oklahoma – Techdirt (original) (raw)
Parents Use Republican’s Own Law Against Them To Keep Their Kids From Being Subjected To Election Conspiracy Theories
from the lol,-lmao-even dept
This is delicious. Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma have tried to bend the education system to their will. And now they’re finding out it won’t be bent quite as easy as they thought.
First, let’s take a look at the backstory here, which is steeped in the sort of stupidity we’ve come to expect from the performative mooks currently serving terms as Republican politicians. Here’s what the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (R) mandated for the 2025-26 school year:
The new curriculum includes a section that requires students to “analyze contemporary turning points of 21st-century American society.” That requirement includes the following:
Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of “bellwether county” trends.
According to Walters, it’s essential to dump Republican conspiracy theories into students’ heads because doing otherwise would force them to be “spoon-fed left-wing propaganda.” Walters’ proposal goes the other way, dumping right-wing propaganda into students by the shovelful to ensure they are properly instructed about “legitimate concerns” raised during the 2020 election.
The problem, of course, is that there are no “legitimate concerns,” which means students will purposefully be made stupider by idiots who are heavily reliant on an ignorant voter base to remain in office. $33 million is being spent to indoctrinate students, which is apparently fine with state Republicans who don’t mind indoctrination, so long as it’s their indoctrination.
Here’s what makes this new development really fun. The Republicans pushed through a bill that allows parents to opt their kids out of any “learning material or activity” a parent felt was “harmful” to their children. That law went into effect this year, and was crafted specifically to allow parents to prevent their kids from being subjected to anything they considered to be “woke.”
In a truly hilarious twist, parents who don’t want their kids to be subjected to pro-Trump propaganda are using the Republican’s anti-woke law to opt out of the newly mandated conspiracy theory “instruction.” Here’s Judd Legum, reporting for Popular Information:
A group called “We’re Oklahoma Education,” or WOKE, is distributing a form letter that allows parents to opt-out of aspects of the new curriculum, including lessons on “discrepancies in 2020 elections results” and “Judeo-Christian concepts of ethics and government as the basis for American civilization.” The letter also allows parents to opt their children out of instruction created by right-wing groups, such as PragerU and Hillsdale College. Parents can also request that their child not have “[a]ny interaction with State Superintendent Ryan Walters in any capacity, including viewing any video or audio recording of Mr. Walters.”
WOKE Director Erica Watkins says the group created the opt-out form because they consider some lessons in the new curriculum “propaganda” that is not “appropriate to be taught in school.”
Love it. Lawmakers who engage in performative legislating always forget the laws they enact to give them ways to do the stupid stuff they want to do can be utilized by their political opponents. Expanding power just because you’re currently in power seems like a great idea right up until the other party has the majority. Crafting laws designed to be abused by people with certain “conservative beliefs” can prove to be just as useful to people opposed to these beliefs.
That’s how it’s going here: the state superintendent is watching two mandates he supported being utilized to prevent students from being subjected to debunked conspiracy theories and “judeo-christian ethics” that are seemingly present in the people seeking to shove these particular ethics down other people’s throats.
Don’t put in the papers that Superintendent Walters is mad.
In response, Walters said that it was “concerning that parents would opt their kids out of understanding American history.” Walters also said that the waiver created by WOKE was “absolutely not enforceable” in part because it was created by “a hyper-partisan organization.” Walters claimed that a “parent would need to provide his or her own form, or, in some cases, the individual school district might have a form that they use.”
Hmm. Seems like there are several ways to get around these restrictions on opt-out forms. Not that you’ll need them because…
Nothing in the law prevents parents from using a form created by a third party.
Suck it up, Superintendent. You’ve been beaten at your own game by people who aren’t so blinded by their partisan hackery that they’re incapable of seeing the bigger picture. Take the loss like a big boy and get back to your day-to-day business of proving you’re unworthy of the public’s trust or respect. I look forward to further reporting during the upcoming school year, hopefully detailing the dispensing of state-mandated conspiracy theory propaganda to room after room of empty desks.
Filed Under: conspiracy theories, donald trump, oklahoma, ryan walters, woke
Companies: moms for liberty
‘Moral Sanity:’ Dipshit Lawmaker Issues Slew Of Bills To Ban Everything From Porn Possession To No-Fault Divorces
from the death-cult-leaders-continue-to-death-cult dept
There’s a coup underway in the federal government. Across the rest of the nation, people seeking to endear themselves with President Trump or his supporters are doing the same sort of thing at the state level. Refusing to even acknowledge long-standing rights or court precedent, legislators are becoming the Project 2025 they want to see in the world, knowing full well every failed attempt just makes the next attempt a little bit easier.
Oklahoma lawmakers already have problems staying within the constitutional confines when writing laws. They’ve also shown they’re willing to silence dissent in ways that clearly conflict with, if nothing else, the gentlemen’s agreement generated by years of accepted government norms.
Now that legislators are seeking to dump Bibles and Ten Commandment printouts into public schools, one particular Oklahoma lawmaker (previously called out for his porn ban attempt early last year) is seeking to implement Project 2025 essentials at the state level.
Oklahoma state senator Dusty Deevers has introduced a slate of bills that would impose his “moral sanity” on the state’s residents, whether they want it or not.
It starts with this statement, which strongly suggests Deevers just really wants to run an op-ed service that is backed by the force of law.
Together, these bills set a course for pushing back against the moral decay foisted upon Oklahoma by the far-left’s march through our institutions to destroy the moral foundations upon which the United States and Christian Civilization had long rested.
Yeah, about “those bills.” It starts stupid, goes evil, goes even stupider, and then settles into a groove that pairs evil with stupid in equal measures.
First, there’s the “Abolition of Abortion Act,” which would allow the state to criminalize the use of morning after pills and other such options, even if they’re not provided by entities subject to Oklahoma State laws.
That leads directly to Dusty’s anti-porn efforts — efforts that claim they’re about preventing CSAM before moving on to make it clear anyone involved in the free exchange of ideas in this particular marketplace is just another criminal in need of jailing. It goes beyond targeting porn producers, performers, and porn sites. It also treats end users as criminals.
The bill also prohibits pornography in general, providing for criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison for production, distribution, or possession. It also provides heightened 10-to-30-year criminal penalties for organized pornography trafficking.
What’s not explained is what “possession” means in this context. Is this dad’s box of Playboys that’s been stashed in the attic for years? Is it the cookies stored by porn sites visited by internet users? Is it any image or video stored locally on an Oklahoma resident’s computer? Who knows? Deevers doesn’t care, so long as he gets to prevent adults from accessing content created by other consenting adults.
There’s also a bill that would saddle performers and producers of drag acts if any child (not defined) is present in the audience. This is followed by the “Covenant Marriage Act” that would allow residents (presumably only the married males) to opt into a “covenant marriage” that would hamper attempts to dissolve this marriage other than for “abuse, adultery, or abandonment.” Those opting in would get a $2500 tax credit. Those who don’t just get to remain married, but without this additional credit. In Sen. Deevers’ own words, people who chooses to “opt out of the no-fault divorce scheme” are more equal than others in the eyes of the state’s tax laws.
Somehow, that leads directly to another bill proposed by Senator Dusty Deevers, which makes everything but the $2500 kickback completely irrelevant.
This bill would end no-fault divorce in Oklahoma by removing “incompatibility” as a justification for divorce, leaving abandonment, gross neglect, extreme cruelty, habitual drunkenness, insanity for a period of five years, adultery, unknown pregnancy, and fraudulent contract as the available justifications.
No more “this just isn’t working” divorces. Instead, children will be forced to endure the legally mandated marriage of people who don’t like each other. Marriage contracts have always been somewhat legally-binding. This law takes this to a whole new level, turning people who reject this contract for reasons Deevers doesn’t agree with into scofflaws who perhaps may end up being criminally prosecuting for… um… offending Deevers’ very specific view on public morality.
_“Marriage vows were binding until 50 years into the sexual revolution when the no-fault divorce scheme was first brought to America. The results for children and society as a whole could not be worse,” Deevers said. “A society that teaches and allows a marriage covenant to be less important and binding than a business contract will reap the fruit of social upheaval, unfettered dishonesty, crime, violence towards women, war on men, and expendability of children. To devalue marriage is to devalue the family is to undermine the foundation of a thriving society._“
Bro, marriages has been steadily devalued for years. You know who led the charge? Men like you who believe women are pretty much just chattel, if not two-legged cattle. Once women were given the opportunity to engage in no-fault divorces, a whole lot of assholes, sociopaths, and serial abusers found themselves getting their paychecks garnished. And I’m sure that’s why you’re suddenly so concerned. The type of people who would vote in a Dusty Deevers are the same sort of people who tend to come out on the losing end of divorce proceedings.
To his credit, Deevers has also introduced a bill that would provide money to people seeking to adopt. But that’s undercut by his next bill, which says tax credits will be given to parents of children… but only the sort of parents Deevers chooses to recognize under the law.
SB328 establishes a 500taxcreditperchildforamotherandfatherfilingjointly.Thecreditisescalatedto500 tax credit per child for a mother and father filing jointly. The credit is escalated to 500taxcreditperchildforamotherandfatherfilingjointly.Thecreditisescalatedto1,000 if the child was born after the marriage of the parents.
_“Statistically, growing up in a two-parent household is strongly correlated with virtually every good thing in a child’s life, including educational achievement, emotional health, and staying out of jail,” Deevers said. “There is no greater factor in the well-being and future success of a child than whether they grew up in a two-parent household with their mother and father. It’s not even close. Accordingly, it would be irresponsible of us not to promote two-parent households._“
Yep, this is only for straight couples and the largest benefit goes to those who managed to hold off on having kids until after they were legally married. Same-sex couples need not apply. Unmarried couples can still get half of this credit, but aren’t going to get the whole amount unless they choose to get married before the birth of their next child. And that means the adoption credit offered by Deevers doesn’t actually mean all that much, because continued support for the adopted child pretty much rests on how cis the parents are and how long they’ve been married to each other.
In conclusion, Dusty Deevers is a terrible person who never should have been elevated to public office. But none of that seems to matter anymore. A bunch of Americans have decided it’s better to elect pieces of shit so long as they promise to hurt the people these voters hate the most. They’ll wear their own bruises as a matter of pride and pretend any collateral damage they and their rights suffer is solely attributable to liberals, the deep state, contrails, Antifa, wokeism, or whatever else takes the sting away from a reality that would normally be considered to be undeniable.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, abortion, dusty deevers, free speech, oklahoma, oklahoma senate, porn ban
Oklahoma AG Steps Up To Ensure Cop Who Broke 71-Year-Old Man’s Neck Won’t Face Criminal Charges
from the when-not-even-a-wrist-slap-is-considered-acceptable dept
On October 27, 2024, Oklahoma City police officer Joseph Gibson violently assaulted a 71-year-old Vietnamese man while investigating [checks notes] a “non-injury traffic accident.”
The man, Lich Vu, was definitely much smaller than the cop that assaulted him. He was very definitely much older. A discussion about who was at fault occurred, hampered by Vu’s limited English skills. Vu’s wife came out of where she was working and attempted to help translate, but Officer Gibson chose to escalate past his limited Vietnamese language skills, with the final result of the “interaction” being this:
Prosecutors said Vu suffered a brain bleed and a broken neck and eye socket.
The body camera footage doesn’t help much. It mainly shows Gibson being aggressive and throwing Vu to the ground. What it doesn’t capture with any clarity is the supposed “assault” the 71-year-old man committed that apparently provoked this violent response.
But a nearby security camera operated by a local business captured the whole thing. And, thanks to that footage, we can see for ourselves the alleged violent act that led to Officer Gibson’s violent act:
What the recording shows is something that might have seemed offensive to a US police officer (the ones that believe the only acceptable response to an officer’s questions/demands is complete deference) but what probably seemed acceptable to a man who felt the cop wasn’t paying attention to his explanation. The only physical contact here was a mild backhand to the officer’s upper arm/chest — a tap meant to interrupt or redirect the conversation. It certainly wasn’t an attack on the officer. It was something that might have shocked a very small child, but certainly shouldn’t have bothered an officer clad in body armor and carrying a small arsenal of lethal and less-than-lethal weapons.
This over-response definitely looked like assault. And even if it might have been tough to prove it was lawless when a cop does it, local prosecutors were going to at least take a run at it.
Oklahoma City DA Vicki Behenna charged Gibson with aggravated assault and battery after the surveillance camera footage made its way into the public domain. But that has all disappeared, thanks to the unwanted and uncalled-for intervention of Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond.
“As attorney general, I will not permit Oklahoma police officers to face criminal prosecution for conduct adhering to their training,” Drummond said in a statement. “While the outcome of this incident is unquestionably devastating for Mr. Vu and his family, I do not believe the officer exhibited criminal intent.”
Well, define “criminal intent” then, AG Drummond. Because it sure looks like Officer Gibson meant to inflict as much pain as possible, despite nothing occurring that demanded this much force to be deployed. Is it a criminal act to respond to a small amount of disrespect with a body slam that breaks someone’s neck? Is it a criminal act to express your irritation with physical violence against another person?
For all of us regular people, it is. It may not be “criminal intent,” but the act itself is usually considered a violation of law. At best, it’s simple assault, rather than aggravated assault. But it appears AG Drummond believes cops should be held to a lower standard.
Not only that, but his statement demonstrates he’s a cop shop lapdog. Anyone who views the recording can see the officer’s acts weren’t justified. More so, they can see what Vu did isn’t even remotely comparable to the phrases the Attorney General uses to justify taking this case out the local prosecutor’s hands.
“No individual is allowed to hit or push an officer, regardless of whether he or she doesn’t understand English well or comes from a different culture,” Drummond said. “The simple truth is, this unfortunate incident never would have occurred if Mr. Vu had kept his hands to himself.”
This wasn’t a “hit” or a “push.” It was a small tap of the officer’s chest/shoulder by someone apparently just as frustrated by the language barrier as Officer Gibson. Blaming the victim for their own incapacitation is just par for the law enforcement course, though. And AG Drummond — despite his recent anti-death penalty advocacy — is proving he just one of the boys (in blue).
Filed Under: excessive force, gentner drummond, joseph gibson, lich vu, oklahoma, police misconduct, police violence
OK State Superintendent Ryan Walters Wants Even More Bibles, Prayers For The Dear Leader
from the holy-shit dept
Whatever your politics, there can be no arguing that the election of Donald Trump once more to the highest office in the land has served as a permission slip for some of the worst people in the country to behave badly. We’re already seeing this in all sorts of ways, from incel fuckwits telling women that it’s “Your body, my choice, forever“, to obviously racist and antisemetic public displays, and so on. Note that I am not laying these occurrences squarely at the feet of Donald Trump as though he specifically ordered that any of this occur, but it is a simple, inconvenient fact that these assholes pulling this crap are his fans and voters. And until the man specifically decries these horrible things, he tacitly endorses them.
The same would be true of Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ actions. We last discussed Walters over his plans to use taxpayer money to buy 55,000 bibles for the state’s public schools. Notably, the initial ask included a very specific set of specs for these bibles, with which essentially only Trump’s perverse God Bless The U.S.A. Bible complied. After a bipartisan backlash, which Walters of course blamed on “leftists,” the spec list was changed so that more bibles would fit the bill. But if you thought that this signaled that Walters would stop treating Trump’s boots like a lollipop, you were wrong.
The most recent news is that Walters has announced that 500 bibles have already been purchased for public schools, specifically for AP courses on government. This comes with language that attempts to couch the purchase as being for historical purposes, which is absolutely absurd.
In a news release, Walters said the Bibles would be used in Advanced Placement government classrooms across the state. He said the move represented “the first in the nation Bible purchase explicitly for use in schools as an academic and literary resource,” and described the purchase as “the first step toward providing Bibles for every classroom in the state.”
“We are focused on ensuring we get Bibles available in every classroom in our state as quickly as we can,” Walters said in a news release.
Notably absent from the announcement was any indication of how many copies of other religious texts had been purchased for schools as well. No mention of any purchases of the Qur’an, the Hadith, the Torah, the Talmud, the Vedas, the Adi Granth, the Avesta, nor even the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And that’s sort of a big problem when it comes to what Walters is attempting here, given the collision course he is currently on with the First Amendment. The government is to take no stance on matters of religion and forcing exactly one very specific religious text into classrooms is as naked a violation of the First Amendment as I can recall.
And Walters can attempt to portray this as necessary in order to teach the foundational history of America, but that is plainly bullshit. One does not need the full copy of a religious text, to which not all founding fathers subscribed mind you, in order to learn about the importance of religion to the history of the country. You can find evidence of its importance in the same fucking First Amendment that Walters is currently attempting to violate. That amendment’s inspiration, Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, was specifically designed to uncouple his state’s government from the Church of England, with a primary aim to protect other religions in the state, such as Catholicism and those of Jewish faith. Hell, at least some number of the founding fathers weren’t Christian at all, but rather Deists. So where the hell are the Deist texts in Oklahoma classrooms? You know, for historical purposes and such?
Conversations on the historical nature of religion in America are perfectly valid and fun, frankly, but they would also be entirely wasted calories when it comes to Walters. He’s not interested in any of this. And if you think he is, that is belied by his other demand of the public schools under his care.
State Superintendent Ryan Walters sent superintendents an email Thursday afternoon mandating districts show students a video of him announcing the new Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism and inviting students into a prayer for President-elect Donald Trump, among other topics.
In the video, Walters says the “radical left” is attacking religious liberty in schools, patriotism is being “mocked,” and there is “a hatred for this country pushed by woke teachers’ unions.”
He invites the students to pray with him, clarifying they don’t have to join in.
“I pray for our leaders to make the right decisions,” Walters said. “I pray in particular for President Donald Trump and his team as they continue to bring about change to the country.”
Nothing like a little newspeak mixed in with a healthy dose of hypocrisy, apparently. The name of his manufactured office is negated by his own actions. This isn’t practicing religious liberty; that’s what Jefferson did. This is the state government favoring one specific religious text as the expense of every other religious text. That’s the opposite of religious freedom.
And to demand, nay, mandate what is essentially the indoctrination of school-aged children into the political opinions of one man, from one party, with not a care in the world for the 32% of voters who didn’t vote for Walters’ preferred candidate or party, is bonkers. And before we get comments about how “Wah, the left has been indoctrinating kids in schools for years,” please show me where a member of the left mandated the viewing of a video by school children that specifically negatively portrays the other political side as hating the country, or attacking religious liberty. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
All the worse is subjecting these same children to a call for prayer for a man who is quite plainly as un-Christian a person as we’ve ever had serve in the Oval Office. This is pure boot-licking behavior from a person whom everyone agrees is merely vying of a position in Trump’s government.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump is quickly filling out his incoming Cabinet, and Walters’ name has been mentioned by some national news outlets as a potential pick for education secretary or adviser.
Exactly correct. Walters is using both the real religious beliefs of those within his state and freaking children in order to advance his own political career.
Somehow, it strains the mind to imagine Christ approving of any of this. Regardless of that, all of this should be struck down as violating the Constitution.
Filed Under: bibles, donald trump, oklahoma, prayer in school, religion, ryan walters, schools, separation of church and state
Oklahoma Opens Bids For Bibles In Every School With Curiously Specific Requirements
from the holy-shit dept
When it comes to how you include religious texts in public school classrooms and libraries, the devil, as they say, is in the details. Want those texts of various world religions in place for secular teaching of topics they pertain to? All good! But picking one particular religion’s iconography and injecting it into public schools is a fairly blatant First Amendment violation. And if you’re one of those state officials looking to ban certain books due discussions about sexuality, gender, slavery, or violence and you aren’t banning most religious texts, including the bible, then you’re a flat-out hypocrite.
The point is that public schools are secular in nature. Any desire to put religious texts in them should be done so for secular reasons and not for the overt promotion of either a single religion or for political reasons.
And that brings us to Oklahoma and its state Superintendent, Ryan Walters. Walters decided that he wanted a bible in every public classroom in Oklahoma, suggesting it would be used due to the nature of American history and our founding fathers. I would normally simply argue about that history and talk about just how many of our founding fathers either weren’t religious at all, or were religious in a way that today’s conservative religious folks would find abhorrent (see: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Thomas Paine). But instead I’m going to focus more on the original requirements Walters had in the state’s RFP.
Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.
Now, most bibles don’t include those other historical documents, and certainly they aren’t all bound in material best served for the interior of a car. But at least one does. And if you’ve followed politics and the news closely enough over the last year or so, you may have already guessed which one that is.
A salesperson at Mardel Christian & Education searched, and though they carry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the parameters. But one Bible fits perfectly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and commonly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiving fees for his endorsement.
Mardel doesn’t carry the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible or another Bible that could meet the specifications, the We The People Bible, which was also endorsed by Donald Trump Jr. It sells for $90.
Was this a politically motivated move to get specifically Trump-endorsed bibles, for which he receives payment, into the public schools of Oklahoma, thereby using taxpayer funds to enrich the former President. Well, gosh golly gee, we just can’t say for certain, can we? But if that was the motivation, this is exactly the action a person so motivated would take.
Now, after many people in the state and nationally lost their collective shit over what is, at minimum, the appearance of a conflict of taxpayer interests, the state amended the RFP to make it so other, less expensive bibles would qualify. But of course that came along with Walters blaming everyone else for the concern expressed about his very, very tailored RFP.
Walters, in a Monday video on X, said the Bible will be used “because of its historical significance throughout this nation’s history,” blaming what he called the “fake news media” for lies about the program.
“The left-wing media hates Donald Trump so much, and they hate the Bible so much, they will lie and go to any means necessary to stop this initiative from happening,” Walters said.
I’m trying to picture Jesus saying this very thing and somehow I just can’t manage it.
In any case, it should go without saying that when we’re talking about introducing religious texts, paid for by taxpayers and for use in secular schools, it should be done with great care. Having a bloviating boot-licker go about it in this way ought to anger Oklahoman taxpayers, whether they are Christian or not.
Filed Under: bibles, oklahoma, ryan walters, schools
Oklahoma Gov’t Revokes License Of Teacher Who Dared To Push Back Against State’s Censors
from the fascism-in-action dept
More and more politicians have decided the only way to make America great is to abandon the things that made America great in the first place. The free and open exchange of ideas is getting shut down. The First Amendment is being remade and remodeled to only protect the ideas those in power are in favor of.
As is always the case when aspiring fascist take the law into their own hands, the first people against the wall are those whose job it is to pass information on to others. That’s why when rulers seek to control the public’s perception, they go after journalists and teachers first. An educated and informed voting bloc won’t vote the “right” way. And if they’re going to hold onto their power, they need to make sure the next generation of voters and public servants only know what their current leaders want them to know.
This is America and yet it feels like something else entirely in far too many states. Between the incessant book bans, anti-LGBTQ laws, and the constant portrayal of the First Amendment as only protective of speech government leaders like, no one insisting on travelling in Donald Trump’s orbit is actually trying to make America “great.” Instead, it appears they’re trying to make America WWII Germany. Or Russia under Lenin/Stalin/Putin.
That’s why state officials now feel comfortable punishing teachers for the crime of… teaching. Here’s Nadia Lathan with more details for the Associated Press.
Oklahoma’s education board has revoked the license of a former teacher who drew national attention during surging book-ban efforts across the U.S. in 2022 when she covered part of her classroom bookshelf in red tape with the words “Books the state didn’t want you to read.”
The decision Thursday went against a judge who had advised the Oklahoma Board of Education not to revoke the license of Summer Boismier, who had also put in her high school classroom a QR code of the Brooklyn Public Library’s catalogue of banned books.
For that, the board pulled her license. And All Boismier did was highlight the ridiculousness of the state government’s actions and provide opportunities for students to discover for themselves the content Oklahoma legislators unilaterally decided they should no longer have access to.
There’s nothing more American than someone fighting censorship, especially when that person is tasked with educating and informing developing minds. But the Oklahoma government doesn’t want Americans teaching in its schools. And it clearly doesn’t want anyone — no matter what age or position — to question the status quo being imposed by the censors in its midst. All it wants is unquestioning equivocation — the sort of thing that, if adopted by the founding fathers, would have resulted in us never referring to them as “founding fathers.” This would still be a British colony, or failing that, a former British colony now presided over by China or strip-mined of anything of value periodically by successive European nations with their own takes on colonialism before settling in for a long run of corrupt governments and military coups.
But we’re not that. We’re the land of liberty. Or supposed to be. Firing teachers for pushing back against censorship isn’t an American ideal. It’s apparently an Oklahoman ideal, although it would be a stretch to think all Oklahomans support this sort of thing.
But one politician has managed to convert a personal vendetta into a chilling effect that will harm teachers, librarians, and other government employees across the state. State Superintendent Ryan Walters has been trying to get Bosmier fired for two years. And now he’s finally succeeded.
Walters, who was a candidate for Oklahoma’s top education office when Boismier was teaching, had called on the board in 2022 to revoke her teaching license in a letter he shared on social media.
“There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom,” Walters had wrote. He accused her of providing “banned and pornographic material” to students.
Strong words from the state sup. Strong words indeed. Of course, one feels Walters would be completely supportive of a teacher with a “conservative political agenda” presiding over a classroom of young impressionables. His follow-up statement — that Bosier was fired for “breaking the law” that prohibits instruction on topics related to race and gender (and let’s just take a beat to recognize just how amazingly shitty that law is) — doesn’t add anything that would alter the immediate reaction to this news. That reaction being: the state will always fire people who don’t align themselves with the bigots running the government.
He also added this:
He accused her of providing “banned and pornographic material” to students.
This is just as patently false as it is technically false. Bosmier didn’t provide any material to anyone. In fact, she taped off a section of her own classroom bookshelf to prevent access. Handing the kids a QR code to a list of banned books doesn’t “provide” this material to anyone. All it gives them is a list of books. It’s up to the students to do what they will with that information.
But discussing this in rational terms is useless. These are not rational people. These are people steeped in hatred who have the power to inflict misery on anyone who pushes back against their agenda. The state superintendent doesn’t seem to like any political agenda other than his own and the ones pushed by the party he clearly supports. That’s not how America is supposed to work. There’s supposed to be free and open discussion of competing views — something that encourages younger minds to consider all the facts and draw their own conclusions.
For all the whining about “indoctrination” of students with “liberal agendas,” state officials clearly aren’t opposed to indoctrinating kids. They just want to be the ones doing the indoctrinating. It’s sickening and, unfortunately, it’s not the political career-killer it once was. Now, going as far right as you can — even past the Constitutional confines these people claim to support — is encouraged and rewarded. Many more people will be up against the wall before America (hopefully) moves past this embrace of the worst people to ever hold public office.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, bigotry, book ban, censorship, oklahoma, ryan walters, schools, summer bosnier
Judge Tells Corrections Officers To ‘Suck It Up’ If They Can’t Handle An Endless Stream Of Executions
from the inhumanity-is-what-I-want,-says-impartial-magistrate dept
We’ve long known no one cares what happens to people who are incarcerated.
The indifference flows through the so-called criminal justice system to the private sector to tons of voters who firmly believe the nation could be better served by stripping certain Americans of all their rights.
The fact that we jail more people than totalitarian nations is constantly ignored. We pretend prison is the best thing for errant people — something that offers them the chance to pay society for their misdeeds while giving them the bonus of bettering themselves through rehabilitation.
But nothing in the system lends itself to better outcomes. The criminal justice system ensures anyone merely charged with a crime — much less convicted of one — will carry that burden for years, if not the rest of their lives. People jailed for decades for non-violent crimes (mostly of the drug possession variety) can expect to return to society years behind the curve and saddled with a felony conviction that ensures only people willing to exploit others will have anything to do with them.
While behind bars, inmates are treated as less than human by the government at all levels. They’re also expected to routinely be victims of crimes that will never be prosecuted, ranging from theft to assault to rape. And that’s on top of whatever criminal acts are committed by those tasked with protecting them while they’re in the government’s custody.
They’re also at the mercy of entities both public and private. Sheriffs run most county jails with impunity, protected from accountability by layers of immunity and the election process itself. Sheriffs have shown themselves willing to starve inmates to enrich themselves when not just ignoring inmate-on-inmate crime or systemic abuse from jailers in their employ.
Private entities engage in further harm, subjecting an entirely captive audience to rapacious fees if prisoners desire outside contact. At first, it was just exorbitant per-minute fees for phone calls, a burden bore by loved ones who realized the importance of letting people in jail know someone on the outside cared about them.
Those fees — which are always shared with those housing inmates — made the most of the move to internet-based communications, adding even more extortionate fees to everything from texting to access to free streaming services. These fees further pad the payrolls of correctional facilities. But none of this windfall has ever been passed on to the people who actually pay these fees.
Decades of indifference — if not outright disdain — has accustomed us to the fact that the criminal justice system doesn’t care about anyone who can’t beat the rap and is forced to ride the ride.
But this is something else. This is a state judge declaring he doesn’t care about the people the state employs to staff jails and prisons. This a judge saying “fuck you” on top of “fuck those guys,” letting government employees in certain positions know they’re considered little better than the prisoners they watch over.
Here’s Austin Sarat with the details for Slate:
Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, and Steven Harpe, the director of the Department of Corrections, want to slow down the pace of their state’s upcoming executions, moving from a 60-day to a 90-day interval between each of them. They contend that doing so is necessary to deal with trauma to those who carry them out and to ensure that future executions will not be botched.
To reschedule the pending executions, the state needs permission from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, which, in 2021, had approved a plan to execute 25 death row inmates in less than three years. That plan would have cut the state’s death row population by more than half.
The state of Oklahoma would like inmates to shut up until it’s their time to be killed. The objections raised by the state AG had nothing to do with the fact that the state was killing inmates with alarming frequency. Instead, it was concerned the people who have to perform these killings might need a bit more time off between state-ordained killings.
The AG got the state’s Criminal Court of Appeals to give its executioners some more recovery time — an agreement that would have prevented executions from happening any more often than every 60 days.
However, it appeared the state’s hired killers needed more time off than this. The AG’s office asked for a 90-day recovery period between executions.
And that’s where the state ran head-on into one judge’s particular indifference towards everyone affected. That a former prosecutor-turned-judge wouldn’t be concerned that the state was executing people quickly is unsurprising. What’s alarming is that this judge made it clear he didn’t care about his fellow government employees — the ones tasked with all the killing.
During that hearing, Judge Gary Lumpkin, a former prosecutor who has been on the five-person court for more than 30 years, displayed a surprising callousness about the well-being of the correctional officials involved in the execution process. He said that they need to stop complaining, “suck it up,” and stick to the current execution schedule.
That’s the message being sent by Judge Lumpkin: if you don’t like the job of killing person after person at the behest of the state, you can pack your feelings up and GTFO.
[Judge Lumpkin] insisted that he would not buy into arguments about the traumatic effects of participating in executions, which he derisively labeled “sympathy stuff.”
He said that Drummond and Harpe needed to “man up.” “If you can’t do the job,” Lumpkin continued, “you should step aside and let somebody do it that can.”
Kill them or I’ll find somebody who will.
That’s pretty fucking harsh. And it shows Judge Lumpkin doesn’t think the people handling executions deserve any more empathy than those being executed. Sure, it’s harsh that people are getting killed because Oklahoma still believes firmly in the death penalty. Those performing the executions may not be dying, but they’ve got to live with what they’re doing. All they were asking for is just a little more downtime between killing in the name of. And this judge just told them to go fuck themselves.
Don’t kid yourselves, corrections officers. In Oklahoma, you’re little better than the misfits, outcasts, and abandoned property the government believes your inmates are. You’re as close to nobody as any government employee can get and if you can’t handle the job of government hatchet man, you’re of no use to Judge Lumpkin or the criminal justice system he represents.
Filed Under: executions, gary lumpkin, oklahoma, trauma
Freshman State Lawmaker Wants To Ban Porn In Oklahoma
from the extremist-maga-lawmaker dept
A far-right state lawmaker in the Oklahoma state legislature has started his first term on the civil liberties shortbus. Sen. Dusty Deevers, a Republican lawmaker and Southern Baptist pastor, introduced a complete ban on consensual pornography despite its First Amendment protections.
Senate Bill 1976, sponsored by Deevers alone, features fascistic language looking to completely ban the viewing, production, and distribution of adult content that is otherwise legally produced.
Any violations of the bill, if it were to become law, would make it a felony or misdemeanor if an individual violates these criminal provisions. According to the bill’s language, legal pornography which features one or more consenting adults over the age of 18 years would be defined similarly to criminal penalties for the morally bankrupt asswipes who produce and distribute child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) or cases of non-consensual intimate imagery (e.g., revenge porn, etc.).
Sen. Deevers intends to create entirely new definitions that would ultimately outlaw porn. Deevers uses bogus public safety terminology to sell the bill, which is at the moment being circulated among far-right Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and extremist anti-pornography campaigners to push the bill.
Senate Bill 1976 provides a definition for “obscene material” that isn’t related to CSAM or NCII:
“Obscene material” means and includes any representation, performance, depiction, or description of sexual conduct, whether in any form or on any medium, including still photographs, undeveloped photographs, motion pictures, undeveloped film, videotape, optical, magnetic, or solid-state storage, CD or DVD, or a purely photographic product or a reproduction of such product in any book, pamphlet,[…]magazine, or other publication or electronic or photo-optical format, if said items contain the following elements: a. depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct which are patently offensive as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, b. taken as a whole, have as the dominant theme an appeal to prurient interest in sex as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, and c. a reasonable person would find the material or performance taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value. The standard for obscenity applied in this section shall not apply to child pornography.…”
Federal statutes and case law indicate that obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment. By this, obscenity is typically content that depicts illegal material that violates the Miller test. U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled in Miller v. California that material that is obscene but is defined by a judge or jury through a three-pronged test. The Miller test asks whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards,” would find that a work is taken as a whole that appeals to a criminal prurient interest. The test adds that if the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state or federal laws. Or that the work taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value to the national culture and conversation. Something is obscene only if the judge or jury defines these three conditions are satisfied. Only then is the material in question obscene.
Porn, as defined in Deevers’ bill, is not considered obscene given that pornography is protected speech.
Adult entertainment companies are regulated by the U.S. Department of Justice and are required by federal law to verify the age and consent of all performers and retain those records through a custodian of records. Any violation of these laws is punishable by federal criminal penalties. By no means does Deevers have a viable bill, given that it seeks to repress legitimate entertainment.
The Oklahoma bill also provides the following definition for “unlawful pornography”:
“[U]nlawful pornography” means any visual depiction or individual image stored or contained in any format on any medium including, but not limited to, film, motion picture, videotape, photograph, negative, undeveloped film, slide, photographic product, reproduction of a photographic product, play, or performance in which a person is engaged in any of the following acts with a person: a. sexual intercourse which is normal or perverted…b. anal sodomy, c. sexual activity with an animal, d. sadomasochistic abuse, e., flagellation or torture, f. physical restraint such as binding or fettering in the context of sexual conduct, g. fellatio or cunnilingus, h. excretion in the context of sexual conduct, i. lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals in the context of masturbation or other sexual conduct, and j. lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals, buttocks, or, if such person is female, the breast, for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer.”
Excluding the depiction of bestiality, Senate Bill 1976 defines pornography as unlawful when, in reality, it is otherwise consensual in virtually every other U.S. jurisdiction — including jurisdictions with unconstitutional age verification requirements. In fact, there are some lawmakers in other states who are realizing that broadly applied age verification requirements could limit the rights of free expression and privacy adult entertainment consumers, producers, and creators are given. Deevers is toeing the company line for the Heritage Foundation and the conservatives who openly called for the revocation of First Amendment rights covering legal porn, content that isn’t pornography that deals with sexuality, LGBTQ+ rights and health information, and more. It is safe to say that this legislation follows the fucked worldview of Project 2025, which seeks to strip civil liberties and set back women’s and LGBTQ+ rights back by over five or six decades.
Deevers introduced the bill on his own. It is unlikely that the bill would advance given the First Amendment concerns. But it speaks volumes that a man who knows nothing beyond far-right Christian nationalism ideology feels so emboldened to criminalize legally protected expression.
Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics. He is the politics and legal contributing editor for AVN.com.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, dusty deevers, oklahoma, porn
Oklahoma Senator Thinks Journalists Need Licenses, Should Be Trained By PragerU
from the garbage-people-doing-garbage-things dept
“They’re not sending their best.”
I hear ya, Donnie. Just look at the jamokes you’ve inspired to set fire to the Constitution, if only because they failed to set fire to Capitol Hill following the 2020 election.
Florida’s full of them. The state legislature is infested with people who think fascism is something to aspire to. As far as they see it, the Constitution protects the rights of white males. Everyone else should just get used to their faces being stamped on forever.
Florida may be the worst, but state governments all over the nation are filled with people too stupid to govern but savvy enough to get elected. The residents that support them love them for their stupidity and performative lawmaking. Everyone else is reduced to looking on in disbelief, at best. At worst, they’re now the target of laws meant to further elevate white, straight males at the expense of everyone else.
But let’s not short-sell these legislators. They’re willing to cross the line to punish white, straight males if these outliers are unwilling to bend the knee. Critics of these government figures are also being pushed up against the wall by legislators, a disturbing number of which are willing to rewrite the First Amendment in their own image. If “free” speech doesn’t make the people in power happy, then that speech should no longer be “free.”
That brings us to the latest bit of anti-Constitutional thuggery being pushed forward in a state legislature. This time is yet another state with a panhandle hosting the idiocy, as Walter Einenkel reports for Daily Kos.
On Wednesday, Oklahoma state Sen. Nathan Dahm has proposed a bill that would require journalists to submit to drug tests, take courses in being “propaganda-free,” and get a license from the state.
Senator Dahm is not only an idiot when its comes to crafting law, but he’s also incapable of coming up with his own ideas.
This isn’t the first, second, or third time that conservative lawmakers have attempted to control the free press by demanding some sort of licensing requirements. In 2016, a South Carolina Republican introduced a bill that would require journalists to be registered and vetted by the state. An Indiana Republican tried to do a similar thing in 2017, arguing it was the same as licensing Second Amendment rights. And in 2023, a Florida lawmaker attempted to force bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, people in his administration, or state legislators to register with the government.
About the only thing new in Dahm’s attack on the First Amendment is the entity he wants to aid and abet in this mass violation of rights. The bill [PDF] mandates cultural readjustment at the hands of Dahm’s preferred brainwasher.
Each individual reporter, producer, writer, editor, or any other employee involved in the production of content distributed by a media outlet is hereby required to:
a. complete a criminal background check conducted by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, b. receive a license as prescribed by the Corporation Commission as provided in subsection C of this section, c. complete a propaganda-free safety training course of no less than eight (8) hours as prescribed by the State Department of Education, which shall be developed in coordination with PragerU, d. provide proof of liability insurance no less than One Million Dollars ($1,000,000.00), and e. submit to quarterly drug testing for illicit substances to be administered by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation;
Holy shit. We’re on the other side of reality now. “Propaganda-free safety training courses” developed by a performative “school” whose inability to comprehend the First Amendment and/or Section 230 immunity has seen it lose lawsuit after lawsuit. The Senator doesn’t want the state’s journalism to be “free” of “propaganda.” He wants it to parrot the propaganda he likes and is willing to use the government’s power to ensure this happens.
If you don’t think that set of mandates is ridiculous enough, there’s more. These are the ravings of someone who read 1984 and came to the conclusion the government didn’t punish Winston Smith enough.
The list above is just for individual journalists, whether or not they work for larger news agencies. The list of requirements for journalist entities demands $50 million in liability insurance, mandatory PragerU “propaganda” training for all employees (whether they’re journalists or not), and this fever dream of a disclaimer to be attached to anything published by journalists:
“WARNING: THIS ENTITY IS KNOWN TO PROVIDE PROPAGANDA. CONSUMING PROPAGANDA MAY BE DETRIMENTAL TO YOUR HEALTH AND HEALTH OF THE REPUBLIC.”
Welcome to Trump’s America, as legislated by long-time bootlickers like Senator Nathan Dahm. And if you really enjoy deep, dark levels of irony, you should definitely check out Dahm being absolutely crucified on a cross constructed entirely of his own hypocrisy by Jon Stewart. In this interview, Dahm argues against gun registration:
JON STEWART: You want to say I’m a Second Amendment purist and I’m making it safer? You’re not. You’re making it more chaotic. And that’s not a matter of opinion. That’s the truth.
STATE SEN. NATHAN DAHM: That is a matter of opinion, Jon.
STEWART: But why take away their tools?
DAHM: Because certain of their tools that they’re using would be infringements upon the people’s right to keep and bear arms upon their constitutional rights upon due process, upon other things.
STEWART: So you’re saying that registering is an infringement?
And there it is. Dahm thinks people exercising their Second Amendment rights shouldn’t have to be subjected to government interference like registration. But with this bill, he feels people exercising their First Amendment rights should be subjected to registration requirements.
This bill won’t make it far. I mean, I would hope. Even his allies in the state senate are unlikely to support a law that not only pretends the First Amendment doesn’t exist, but allows PragerU to come along for the ride. Unfortunately, Dahm is representative (no pun intended) of legislators being elected all over the country. These people are a threat to democracy and the nation itself. And yet it appears a sizable percentage of voters are ok with a descent into fascism, just as long as it hurts other people first.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, free press, free speech, journalism, licensing journalists, nathan dahm, oklahoma, propaganda
Companies: prageru
Tenth Circuit Says Pretextual Inventory Searches Need To Be A Whole Lot Less Pretextual
from the mic-is-hot,-boys dept
One of the great warrant exceptions is the “inventory search.” Stop a car in a high-traffic or “high crime” area, and officers will feel compelled to tow it away. But before it’s towed, they’ll make a list of everything in the car to ensure the vehicle’s owner gets all of their possessions back when they retrieve it from the impound lot. If there happens to be contraband in the car, it’s a win for the cops. The “discovery” (even if derived from a mostly-pretextual search) will be called “inevitable” and can be used against the person to deprive them of their freedom along with their car.
This one simple trick usually works out for law enforcement. But every so often it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t work, it’s usually because officers were in such a hurry to carry out the warrantless search that they completely forgot about the pretext.
That’s the case here in the Tenth Circuit Appeals Court’s handling of a motion to suppress. The lower court denied the suppression motion, but the Appeals Court reverses [PDF] that decision, finding that the officers created an excuse to search the car, making their discoveries less than inevitable.
It all started with a call to the Tulsa (OK) Police Department about Evan Woodard. The caller said Woodward was in the middle of a drug case, may have smoked PCP, had three previous gun charges, and had violated a protective order. Tulsa PD officers headed out to find Woodard and serve him with an outstanding warrant for public intoxication and the protective order he was allegedly violating.
Here’s what happened next:
Police officers found Mr. Woodard in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at about 8:00 a.m. and initiated a traffic stop. Mr. Woodard pulled into a parking lot at a QuikTrip convenience store and stopped there. The police told Mr. Woodard to get out of the car, arrested him based on the warrant, and took his cellphone. Mr. Woodard then asked if he could call someone to pick up the car. One of the police officers responded “I don’t think so,” and the police decided to impound the car.
But it wasn’t that simple. The stop and search were captured on the officers’ body cameras, which caught them saying things that made it clear they were looking for an excuse to search the car, rather than performing a regular inventory in preparation for towing the vehicle from the convenience store parking lot.
One officer looked in the panel on the driver’s side door and on the floor under the driver’s seat, saying that Mr. Woodard was “fighting a huge drug case.” Defendant’s Mot. to Suppress, Exh. 4 (body camera). The other officer replied that Mr. Woodard liked PCP. As the officer replied, he opened the center console.
One officer commented that he was looking for verification of car insurance, expressing doubt that Mr. Woodard had insured the car. After seeing no verification in the center console, he eventually found proof of an old insurance policy in the glove compartment. By then, however, another officer had found marijuana, cocaine, a digital scale, and a gun.
Using this evidence — as well as some information from another traffic stop of Woodard in Bartlesville, Oklahoma that resulted in the discovery of drugs and a gun — officers obtained a warrant to search Woodard’s phone. Text messages recovered from the phone indicated Woodard was dealing drugs.
Prior precedent from this circuit restricts officers’ ability to impound vehicles, which, accordingly, also limits their ability to search vehicles without a warrant.
These heightened requirements allow impoundments from private property, like the impoundment of Mr. Woodard’s car, only when (1) the car is blocking traffic, (2) the car is posing an imminent threat to public safety, or (3) the impoundment is justified by a standardized policy and a reasonable, non-pretextual rationale of community caretaking.
The Tulsa PD’s impound policies comply with this precedent. As conceded by the state, officers can only impound a car if the vehicle is blocking the “public way” or, if the vehicle is stopped on private property, the traffic stop “follows an offense committed on the public way.” In this case, the stop didn’t follow a traffic violation. It was performed to serve a warrant and protective order.
Hence, the impounding and the attached search were unjustified. And the government’s arguments can’t change that.
The police stopped Mr. Woodard to serve a protective order and execute an arrest warrant for public intoxication. The protective order and warrant were pieces of paper, not offenses. The only offense was public intoxication, and the intoxication did not take place on a public way.
The government contends that Mr. Woodard was stopped for a continuing offense: failing to pay costs for his charge of public intoxication. But failing to pay court costs is not a continuing offense.
Plus, there were things said by officers that made it clear they were really interested in searching the car, rather than ensuring it wasn’t left on private property where it might have bothered the owner of the convenience store or been molested by an unspecified criminal element (based on the government’s contention the QuikTrip was in a “high crime area”).
While the government presented a long list of reasons it could have impounded the car (lack of proof of insurance, Woodard’s lack of a valid drivers license, concern over ownership, evidence of a crime, etc.), the officers stated none of these reasons before performing the search, nor after it. These reasons didn’t make an appearance until the search was challenged, indicating the impound was mere pretext for the warrantless search of the car.
Also indicative were statements like these:
Not only does every factor point toward pretext, but other powerful evidence of pretext exists. Before searching the car, the police officers discussed how to proceed and the senior officer declared his intent to “friggin’ light [Mr. Woodard] up with whatever we can.”
[…]
As the police started the search, one officer said that Mr. Woodard was fighting a big drug case and facing three gun charges. The other officer said that Mr. Woodard liked PCP, adding that he had been “digging around” the center console area, and the officer began his search there. Defendant’s Mot. to Suppress, Exh. 4 (body camera), Exh. 5 (body camera). These statements and actions showed the officers’ intent to look for drugs, not to safeguard the car and its contents
And the government couldn’t even come up with any plausible excuse for the first officer’s statement:
At oral argument, the government surmised that the officer might have meant only that he wanted to cite Mr. Woodard for whatever violations could be proven at the time of the decision to impound the car. This explanation is new and illogical. The explanation is new because the government never suggested in district court that this is what the officer had meant. The explanation is also illogical. The command to “light [Mr. Woodard] up with whatever we can” shows that the officer wanted to look for new evidence. The phrase cannot plausibly be interpreted to mean that the officer wanted only to bolster the public intoxication charge and serve the protective order.
The conclusion? The Tulsa PD is wrong and so is the lower court for approving these actions.
Because the Tulsa Police Department’s standardized policy did not apply and the stated rationale for impoundment was pretextual, the district court erred in denying the motion to suppress evidence of the drugs, digital scale, gun, and cellphone found in the Tulsa search.
With that evidence gone, so are the text messages taken from the search of the phone. Without those text messages implicating Woodard in drug distribution, the charges in the other stop in Bartlesville are reversed as well, leaving the officers with nothing but a couple of illegal searches.
Filed Under: 10th circuit, evan wodard, excuses, oklahoma, police, pretextual searches, tulsa