Search this site
Matching entries from BatesLine
Election Eve 2022: Notes
An election eve assortment of thoughts: Last week, I attended and live-tweeted the Tuesday, November 1, 2022, Red Wave rally in Oklahoma City featuring Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Kevin Stitt, and State Superintendent nominee Ryan Walters; the Wednesday Tulsa rally with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and a Wednesday lunch-time...
How did the Unassigned Lands become unassigned?
This past April 22, 2020, was the 131st anniversary of the land run that opened the central part of today's State of Oklahoma to homesteading by non-Indian settlers. These were lands owned by the U. S. Government and not assigned to any organized territory nor to any Indian nation or...
Where are Tulsa's candidates?
I've made this plea repeatedly on social media, on Pat Campbell's show on 1170 KFAQ, and here on this blog. And yet I look at the list of candidates after two of the three days of the filing period, and I am amazed to see so many unopposed candidates. Four...
2020 Oklahoma Retail Theft Survey
The Oklahoma Retail Crime Association issued its annual retail theft survey today, noting "massive spikes in both the numbers of losses due to theft and the amounts taken" for Oklahoma retailers. Already hard-hit by the growth of online sales and the (hopefully temporary) impact of coronavirus, retailers don't need...
Did a stolen Rubens masterpiece hang in a Tulsa art store in 1921?
While looking for something else in the Oklahoma Historical Society's online newspaper database, I came across this startling headline atop the April 17, 1921, edition of the Tulsa Sunday World: PRICELESS PAINTING RECOVERED HERE Beligum Reclaims Ancient Million-Dollar Work of Old Master Bristow Tool Dresser Had Ruebens' Work, 'Descent From...
Oklahoma SQ 780: Decriminalization of drug possession
UPDATED 2016/11/02: Having completed my analysis of all 23 sections of the SQ 780 legislation, I have revised the introductory text below to provide a better summary of the effect of passing the state question. Oklahoma State Question 780 began life as an initiative petition. Unlike most state questions, its...
David McLain for State Senate District 34
UPDATE 2015/11/10: Congratulations to David McLain, who has won the SD 34 GOP primary, with 42% of the vote to John Feary's 39%, a margin of 70 votes out of 2,137 cast. Because there is no runoff, McLain advances to face the Democrat nominee, J. J. Dossett, in the January...
Fred Thompson, RIP
Tribute image posted on Facebook by National Review I was sad to hear of the passing, on Sunday, of actor, lawyer, and former U. S. Senator Fred Thompson, who was felled by lymphoma at the age of 73. My condolences to his family and friends, with my thanks for...
Steve Kunzweiler for Tulsa County District Attorney
After 16 years in office, Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris is stepping down. Three Republican candidates filed to replace him, but one candidate quit the race because of a constitutional impediment to his election, and a second candidate should stand down for the same reason, but he refuses to...
On the George Zimmerman verdict and being a strange pedestrian
A few thoughts: I'm disheartened by the outraged reaction from my liberal friends, who are certain that justice was denied, and that a racist murderer has been set free. NBC, CNN, President Obama, and other public figures and opinionators did race relations and common sense in America a grave disservice...
Pat Key campaigner arrested for sign stealing
This is pretty clever: A Tulsa County voter noticed that his signs supporting Dean Martin for Tulsa County Clerk kept disappearing from his yard. After losing several, he put a GPS tracker in one. It disappeared, too, but they found out who had the sign and a bunch of others...
Why we need voter ID: Investigator offered Attorney General's ballot
A member of the Project Veritas investigative journalism team went into a District of Columbia polling place last Tuesday and was offered a ballot by a poll worker who assumed he was U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Man: "Do you have an Eric Holder, 50th Street? Poll worker: "Let...
Dave Simpson's cartooning career goes "gurgle nawah!"
It's a sad day. Urban Tulsa Weekly editorial cartoonist Dave Simpson has resigned (or, reportedly, was fired) and has announced an end to his career amidst revelations that some of his recent submissions were ripoffs of the work of the late nationally syndicated cartoonist Jeff MacNelly. Indications are that the...
Oklahoma's outsourced meth production (UPDATED)
An article by A. Barton Hinkle, on the website of Reason, the magazine of the libertarian Cato Institute, points to Oklahoma's pseudoephedrine restrictions and their impact on the methamphetamine trade, and not in a good way, in a column about proposed legislation in Virginia: Second, it almost certainly will not...
Tulsa District 4: Get Rocky Frisco some wheels!
Legendary Tulsa musician Rocky Frisco, member of the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, who also happens to be a candidate for the Republican nomination in Tulsa City Council District 4, has been an involuntary pedestrian for the last several weeks, following the theft of his old, beat-up, but reliable Toyota...
Being the wave in Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA
So the other two volunteers from the Tulsa area had to cancel. The expected number of local Muskogee volunteers didn't materialize. I think there were about 7 by the time all was said and done, including me and my 10-year-old daughter. Only three of us had any of the four...
Democrats in key congressional races, part 1
Travis Childers Dina Titus Carol Shea-Porter Ann Kuster Harry Teague John Hall Michael Arcuri Larry Kissell Earl Pomeroy Steve Driehaus Mary Jo Kilroy Zack Space Kathy Dahlkemper Bryan Lentz Patrick Murphy Chris Carney Paul Kanjorski John Spratt Stephanie Herseth Sandlin Roy Herron Chet Edwards Ciro Rodriguez Glenn Nye Tom Perriello...
OSU journalism prof to Bartlett Jr: "Sealing court records isn't supporting the public's right to know"
OSU journalism prof Joey Senat, writing on the blog of FOI Oklahoma, an organization that promotes open meetings, open records, and government transparency, chides mayoral candidate Dewey Bartlett Jr for having public records pertaining to his divorce sealed shortly after pledging himself to transparency in government. Bartlett's request came a...
A lengthy mayoral survey -- on behalf of Bill Christiansen?
A survey firm called me yesterday evening. It was a very lengthy survey about the upcoming Republican primary for Mayor of Tulsa, and it seems likely that it was on behalf of Tulsa City Councilor Bill Christiansen's campaign for Mayor, as there were many specific questions about him, his record,...
A round-up of river tax ponderings and imponderables
If the Vision 2025 Sales Tax Overview Committee is as diligent and vigilant a watchdog as we're being told they are, how did they miss noticing that the arena was going to go way over budget when there was time to prevent the crisis? If Hurricane Katrina caused the arena...
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries matching 'stolen art'. [What is this?]
