All Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible and the Ten Commandments in their curriculums, effective immediately, the state’s chief education officer announced in a memorandum Thursday.

At a State Board of Education meeting, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters said the Bible is “one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth of our country.”

“It’s crystal clear to us that in the Oklahoma academic standards under Title 70 on multiple occasions, the Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Walters said.

Every classroom in the state must have a Bible and all teachers must teach from the Bible in the classroom, Walters said.

The Oklahoma memorandum follows a law in Louisiana passed June 19, that requires all public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. A group of Louisiana parents and civil rights organizations are suing the state over the new law, contending the legislation violates both US Supreme Court precedent and the First Amendment.

Oklahoma’s directive “is in alignment with the educational standards approved on or about May 2019, with which all districts must comply,” according to a news release.

“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in the release. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.”

The new memo comes after the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked an effort to establish the first publicly funded religious charter school in the country. The court on Tuesday ordered the state to rescind its contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in a 6-2 decision with one recusal.

“Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school,” wrote Justice James R. Winchester for the court. “As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian. However, St. Isidore will evangelize the Catholic faith as part of its school curriculum while sponsored by the State.”

Walters called the ruling “one of the worst” decisions the state Supreme Court has made and pledged to “fight back.”

“What the court did was rule against the parents of Oklahoma who have demanded more choices for their kids. We have a great opportunity to make sure that parents have the most options of any parents in the country here in Oklahoma, by giving them the ability to go to a public school, charter schools, private schools, this would have been the most unique charter school in the country,” Walters said.

“So I want you all to know, we will continue to fight back against this, we want to continue to provide an opportunity for parents to send their kids to high-quality schools.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/us/oklahoma-schools-bible-curriculum/index.html

Heading up for the game tomorrow. Anyone have recommendations for good free or cheap parking that is within a reasonable walk from the Kohl Center? Thanks, and go Hawks!

President Joe Biden plans to create two new national monuments in California in the coming days, according to two people briefed on the announcement, aiming to cement his environmental legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint

The two individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity because the announcement is not yet public.

Biden will sign a proclamation establishing the roughly 644,000-acre Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park, the people said. The move would bar drilling, mining, solar-energy farms and other industrial activity in the area. It also would honor the wishes of several Native American tribes that have revered the landscape for thousands of years, and would expand local Latino communities’ access to outdoor recreation areas.


The president also will sign a proclamation creating the roughly 200,000-acre Sáttítla National Monument in Northern California near the Oregon border, the people said. The Pit River Tribe has spearheaded the campaign to protect that area from energy development.
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The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden has already used his executive authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create six new national monuments and expand four others. After signing the proclamations, he will have protected more public lands than any other president in a single term, with the exception of Jimmy Carter.
Trump, in contrast, significantly shrank two national monuments in Utah during his first term. He slashed more than 1.9 million acres in total from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments — known for their stunning desert vistas and wealth of Native American artifacts.


Three Democratic lawmakers from California — Rep. Raul Ruiz and Sens. Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler — have introduced legislation to create the Chuckwalla National Monument. Padilla has also championed a bill to protect Sáttítla.
But neither measure has advanced in the divided Congress. The Antiquities Act authorizes the president to protect lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans without congressional approval.

‘A hugely significant milestone’​

The Chuckwalla National Monument will be named after the chuckwalla lizards that roam the junction of the Mojave, Sonoran and Colorado deserts. The region is also home to bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and iconic bird species such as golden eagles and greater roadrunners.

Chuckwalla would be immediately southeast of Joshua Tree National Park, which ranked as the ninth most-visited national park in 2023, attracting more than 3.2 million people that year, according to the National Park Service.


The area is part of the ancestral homelands of several Indigenous peoples, including the Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Mohave, Quechan and Serrano tribes. The Quechan people say their ancestors emerged from a sacred mountain in Nevada — Avi Kwa Ame, which Biden designated as a monument in 2022 — and then migrated through this stretch of desert, dropping pottery shards as trail markers and leaving petroglyphs as guidance for future generations.
“If someone went and bulldozed the Vatican, that would be the equivalent of desecrating this desert for us,” said Donald Medart, a council member of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe.

For the Cahuilla people, the reddish hue of the rocks and mountains comes from the blood of Mukat, the Cahuilla creator god who was exiled to this area. They say that when Mukat died, his remains became vegetation to sustain his people, including mesquite trees whose beans can be cooked or ground into flour.
A monument designation “would be a hugely significant milestone,” said Thomas Tortez Jr., tribal council chairman of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians. “It’s the best way that we can protect our original homelands.”

I wish both teams could lose. I despise them both, but I despise Georgia and the SEC a little bit more, so it's good that ND is taking a 13-3 lead into the half. And LOL at Georgia for the turnover that led to an ND TD with seconds left before the half. Sometimes you should be aggressive. Sometimes you shouldn't. That didn't seem a like a good time for Georgia to be aggressive.

T’s and p’s

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After the football team loss, it would be nice to have a competitive MBB game tonight. Our non-conference schedule, again this year, is a killer for raising enthusiasm thru November and December. It may be great for winning percentage but is meaningless in terms of interest and building excitement!! Another who cares game tonight! Beth, are you listening!

Eff this Shit. Eff it to HELL.

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As Speaker Mike Johnson labors to lock down enough support to be re-elected to his post, every vote is critical. That has prompted speculation that former Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who engineered the ouster of Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, could play a role in the outcome this time as well.
Mr. Gaetz resigned his seat in December after President-elect Donald J. Trump named him as his choice for attorney general. At the time, Mr. Gaetz said he did not plan to be sworn in to the new Congress despite having been re-elected to another two-year term days earlier.
But then, Mr. Trump dropped him from consideration amid resistance from Republican senators. There is no legal barrier to Mr. Gaetz showing up unannounced to participate in the speakership election. He flirted with the idea on social media last month.
And on Friday, Mr. Gaetz appeared to hint at some inside knowledge about the outcome, declaring on X that Mr. Johnson would be elected “on the first vote.”
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“People might like or dislike that,” Mr. Gaetz wrote. “I’m just reporting the news.”
A representative for One America News Network, where Mr. Gaetz has signed on as an anchor, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment about his plans.

It is not clear what role Mr. Gaetz would play if he materialized on the House floor on Friday, or whether he could in fact participate in the speaker election. A provocateur by nature, the Florida Republican has been more interested in sowing drama within his party than fostering unity. On Thursday, Mr. Gaetz hosted Johnson detractors on the first episode of his new program, “The Matt Gaetz Show,” to speculate on the race for speaker.
Because Mr. Johnson can likely afford to lose only one Republican vote — and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky has already said he is a hard “no” — Mr. Gaetz could be a lifeline for the speaker if he chose to be.
But if he attempted to step in, Democrats would be all but certain to object. In his letter of resignation last month, Mr. Gaetz wrote that in addition to giving up his House seat, “I do not intend to take the oath of office for the same office in the 119th Congress.”
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Notably, House members are not sworn in until after they elect a speaker, so in theory Mr. Gaetz could both participate in the speaker election and also stay true to his word that he won’t take the oath for the new Congress.

The football team had a big win… but “google-up” their band’s pre-game! Featuring

their “Floating Ohio” and “Double Script Ohio”… perfect timing and not one mis-spell!
There is a reason they are called “The Best Damn Band in the Land”….

(As much as I dislike tOSU football and most of their fans, I do respect their marching band.)

Iowa gained 23,074 people from 2023 to 2024, boosted primarily by growth in international migration to the state, according to new U.S. Census data.



Similar to neighboring Midwest states including Illinois and Nebraska, people from other countries moved to Iowa at higher rates than those who came from other places in the United States.


From July 1, 2023, to July 1, 2024, a net of 19,439 people migrated to Iowa from outside the United States — accounting for most of its growth in that period — while a net of 231 people departed Iowa to other states.


Iowa ranks as the country’s 32nd most populous state with a little over 3.2 million people as of July 1, 2024. It previously was ranked as the 31st in population, but gains in other states surpassed Iowa’s growth — with Nevada moving to 31st.


From July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023, Iowa gained 15,594 people, compared with 4,207 the year prior and 7,472 the year before that.


International migration to the United States was the highest in decades between 2023 and 2024, with a net of 2.8 million people moving from other countries, according to U.S. Census data.


Iowa has experienced this trend over the past few years, with 16,114 people moving to Iowa from other countries in the year ending July 1, 2023, and 10,340 people arriving in the year ending July 1, 2022.


Erica Johnson, the founding executive director of the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, said employment opportunities, safety and family members who live in Iowa are the top reasons people are moving to the state from other countries.


“They're pulled to Iowa because we have an economy that needs them, that is hiring essentially for a workforce that depends on them. And because they have family here and because they have heard that Iowa is a comparatively safe and accessible place,” Johnson said.




According to 2021 data from the American Immigration Council, 6.3 percent of Iowa’s population is foreign-born, making up 7.1 percent of the state’s workforce.


Johnson noted the increase in international migrants coming to Iowa helps fill gaps created by people leaving the state.


“It's breathing new life into downtowns in lots of rural communities and supporting schools in some rural places that have been losing populations,” Johnson said.







The departure of young people and recent college graduates to other states — or brain drain, as it’s called — is not a new trend in Iowa. For the last few years, Iowa has seen one of the highest rates of brain drain in the country.


While people still left the state in the past year, Iowa saw a significantly lower departure rate compared with 2023, when a net 3,674 people moved away.


Iowa’s net population gain was calculated by looking at migration both internationally and domestically, as well as birth and death rates. Natural change from births and deaths accounted for a net growth of 3,829 people.

President Joe Biden is bestowing the second highest civilian medal on Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, leaders of the congressional investigation into the Capitol riot who Donald Trump has said should be jailed for their roles in the inquiry.

Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony Thursday at the White House, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president’s longtime friends, former Sens. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

“President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others,” the White House said in a statement. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”

Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol from a mob of angry Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried and failed to overturn the results.

Cheney, a former Wyoming congresswoman, and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that investigated the insurrection. The committee’s final report asserted that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the election he lost to Biden and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. Thompson wrote that Trump “lit that fire.”

Cheney, who lost her seat in the GOP primary in August, later said she would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and campaigned with the Democratic nominee, raising Trump’s ire. Biden has been considering whether to offer preemptive pardons to Cheney and others Trump has targeted.

Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office Jan. 20, still refuses to back away from his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he would pardon the rioters once he is back in the White House.

During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the president-elect said that “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” claiming without evidence they “deleted and destroyed” testimony they collected.

“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he said.

Cheney and Thompson were “an embarrassment to this country” for their conduct on the committee, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung asserted.

Biden is also giving the award to attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.

Other honorees include Frank Butler, who set new standards for using tourniquets on war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women’s rights protests in the 1970s and fought for equal pay.

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He’s also giving the award to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.

Other former lawmakers being honored include former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who championed gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot to death.

Biden will honor four people posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young”; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was held with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.

The Presidential Citizens Medal was created by President Richard Nixon in 1969 and is the country’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It recognizes people who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”

President Joe Biden said Friday that he has decided to block a $15 billion takeover of U.S. Steel by the Japanese company Nippon Steel, capping off a yearlong business saga that drifted into election-year politics.

The decision comes after a national security review by a Treasury Department committee failed to reach a consensus on the deal and referred the final decision to the president in December. NBC News had reported in September that Biden was preparing to block the takeover.

The president, who leaves office in little more than two weeks, faced a challenging political calculus over the fate of the iconic Pittsburgh-based firm: Allowing a foreign entity with far greater resources to take it over could put the business on stabler financial footing. But keeping U.S. Steel in American hands risked the company’s survival under intense foreign competition.

Nearly 200 absentee ballots somehow went uncounted in Wisconsin’s liberal capital after the Nov. 5 election, prompting state election officials to launch an investigation Thursday into whether the city clerk broke the law.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously to investigate whether Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl failed to comply with state law or abused her discretion. Commission members said they were concerned the clerk’s office didn’t inform them of the problem until late December, almost a month and a half after the election. Commission Chair Ann Jacobs certified Wisconsin’s election results on Nov. 29.

Witzel-Behl’s office said in a statement that the number of uncounted votes didn’t affect the outcome of any race or referendum on the ballots. But Jacobs said the oversight was “so egregious” that the commission must determine what happened and how it can be prevented as spring elections approach.

“We are the final canvassers,” Jacobs said. “We are the final arbiters of votes in the state of Wisconsin and we need to know why those ballots weren’t included anywhere.”

Witzel-Behl said in an email to The Associated Press that her office looks forward to working with the commission to determine what happened and how to prevent the same issues in future elections.

It’s another misstep for Witzel-Behl, who announced in September that her office mistakenly sent out up to 2,000 duplicate absentee ballots. She blamed it on a data processing error.

According to election commission documents, the commission learned of the uncounted ballots on Dec. 18, when Witzel-Behl’s staff told the commission that they recorded more absentee ballots as received than ballots counted in three city wards.

The commission asked Witzel-Behl to provide a detailed statement, which she did two days later. The memo stated that on Nov. 12, the clerk’s office discovered 67 unprocessed ballots for Ward 65 and one unprocessed ballot for Ward 68 in a courier bag found in a vote tabulating machine.

The memo also stated that her office was reconciling ballots for Ward 56 on Dec. 3 when 125 unprocessed ballots were discovered in a sealed courier bag. Reconciliation is a post-election process in which officials account for every ballot created. That work begins immediately after an election. Clerks have 45 days to complete it.

The memo does not offer any explanation, saying only that the clerk’s office planned “to debrief these incidents and implement better processes.”

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The clerk’s office issued a statement on Dec. 26 saying it had informed the elections commission and would send an apology letter to each affected voter.

Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway released her own statement the same day saying the clerk’s office didn’t tell her staff about the problem until Dec. 20. She said her office plans to review the city’s election procedures. The mayor issued a new statement Thursday saying she appreciates the election commission’s investigation and the city will cooperate with the probe.

Wisconsin is a perennial battleground state in presidential elections. Republican Donald Trump won the state this past November on his way to reclaiming the White House, beating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by about 29,000 votes.

Madison and surrounding Dane County are well-known liberal strongholds. Harris won 75% of the vote in the county in November.

Inmate: KIERSTYN LEANN MEINCKE

Inmate Profile:​

First:KIERSTYN
Middle:LEANN
Last:MEINCKE
Birth:11/25/2002
Current Age:20
Height:5' 03"
Weight:105

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12/31 -- 6:30pm -- (6) Penn State (12-2) vs (3) Boise State (12-1) -- PSU -11.5

1/1 -- 11:00am -- (5) Texas (12-2) vs (4) Arizona State (11-2) -- TEX - 13.0

1/1 -- 4:00pm -- (8) Ohio State (11-2) vs (1) Oregon (13-0) -- OSU -2.5

1/1 -- 7:45pm -- (7) Notre Dame (12-1) vs (2) Georgia (11-2) -- UGA -1.0

The first in my two part deep dive into Iowa MBB's rebounding problems. This one focuses on offensive rebounding. There will be one on defensive rebounding in the coming days. If you have any questions about the article or want to discuss the rebounding problems further, this thread is a good place for it.

Parades? Fireworks? Speeches?

Would this be the 1st Anniversary or the 4th Anniversary? I tend to think it should be the 1st Anniversary.
What say you?

My hometown bowl game.

In what world does any white girl have a privilege over black athletes? Fast twitch fibers? No. Jumping ability? No. Speed? No, reflexes? No. It is mind boggling hearing Wilson say CC have privilege in basketball

A dozen?

He was a OL freshman who started for North Dakota who transferred in last year. Has he impressed at all? Really haven’t heard anything about him since he committed, outside of the DUI. 😬

high bar.