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The Oklahoma Legislature’s 2024 session has had plenty of headline-grabbing moments: thwarting an attack on judicial independence, undermining The People’s initiative powers, embracing a show-me-your-papers expansion of police powers that could target almost anyone who’s not lily-white. But it’s often the legislation that flies beneath the radar that ends up with the potential to have ..read more

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Growing restrictions on the right to an abortion have revived talk of what many still regard as a highly controversial theory. It holds that the legalization of abortion in 1973 reduced the number of unwanted children, who might have been at higher risk of committing serious crimes. And that explained the sharp drop in the […] To access this content, you must log in or purchase PRINT ONLY - The Oklahoma Observer Print Edition, DIGITAL ONLY - The Oklahoma Observer on-line or TOTAL ACCESS - The Oklahoma Observer on-line and in print ..read more

State Superintendent Ryan Walters is making noise on a fiddle while his agency burns. More and more employees of the Oklahoma State Department of Education [OSDE] are jumping ship like rats in the know. This includes several key staff positions. The Oklahoman reported that since Walters took office, the OSDE has seen 130 staff members resign ..read more

If you look up the word “killjoy” in the dictionary, you’ll find a group photo of this year’s Republican legislative supermajority. In less than 24 hours last week, these supercilious solons seamlessly swapped cheers for jeers – cheers for rejecting a plutocratic scheme to erect for-sale signs on the state’s highest courts, jeers for voting ..read more

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Just days after failing in his attempt to corrupt the judicial system in Oklahoma, lame – and near dead – duck House Speaker Charles McCall apparently needed to restore his fleeting and soon to be forgotten political bonafides. Therefore, as powerful people often do, he targeted a near defenseless class of citizens, in this case ..read more

The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dream’d that Greece might still be free. George Gordon, Lord Byron, wrote those inspiring words more than 200 years ago as he awakened to the Greek cause of independence from the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Friday marked the ..read more