG met its performance targets.

(I found this story in a list of examples of blogs from across the political spectrum doing original reporting, covering stories that the traditional media had missed.)

This, posted at the American Spectator website, seems familiar:

TOM COBURN RECALLS a confrontation on Capitol Hill shortly after last November's GOP bloodbath. He ran into his fellow Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the then powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and chief Senate sponsor of the Alaska Bridge to Nowhere. "He strolled up to me and said: 'Well, Tom, I hope you're satisfied for helping us lose the election.'" Stevens was evidently still infuriated by Coburn's nationally publicized crusade against runaway pork-barrel spending over the past two years. To that, Coburn, never the shrinking violet, replied: "No, Ted, you lost us the election."

The story speaks volumes about the sad state of affairs inside the Republican Party and the Gulf of Mexico-sized disconnect between the party powerbrokers in Washington and a thoroughly disgusted conservative base. The party regulars still blame the November defeat on the fiscal whistleblowers like Coburn, not the fake Republicans who grew a $1.9 trillion budget by an additional trillion dollars in five years.

Coburn and his pork-fighting colleagues are making a difference:

In January, Coburn strong-armed the new Democratic majority into passing the leanest federal budget in five years, and, more remarkably, one that withholds funding for thousands of Teapot museums and Wild Turkey Federations. Coburn and his constant but lower-profile senatorial sidekick, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, teamed up to save the nation about $15 to $20 billion. "We actually shamed them into ending the pork," Coburn tells me.

But Coburn isn't satisfied:

His latest fiscal crusade is called "Good Government A to Z, "a plan to rewrite the entire budget act. Why? "Half the federal agencies don't even report on improper payments. FEMA claims none. They can't pass a basic audit. Twenty-five percent of government programs don't even have a goal," he complains. He is so miserly when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars that last year he returned $200,000 of unspent money from his personal Senate office expense account to the government. Yet, Coburn, with virtually the smallest budget of any senator, is arguably the most effective legislator on Capitol Hill. Jeff Flake, who is Coburn's anti-spending pit bull in the House, says that he and the small band of small government conservatives in the House often say: "Thank God for Tom, he makes our life at least tolerable over here in the House, where earmarking is an even bigger problem."

Can we please have more people like Tom Coburn, Randy Brogdon, and John Eagleton in public office?

... why someone who represents a district of roughly 35,000 people needs to raise a quarter of a million dollars to run for re-election? And why he needs to spend $20,000 a month in an off-year?

House Speaker Lance Cargill, raised almost $250,000 in the first six months of 2007, including more than $190,000 from April 1 through June 30, according to state Ethics Commission reports. Cargill's campaign fund spent more than $120,000 during the first half of 2007.

MORE: Maybe this is a clue?

Oklahoma House Speaker Republican Lance Cargill, the founder of a group known as The 100 Ideas Initiative, has invited Poole to give a June 13 luncheon speech at Spirit Bank in Tulsa.

Oklahoma activists opposed to the construction of NAFTA superhighway toll roads have objected that bringing a "heavy hitter" like Poole to Oklahoma signals that state politicians are already lining up with investment bankers in a PPP plan designed to bring the Texas Department of Transportation's Trans-Texas Corridor into their state.

Poole's luncheon speech will be introduced by opening remarks from Cargill.

I want to call your attention to three relatively new links on the sidebar:

TPD Blog, the blog of the Tulsa Police Department, has had a lot of interesting content lately. They link to articles in local media about TPD, and provide regular updates on the progress of the latest academy class. In one recent entry, Off. Will Dalsing expresses his opinion of the personnel and financial challenges faced by the TPD:

So here is the problem: while it is true that we are back to being at, or slightly above, our "authorized strength," that number is terribly low. The Tulsa Police Department has been at that number for over twenty years. True, the population has not significantly changed in numbers, but the calls for service (the amount of calls that the officers must respond to) yearly has gone up in the tens of thousands....

Imagine that you are having a bit of a problem in the neighborhood. Kids are out at all hours of the night being loud and tearing stuff up. Maybe there are some houses with what appears to be a lot of traffic…. maybe someone is selling drugs there. Or maybe there are some scary looking people whom you are pretty sure are calling themselves a gang. You would call the police right?

So the Police Captain at the local division assigns a whole squad of seven or eight cops to your street. The Captain tells them "saturate that neighborhood for a few days….I don’t want anyone to so much as spit on the sidewalk without having to talk to an officer because of it."

Is that a dream? It is in Tulsa. See we don’t actually have enough staff to take the calls for service. We "hire-over" nearly every shift at every division. It’s hard to be pro-active when you are always back "on your heels." So even thought we do have a squad at some divisions for "Directed Patrol," it may be still at the expense of our response to calls in the field.

Or let’s say you are building a new structure in your downtown that will likely bring tens of thousands of people to the area several nights a week. The area is in the process of revitalization. Foot traffic is going up. The bars and restaurants are popping up. For tourism, safety, and the well being of everyone involved, more cops are needed. In fact, the business owners are so decisive on the matter that they are willing to give their own money to help equip officers to work in the area. Can we give them a squad of officers? Not currently.

We know we must be pro-active for Tulsa’s new arena and for the downtown district as a whole. A part-time bike squad is in the works but how will we have the manpower to staff the area full time?

The second link is Stop the Chop, a website about protecting Woodward Park's trees from indiscriminate removal. You can read the history of the controversy, view relevant documents, and learn what you can do to help.

The final link is not Tulsa-specific. It's a web community for conservative activists throughout the State of Oklahoma, and it's called GetRightOK.com. The site includes a blog, a forum, an events calendar, and other community networking tools. It's intended not just to be a place to chat and trade insults but to network for the purpose of taking constructive political action. I've written a guest piece for them, yet again about the Oklahoma Republican state convention, but with a focus on the state chairman and vice chairman's races, with some historical background.

Fairgrounds annexation: Still no action from the Mayor, who has until the end of this week to sign or veto. The scrivener's error that reset the 15-day clock was a failure to specify to which council district the newly annexed territory would be assigned. I supposed everyone thought that was obvious, as it's surrounded by Council District 4 on all four sides.

City budget: The Mayor will submit her proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2007-08 to the Council at the 10:00 a.m. urban development committee meeting, with a full presentation to follow at the regular meeting on Thursday night. With the fire district tax dead (a fact the Whirled didn't get around to reporting until Saturday), there will have to be some creative juggling to get the books to balance. Rumors are that proposed spending will grow faster than the rate of inflation and that the arena operating costs will be worse than previously acknowledged.

Also on the council committee agendas: During the 8:00 a.m. meeting, a presentation on the FY '08 operating budget for the BOk Center. During the 10:00 a.m. meeting, Councilor Turner's proposal to require the public display of sales tax permits, the rezoning of the SE corner of 11th Street and 161st East Ave. for residential and commercial use (currently the Brashear Stables; the TMAPC voted 4-4 on the rezoning in a rare tie), a discussion of the 2006 Police Department Manpower Report, and a property tax increase.

Yeah, you read that right. City of Tulsa property owners will have their millage go up enough to cover the latest $6.125 million installment of the city's $14.5 million settlement with Arvin McGee, who spent 12 years in prison for crimes he didn't commit because of what a jury ruled was Tulsa police misconduct. The Council has no choice but to commit the money to pay the settlement.

Brad Henry veto watch: The first attempt to override Henry's veto of pro-life SB 714 failed, because of a switcheroo by Shawnee Sen. Charlie Laster and a longer term flip-flop by Sand Springs Sen. Nancy Riley, who promised in her first race in 2000, "absolutely NO STATE FUNDING FOR ABORTION." Henry protected the interests of his trial lawyer buddies by vetoing SB 507, a comprehensive lawsuit reform bill that incorporated most of the provisions he had previously championed. Brandon Dutcher says there's a link: Laster insisted on the tort reform veto in exchange for his SB 714 flip-flop.

The National Association of Manufacturers is watching Oklahoma's progress on lawsuit reform very closely. And here's a fact sheet from the State Chamber outlining the key points of SB 507. (Hat tip: Point of Law.)

And after returning tanned and rested from Spring Break, missing the successful conclusion of budget negotiations, Henry has now vetoed not only the legislature's budget, but five agency bills that matched his own budget proposal.

Today should see passage of Oklahoma's landmark immigration enforcement bill, HB 1804. If it passes, it will be headed to the governor's desk.

UPDATE: Where was I this morning? Oversleeping. I thought I had two alarms set, but somehow neither one went off. We'll try again tomorrow morning at 6:10.

As you've heard by now, SB 714, which would have gotten Oklahoma taxpayers out of the abortion business, was vetoed by Gov. Brad Henry. Although the bill passed with a veto-proof majority in both houses, it was close enough that the defection of one senator, Shawnee Democrat Charlie Laster (405-521-5539), was enough to cause the override attempt to fail. Tulsa Republican Sen. James Williamson promises to try again, as is possible under the Legislature's rules, so it is still worthwhile to call state senators to thank them for their vote for SB 714 or to ask them to change and support overriding the Governor's veto.

There were three other Democrats in the Senate who voted for SB 714 in committee before voting against it last week and again during the override vote. They are:

Nancy Riley (Tulsa), 405-521-5600
Joe Sweeden (Pawhuska), 405-521-5581
Charles Wyrick (Fairland, Miami, Grove), 405-521-5561

Nancy Riley represents western Tulsa County and was elected as a Republican in 2000 (by a narrow margin) and 2004 (by a two-thirds) vote. In 2006, after finishing third in the Republican Lt. Governor's primary behind two very well-funded candidates, she crossed the aisle and became a Democrat. (My disappointment with that decision was as much personal as political.)

Not only has she changed parties, apparently she has changed sides on the issue of public funding for abortion. Brandon Dutcher has unearthed a flyer from Nancy Riley's first run for State Senate in 2000, in which she proclaims her pro-life bona fides. He notes that there are only five words in the piece that she deems important enough for ALL CAPS:

I will also fight for:

** Tough parental consent laws;

** Enforcement of a mandatory “cooling off” period before anyone can receive an abortion;

** And, absolutely NO STATE FUNDING FOR ABORTION.

You can read the whole thing at Brandon Dutcher's blog. According to this piece of campaign literature, this issue was not just one among many to her, but was "one of the reasons why [she] decided to run for the State Senate."

With a margin of only 265 votes, and given the socially conservative makeup of her district, I have to believe that she would have lost the seat had she not taken a strong, uncompromising pro-life stance.

I said last year that the honorable course for Sen. Riley was to follow in Phil Gramm's footsteps and resign her seat, then run again as a Democrat and let the voters decide whether having her as a state senator is more or less important to them than being represented by a Republican.

That's not likely to happen, but at the very least, she can keep the promise she made to the voters: "NO STATE FUNDING FOR ABORTION."

A bill that would have enabled cities to establish fire districts and levy property taxes in those districts was narrowly defeated in the Oklahoma House, killing it for two years.

A floor version of SB 605 (link opens Rich Text Format file) which omitted the most objectionable features of the bill, but it was assumed that these would be readded by a conference committee before final approval.

The debate against the bill was led by Oklahoma City Reps. Mike Reynolds and Randy Terrill and Tulsa Reps. Pam Peterson and John Wright. The Tulsa Metro Chamber was lobbying heavily in favor of the bill.

It will be interesting to see how Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor responds to the failure of this bill. She had been planning to go after this source of revenue. For example, now that it's off the table, will she be more likely to sign the fairgrounds annexation ordinance, because it would mean additional revenue for the City.

One of my favorite state senators, Randy Brogdon of Owasso, is profiled in the current issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. One of the many things I appreciate about him is that, unlike some Republicans, he believes that being pro-business means reducing government's burdens on all business, not providing special subsidies to politically favored businesses. When asked for examples of government waste, here's what he told UTW reporter Brian Ervin:

So, where is the government spending irresponsibly?

"Corporate welfare," answered Brogdon as an immediate example.

The governor's Opportunity Fund and EDGE Fund were specific examples he cited.

"It's not right for the state government to spend money to handpick which companies are going to prosper," he said. "If was governor and I was going to make that decision, I would set a level playing field and set up a free market."

Senator, are you announcing your candidacy for governor in 2010?

"Not today," answered Brogdon in mid-laugh.

I hope he will.

Elsewhere in the issue, sports columnist Dwayne Davis reviews a Tulsa and Muskogee-based sports talk station called the Sports Animal. This paragraph caught my eye:

[Host Geoff Haxton] is joined by local sports broadcasting legend Bob Carpenter and/or Channel 6's John Holcomb depending on the day of the week. It is refreshing to hear Tulsa talk from guys who understand the town.

Interesting note about Carpenter. For years he could be found on sports talk rival AM 1430 The Buzz. The 'Carpenter Call' was a staple of the afternoon show with Pop and Plank.

Dwayne is probably too young to remember this, but Bob Carpenter was a pioneer of local sports talk back in the late '70s, with his nightly hour of Sportsline on KRMG. (Sportsline was 6-7, Nightline with David Stanford was 7-8, then Johnny Martin came on with big band music until one o'clock in the morning.)

I missed this when it first ran two weeks ago, but Katharine Kelly gave a very good review to a Filipino restaurant called Phil-Asia, near 36th & Sheridan. We'll have to give it a try.

My Urban Tulsa Weekly column this week is on two very different events: last Saturday's Oklahoma Republican State Convention and last Friday's inaugural gala for the National Fiddler Hall of Fame. The convention story covers the race for state party chairman and a brief description of what delegates were saying about next year's presidential race. (More about the NFHOF gala in a separate entry.)

In plugging my own column, I shamefully neglected to call attention to Brian Ervin's excellent piece on Gov. Brad Henry, and his pique at the Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature for coming up with a budget agreement -- a bill that passed the Senate unanimously -- while he was away on a spring break vacation in the sun. Ervin has a quote from Henry supporter Frosty Troy:

"Brad Henry is the single laziest governor we've ever had," said Frosty Troy, founding editor of the Oklahoma Observer, Pulitzer nominee and long-time fixture within the Capitol press corps.

Troy, who's covered seven governors during his nearly 50 years of reporting on the state Capitol, said Henry's typical pattern during his five years in office is to keep a low profile during session, if he's present at all, and then show up at the end to take credit for many of the more popular pieces of legislation.

"He shows up late at the Capitol and keeps pretty much a social calendar," said Troy.

If for no other reason, you need to click through to Brian Ervin's article to see the wonderful caricature of Henry that adorns the story.

Missed linking to this earlier:

See-Dubya's earlier entry about the Prince of Darkness, former State Sen. Gene Stipe, attracted a celebrity commenter. Mark Singer, who wrote the 1979 New Yorker profile of Stipe, responded to See-Dubya, who comments on Singer's comments.

It's interesting that Singer says he has "refrained from reprinting it in any of [his] books," because it's a terrific piece. He doesn't come right out and say he regrets writing the story, but he seems awfully apologetic about it, and even denies that the article is what it manifestly is -- a profile of Stipe.

Also on the Stipe beat, Jeff Shaw has an interesting theory about why Stipe would make illegal straw donations when he's already doing time for making illegal straw contributions. That same entry reviews an editorial by a Pottawatomie County paper on the straw contributor scandal, which involves the campaigns of three politicians from that part of the state.

The McCarville Report is the place to watch for further developments. McCarville links to today's Oklahoman story (free registration required) reporting that State Auditor Jeff McMahan went on three trips with Stipe business partner Steve Phipps, despite claims by McMahan that he barely knew the man. Phipps and Stipe were partners in abstracting companies, which are regulated by McMahan's office.

Last week, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed, by a vote of 82-14, HB 2595 (link opens a Microsoft Word-compatible Rich Text Format file), which would move Oklahoma's 2008 presidential preference primary from the first Tuesday in February to the last Tuesday in January. The bill was authored by State Rep. Trebor Worthen and State Sen. Todd Lamb, both Oklahoma City Republicans. The bill has been assigned to the Senate Rules Committee.

Oklahoma is already in a strategic position with its current primary date, which it shares with California, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Missouri, and Utah. (West Virginia has a state convention for delegate selection that day, and North Dakota has caucuses.) Although California will attract a lot of attention, it doesn't have the majority of delegates up for grabs that day. In fact, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma have a combined total of 125 delegates. Add in Alabama's 45, and you have what amounts to a south central regional primary offering 170 delegates. (The numbers exclude the three uncommitted superdelegate seats allocated to each state's RNC representatives.)

Despite a much greater population, California has the same number of delegates, a consequence of the party's overall lack of success in statewide races there. California gets one bonus delegate (for winning the Governor's Mansion); Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma have a total of 55 bonus delegates.

(Arizona and Utah are inconsequential -- likely locks for McCain and Romney, respectively.)

While California was a winner-take-all state in years past, in 2008, there will be 54 separate elections. Three delegates will be allocated in each congressional district to the candidate with a plurality. The winner of the statewide tally will get an additional 11 seats. There's an incentive for an underfunded candidate to focus on winning in just one of California's media markets, while spending more time and money in the less expensive, more compact south central states.

So there are already plenty of strategic reasons for presidential hopefuls to spend plenty of time in Oklahoma. If HB 2095 passes the State Senate, Oklahoma would become even more important, leaping ahead of South Carolina by four days to become the second primary on the calendar, just a week after New Hampshire.

Of course, any other state might move its date, too, if there is still time for its legislature to act. In some states, legislatures have authorized the governor or the state's chief election official to move the date in response to the actions of other states, whether or not the legislature is in session.

LINKS: The Green Papers has a wealth of information about the 2008 primary process, including a chronological calendar of primaries, caucuses, and conventions, which in turn has links to details on each state's rules, delegate allocations for the Republicans and Democrats, showing the allocation formula used by each party. There is also a table showing who is eligible to participate in delegate selection and what allocation method is used for each state for both Republicans and Democrats. Each state page includes notes on legislation affecting the date of the primary.

The fact that the Green Papers got Oklahoma's legislative information wrong makes me wonder about the reliability of their other information, however. They have this:

Oklahoma HB 1790 was amended on 7 February 2007 to change the Presidentail Primary date from the first Tuesday in February (5 February 2008) to the first Saturday in February (2 February 2008).

HB 1790 is actually Rep. John Trebilcock's very sensible bill to reduce the number of permitted special election dates from 21 to 14 in every two-year cycle. Unfortunately HB 1790 didn't make it out of committee. I can't find any legislation that would move the primary to a Saturday.

The Daily Oklahoman has been covering the latest developments in the investigation of illegal campaign contributions involving former State Sen. Gene Stipe of McAlester and other powerful Democrats in state government. I don't have time to try to sort through the tangled mess tonight, but here are links to the Oklahoman's series. (Free registration is required:

March 7: "FBI agents Wednesday searched the offices of former state Sen. Gene Stipe and his accountant, apparently looking for evidence linking Stipe to a pet food plant that is under grand jury investigation." Computers from Stipe's offices were loaded into an FBI van. McAlester's National Pet Food Plant belonged to Stipe's business partner Steve Phipps. Phipps and Stipe were partners in an abstracting company in Antlers in southeastern Oklahoma.

March 8: A more detailed version of the initial report, including more of an explanation about the activities of Phipps that are under investigation:

An FBI agent's affidavit used to obtain that search warrant alleged Phipps made three ex-legislators — Mike Mass, Randall Erwin and Jerry Hefner — partners in a gambling machine company, Indian Nation Entertainment. The FBI claims that partnership was in return for the legislators' help in obtaining state money for Phipps' other interests, including a not-for-profit foundation called Rural Development Foundation.

The dog food plant ultimately got $1.1 million of money earmarked for Rural Development Foundation, in addition to $419,000 in state money that Mass directed through the quasi-private McAlester Foundation, records show.

The Oklahoman previously reported Stipe profited from the sale of property on which the plant was built.

Records show Oklahoma taxpayer money was used in 2002 to buy property from Stipe, which allowed him to repay a $50,000 loan that had been illegally funneled into the congressional campaign of Walt Roberts.

The property in question was essentially a warehouse that Stipe and Roberts bought in 2001 for about $75,000 as a possible auction house for Roberts. A year later, the McAlester Foundation, using city and state tax money, bought the property from Stipe for $190,000, records show.

The article goes on to remind readers that Mass, who is also a former chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, admitted to being a straw donor for Stipe, passing along money contributed by Stipe in a way that avoided public scrutiny and campaign contribution limits.

Looks like everyone got their back scratched with the help of taxpayer funds.

March 9: "Former state Sen. Gene Stipe continued to illegally fund congressional campaigns through straw donors as recently as 2004, even while on house arrest for the same thing in a 1998 campaign, an FBI agent said in an affidavit that was unsealed Thursday in Muskogee." One of the recipients of straw donations was Congressman Dan Boren. Another was State Auditor and Inspector Jeff McMahan. This article features quotes from some of the straw donors used to hide illegal contributions from Stipe.

March 9: State Reps. Mass, Hefner, and Erwin earmarked nearly $2.3 million in Rural Development Foundation money for Steve Phipps for construction of the National Pet Foods Plant. Looks an awful lot like a quid pro quo -- they get government money for Phipps; Phipps sets them up to make a living when they are term-limited out of office.

March 10: Straw donors also funneled money from Stipe to Gov. Brad Henry, State Rep. Mike Mass, and McMahan.

Some state employees served as straw donors to Boren's campaign, including the head of the department in the State Auditor's office that oversees abstracting companies (recall that Stipe and Phipps were partners in an abstracting company) and an employee of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.

March 12: State Republican Chairman Tom Daxon, himself a former State Auditor and Inspector, called on State Auditor Jeff McMahan and his deputy, Tim Arbaugh, to resign. McMahan was the beneficiary of illegal contributions from Stipe, and Arbaugh was used to pass illegal Stipe contributions to Congressman Boren.

Keep an eye on the Daily Oklahoman's local news page and Mike McCarville's blog for further developments. (Here's McCarville's article on the "smoking gun" affidavit tying Stipe and Phipps to Boren and McMahan.) Jeff Shaw of Bounded Rationality has some commentary here.

UPDATE: See-Dubya, a native son of Stipeland, has a terrific description of Gene Stipe:

If you could see the guy and hear him speak for a minute--taking in the flapping jowls, the sanctimonious drone, the Yosemite Sam diction--you couldn't help but size up former Oklahoma State Senator Gene Stipe accurately. He's Boss Hogg and Kingfish and every caricatured stereotypical Southern machine politician you've seen rolled up into one smarmy package. And despite retiring from Oklahoma's State Senate and a subsequent campaign finance conviction, Stipe's still making himself felt in Oklahoma politics.

He's also got a quote from Mark Singer, who wrote the definitive profile of Stipe in the April 2, 1979, edition of the New Yorker.

Singer continues, "'Let's say I pick up a Smith & Wesson double-action .22-calibre revolver on a .32 frame with a four-inch barrel and plant one right between your eyes,' a man in Latimer County once said to me, in what I decided to regard as an utterly speculative and friendly tone of voice. 'Now, if I've got a brain in my head, all I need to do is drop the gun and borrow a dime and call Gene Stipe. And I'm pretty sure he can find me a jury of my peers that believes in the good old "Judge not, that ye be not judged." ' "

If that can be believed, Gene Stipe, like his fellow Oklahoma lawyer Moman Pruiett did decades earlier, "made it safe to murder."

Mike McCarville has discovered something interesting about State Sen. Mary Easley from an amendment to her mileage reimbursement claims:

Tuesday's Senate Journal lists mileage reimbursement for Easley and it shows "Tulsa 230 (miles)" and "$111.55" reimbursement. The "230" and "$111.55" are marked out, however, and replaced with "336" (miles) and "$162.96."

McCarville points out that 230 miles is the right distance for a round trip from the Capitol to Owasso -- where the phone book lists her as living, even though it's in Randy Brogdon's district -- but too far for the round trip between the Capitol and east Tulsa, where Easley was registered to vote last summer. 336 is what Google Maps gives for a round trip between the State Capitol and Grand Lake Towne, where Easley and her husband Truman registered to vote on October 2. (Records show that neither of them actually voted in that precinct, 490031. They are no longer registered to vote in Tulsa County, so it's not clear where they voted. I can't imagine that they wouldn't vote when her name was on the ballot.)

I doubt she changed the mileage for the sake of $50, but she might have changed it in order to keep her stories straight.

In the February issue of Gentleman's Quarterly there's a lengthy and generally positive profile of Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, focusing on his campaign against wasteful spending.

This early paragraph in the piece illustrates the myopia of many in Washington:

But for many of Coburn’s colleagues, what is most surprising is not that he has become a thorn in the party’s side; it’s the issue with which he has made his mark. Back in 2004, when Coburn was first running for Senate, fiscal prudence wasn’t supposed to be his issue. In fact, the last thing anybody expected him to become was a voice of restraint in a body of excess. If anything, Coburn was the one known for his excesses, for making pronouncements so outrageous, so far from the mainstream, that at times he seemed like a cartoon of the fanatical right—declaring his own Senate race “the battle of good versus evil,” calling for “the death penalty for abortionists,” and suggesting that the country was under attack by a secret gay conspiracy that had “infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country.” Back in 2004, Tom Coburn was the last man anybody expected to rise above politics and try to lead us back to common sense.

Anybody, that is, except the voters of Oklahoma. Yes, his most enthusiastic supporters shared his concerns on social issues, but it was his determination to fight against waste and corruption that differentiated him from his nearest Republican rival, Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys. Anyone who paid attention to his service in the U. S. House, anyone who bothered to read his no-punches-pulled book Breach of Trust would have known that his willingness to stand firm and, if necessary, alone, on fiscal issues are at the heart of why Oklahoma Republicans urged him to run and why he decided to get in the race.

The article covers his medical practice, growing up helping with his dad's business, his living arrangements in Washington, and this about the connection between his social positions and his fiscal stubborness:

Having entered the public spotlight for his social positions, far from the mainstream and widely condemned for his views on abortion and gay rights, he had long since adjusted to the outrage and indignation he aroused. If anything, his social views had bolstered him for the fiscal fight. In a world as upside down as Congress, where waste is the norm and prudence on the fringe, where a man fighting pork and fraud can be ostracized by his peers, maybe it takes someone who is comfortable with that, and has spent most of his adult life on the fringe already, to speak out in spite of the risks.

Go read the whole thing.

(Via Mike McCarville.)

Here is the latest news on precinct elections for the Tulsa County Republican Party, which are scheduled for tonight, from Tulsa County Republican Chairman Jerry Buchanan:

The bi-annual Republican Party Precinct Caucuses will still be held Tuesday night at 7:00 p.m. in Tulsa County. However, some Precinct Chairmen of the 262 precincts in Tulsa County will have the opportunity to hold their bi-annual Caucus through next Tuesday, Jan. 23rd due to the road conditions from the weather.

Republicans should contact their Precinct Chairman or the Republican Headquarters for further information Tuesday from 1:00 until 4:00 for more information if they are unsure of the time and date of their Precinct Caucus.

Due to the many calls and email to the Republican Headquarters with concerns to icy conditions, Jerry Buchanan, Chairman of the Tulsa County Republican Party, has asked Precinct Chairmen to evaluate the situation in their own Precincts and contact those in their Precincts if they wish to change their meeting dates and times.

The Republican Headquarters can be reached by phone at 627-5702 or email at chairman@tulsagop.org.

If you are a registered Republican voter in Oklahoma, you're entitled to participate in precinct elections. If you're a Republican who cares about the direction of the party, about its strategies and tactics, about its principles and positions, you need to participate in precinct elections.

Republican precinct elections occur three of every four years and are the first stage in a multiple-stage process for electing party leaders and establishing a party platform. Precinct officers are elected and resolutions are considered for inclusion in the party platform. The precinct also elects delegates to attend the county convention, although typically a precinct will vote to be an "open delegation," so that anyone who wishes may be a delegate to the county convention.

The next step in the process is a county convention. In odd-numbered years the county convention elects a chairman and vice-chairman, along with the county's two representatives on the state Republican committee (the governing body of the Oklahoma Republican Party), and the county's two representatives on the 1st Congressional District committee. The county convention also votes on a platform which deals with local, state, and national issues.

The final step in odd-numbered years is a state convention, at which a state chairman and vice-chairman are elected and a state party platform is approved.

(In presidential years, there is also a congressional district convention which elects delegates and alternates to the national convention, and the state convention elects the state's two representatives on the Republican National Committee and chooses at-large delegates and alternates.)

Precinct elections are usually held in the home of the precinct chairman. Typically they last an hour or so, and most of that time is spent considering resolutions for inclusion in the party platform. All resolutions approved by a precinct election are forwarded to the county convention's platform committee, which assembles the planks supplied by the precincts into a coherent platform.

I particularly want to emphasize the opportunity to influence the platform. It can be a tool for holding our elected Republican officials accountable, for expressing the collective opinion of the Republican grassroots. Historically, the local section of the platform has been rather brief as Republican activists have tended to focus on social, economic, and defense issues at the state and federal levels. If you feel we shouldn't raise taxes for river development, for example, this is a way to make that opinion heard.

To find out where your precinct election is being held, contact the Tulsa County Republican HQ at 627-5702.

Even if you can't attend a precinct election, you can still participate in the later stages of the process by signing up as a county delegate through the end of the week, by contacting your precinct chairman or Republican Party HQ at the above number. (This is assuming your precinct votes to send an open delegation to the county convention, which is almost always the case.)

Why exactly should the state subsidize the construction of half-million dollar luxury lakeside condominiums?

An enterprising participant in the tulsatime LiveJournal group worried when she saw a Request for Proposals on the Oklahoma State Election Board website for a "Telecommunications-based Statewide Voting System." Would this mean a switch from our reliable optical-scan ballot system to a touchscreen system? The link to the RFP was broken, so she wrote OSEB and asked what this was all about. The reply is reassuring:

Identical mark-sense optical scan voting devices manufactured by the Business Records Corporation (now Election Systems & Software) have been used in every precinct in the State of Oklahoma since 1992. As you know, these devices read paper ballots marked in the voter's own hand and preserve a complete and perfect paper audit trail. We do not have any plans to replace our optical scanners with direct recording electronic (touchscreen) devices, or with voting devices of any other type.

So what's this about a "telecommunications-based" voting system? It will allow a vision-impaired voter to go to his polling place, listen to an audio ballot on a telephone and vote by pressing buttons on a keypad. But the vote doesn't get recorded electronically:

The voting system then produces a marked paper ballot, which is scanned and read back to the voter, allowing the voter to confirm whether the paper ballot has been marked according to the way he or she voted. After the voter confirms that the ballot is correct, his or her vote is cast, and a paper ballot is tabulated by the same mark-sense optical scanning voting device used by all other voters statewide.

Here's the really clever bit (emphasis added):

Oklahoma's telephone voting system features a fundamental and innovative improvement over direct recording electronic (touchscreen) voting systems, including even those that provide accommodative telephone keypad input devices and voter verifiable receipts. Typically, a touchscreen voting device in audio mode will read back a voter's marked ballot, but the information read back to the voter is merely that which exists in the device's memory. The readback may confirm the voter's selections, but there is no way to say that the vote eventually cast is the same as that voted by the voter or read back by the voting device. But with Oklahoma's system, it is the paper ballot generated by the system that is scanned and read back to the voter, and it is the paper ballot that is tabulated by our mark-sense optical scanners, preserving the complete and perfect paper audit trail that most Oklahoma voters seem to prefer.

Hats off to the Oklahoma State Election Board for recognizing what makes our system so good and extending that principle in accommodating the right of vision-impaired voters to cast a secret ballot. That kind of perspicacity is a rare thing in government.

(Nevertheless, I'm still hoping for a scanner upgrade that will accommodate a preferential ballot. And for OSEB to put precinct-by-precinct results on their website.)

Following in former City Councilor Randy Sullivan's footsteps, Oklahoma State Sen. Mary Easley, a Democrat representing District 18 , which stretches from east Tulsa to the western shores of Grand Lake (PDF map), no longer lives in her district. She lives in District 34, represented in the State Senate by Randy Brogdon. Senate Republican leader Glenn Coffee issued the following press release today:

MARY EASLEY NOW LIVES IN SENATOR RANDY BROGDON'S DISTRICT

OWASSO - State Senator Mary Easley no longer lives in her Senate District and now resides at 19009 Knightsbridge in Owasso, which is located in Senate District 34.

Senate Republican Leader Glenn Coffee said Easley is skirting state election laws by living in another Senate district while running for reelection in District 18.

"Mary Easley now resides at an Owasso address in Senate District 34. She is clearly skirting state election laws by living at her new address while running for office and voting using an old address," Coffee said.

Coffee said State Senator Randy Brogdon, who represents Owasso in the Oklahoma Senate, has sighted Easley on numerous occasions while he has campaigned in Owasso this year.

"Senator Brogdon was understandably surprised to learn that Mary Easley is now one of his constiuents," said Coffee.

State law requires legislative candidates to reside in the districts in which they run for office. But Easley and her husband now live at their Owasso home, even though Easley is running for reelection using an old address in east Tulsa.

"Mary Easley has left her district behind. How can she represent the people of District 18 when she doesn't even want to live there?" Coffee stated.

BACKGROUND:

Sources:

Southwestern Bell Yellow-Pages
Rogers County Property Taxes

The funny thing about this is that the existing district lines were drawn in 2001 to the specifications of Mary Easley and her son Kevin Easley, whom she succeeded as State Senator. Mary had represented House District 78 since 1996, and with Kevin approaching term limits, Mary had the HD 78 lines redrawn to overlap SD 18, to allow her to replace him. Surely she could have had the lines for SD 18 drawn to include the location of her dream home in Owasso, too.

There is a state law (51 O. S. 8) that causes a seat to become vacant if an elected official moves out of the district that elected her. It isn't clear who has the power to make that determination.

But the voters of SD 18 could make that determination themselves, and deny Mary Easley another term in office.

(The campaign flyer scan you see above was found at oksenatedemocrats.com, which has scans of all the mail pieces that both campaigns have sent out, flavored with Democratic spin, of course. Very interesting if you like the nuts and bolts of campaigns.)

Here are links to the websites for candidates for District Judge and Associate District Judge on the ballot in Tulsa County.

(Added on November 4: Party registration, as of the date of filing. Although judicial races are non-partisan, voter registration is a matter of public record, and I believe the public has a right to know it, as one more piece of information to weigh. At a national level, Republicans and Democrats have different ideological approaches to the role of the judiciary, and party registration may be an indication of a judge's ideology.)

Office 1 (elected from Tulsa and Pawnee Counties, replacing retiring Judge Ronald Shaffer):

Cliff Smith (D)
Bill Kellough (D)

Office 4 (elected from electoral district 4 in Tulsa County, replacing retiring Judge David Peterson):

Jim Caputo (R)
Daman Cantrell (D)

Office 8 (elected from electoral district 5 in Tulsa County; Thornbrugh is the incumbent):

Tom Thornbrugh (R)
Gregg Graves (D)

Office 10 (elected from Tulsa and Pawnee Counties, replacing Judge Gregory Frizzell, who has been nominated to be a Federal judge):

Deirdre Dexter (R)
Mary Fitzgerald (R)

Office 13 (elected from Tulsa and Pawnee Counties; Shallcross is the incumbent):

Jonathan Sutton (R)
Deborah Shallcross (D) (warning: obnoxious Flash video and sound plays automatically)

Tulsa County Associate District Judge (Wall is the incumbent):

Dana Kuehn (R)
Caroline Wall (R)

And here's my attempt at explaining the various ways we elect the 14 District Judges that serve Tulsa and Pawnee Counties.