Search this site
Matching entries from BatesLine
Oklahoma SQ 805: Lighter sentences for career criminals
Oklahoma State Question 805 would insert a new article into the Oklahoma Constitution to ban longer sentences for repeat felony offenders. The question arises from an initiative petition. (UPDATE: On October 30, 2020, I spoke with Jeremie Poplin, filling in for Pat Campbell on Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ, about both...
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...
Tulsa Election 2020, District 4: Kathryn Lyons questionnaire
Back on August 12, I sent the three eligible candidates for City Council District 4 a questionnaire using the email addresses provided in their declarations of candidacy or on their websites. The questionnaire included the 18 questions I asked the mayoral candidates, plus a question about neighborhood conservation districts and...
Tulsa Election 2020: Mayoral candidate questionnaire
Last Wednesday, BatesLine sent a questionnaire to the six serious candidates for Mayor of Tulsa, using the email addresses provided in their declarations of candidacy or on their websites. We sent two reminders. We received replies from three candidates: Craig Immel, Ken Reddick, and Ty Walker. The survey consists of...
Ballot harvesting destroys the secret ballot
Democrats in Congress and in state capitols are pushing for measures that would enable voter intimidation and undermine the secret ballot, under cover of facilitating voting during the CCP Bat Virus pandemic. Earlier this week, the Daily Signal published a list of 15 election results that were tossed over fraudulent...
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...
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...
The fake REAL ID panic
UPDATE 2016/10/14: Oklahoma, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maine, and South Carolina have been reclassified as non-compliant and have been granted a grace period only until January 15, 2017. Alaska, California, Oregon, and Virginia have a limited extension until June 6, 2017, and American Samoa, Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Northern Marianas,...
QuikTrip, Ferguson, and store theft
CNN broadcast security camera video (more here) that appears to show Michael Brown shoplifting from a convenience store in Ferguson, Mo., shortly before he was shot by a police officer. At one point in the video, a thin man in a white shirt with skinny vertical stripes, untucked, and dark...
Purging Tulsa's map of doers and enablers of evil
FINAL UPDATE! Council votes 7-to-Patrick to change the name within the IDL to M. B. Brady Street in honor of the Civil War era photographer, thus preserving the street name while clarifying that we don't wish to honor W. Tate Brady. Not sure if I should applaud the finesse of...
Tulsa K9 Officer Hooch takes a bite out of crime
A news release this morning from the Tulsa Police Department announces the apprehension of a suspect in a car burglary in the Owen Park neighborhood: Burglary from Vehicle Suspect Apprehended At about 1:49 AM, officers were dispatched to an auto theft in progress at 302 N. Santa Fe Ave. Upon...
Back online after SOPA/PIPA blackout; congressional statements
BatesLine was offline yesterday, Wednesday, January 18, 2012, in protest of two draconian bills that could be used to suppress free speech on the Internet. In the course of the day, in which major sites, like Wikipedia, and thousands of minor sites went dark, many members of Congress spoke for...
Offline in protest of SOPA and PIPA
BatesLine will be offline today, Wednesday, January 18, 2012, in protest of two draconian bills that could be used to suppress free speech on the Internet. It's not hard to imagine a member of Tulsa's Cockroach Caucus using influence in Washington to turn a bogus charge of intellectual property violations...
PROTECT IP / SOPA's threat to political blogs
Two similar bills targeting online piracy, the PROTECT IP Act (S. 968) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (HR 3261), threaten free speech by putting unprecedented and unchecked power in the hands of the Attorney General, according to an analysis in Conservative Daily News. Under the current circumstances, with the...
Tulsa District 4 Republican primary: For Blake Ewing
This is the only election I get to vote in tomorrow, and I'm voting for entrepreneur Blake Ewing for the Republican nomination for Tulsa City Council District 4. In the 2009 primary, I endorsed legendary Tulsa musician Rocky Frisco in his race to unseat incumbent Eric Gomez, who had beclowned...
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...
Weiner-Wienergate: CNN video: Weiner refuses to deny that he sent lewd pic
As many Americans avoided the news over the long holiday weekend, those watching the social networking site Twitter saw a fascinating story unfold involving a liberal congressman and a photo of a clothed but discernibly turgid body part that was broadcast publicly from his verified Twitter account and addressed to...
International observers call British voting system "corruptible"
A team of 11 officials from Third World countries observing last Thursday's British election called the UK's approach to voting "corruptible," too dependent on trust. The observers came from countries where election fraud has often been a problem, with methods that include ballot box stuffing, voter intimidation, voter impersonation, and...
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...
Bartlett Jr has divorce file sealed, denounces blogs
Welcome, new readers! Click this link to read the blog article in question regarding Dewey Bartlett Jr's divorce filings and what his own side's assertions tell us about his financial acumen. Did Bartlett Jr fairly characterize what I posted? Read the article and the accompanying documents for yourself and draw...
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries matching 'theft'. [What is this?]
