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In the wake of an execution that left a prisoner dying of a painful heart attack, Oklahoma is delaying lethal injection for another man so that the matter can be fully investigated. Oklahoma's attorney general today said that he'd put off the execution of convicted murderer and rapist Charles Warner so that the state can finish looking into what led to the botched execution of prisoner Clayton Lockett, The New York Times reports. The mix of drugs Lockett was given last week left him awake during the second and third rounds of chemicals designed to stop breathing and then the...

A Satanist statue cast in bronze is just months away from completion, and activists hope that it will find a home on the lawn of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Ultimately, the statue — which features the seven-foot tall, horned figure of Baphomet fawned upon by two exultant children — is intended to stand directly next to a highly controversial monument of the ten commandments that was donated by a state legislator in 2012 and subsequently placed on the grounds of the Capitol. The Baphomet figure, complete with a goat head, angel wings, and a beard, comes from a recently-formed New...

The rate of earthquakes in Oklahoma has increased remarkably since October 2013 – by about 50 percent – significantly increasing the chance for a damaging magnitude 5.5 or greater quake in central Oklahoma. View map of Oklahoma seismicity. View animation of Oklahoma Seismicity. A new U.S. Geological Survey and Oklahoma Geological Survey analysis found that 145 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater occurred in Oklahoma from January 2014 (through May 2; see accompanying graphic). The previous annual record, set in 2013, was 109 earthquakes, while the long-term average earthquake rate, from 1978 to 2008, was just two magnitude 3.0...

The Oklahoma House of Representatives voted last night, 87-3, to override Gov. Mary Fallin’s veto of a measure supported by Second Amendment advocates. The state Senate has not yet scheduled an override attempt. Leading the charge for the override was the Oklahoma Second Amendment Association and founder-president Tim Gillespie. In lockstep with the group, at least on this issue, was the legislative Democrat most likely to oppose Fallin in the November general election. In an interview with Oklahoma Watchdog, Gillespie said the legislation was certainly not, as the governor said in her veto messages, of “no significant interest” to Oklahomans....

Mile for mile, there are almost as many earthquakes rattling Oklahoma as California this year. This major increase in seismic shaking led to a rare earthquake warning today (May 5) from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Geological Survey. In a joint statement, the agencies said the risk of a damaging earthquake — one larger than magnitude 5.0 — has significantly increased in central Oklahoma.

The URL shows the swarm of small earthquakes in Oklahoma. I have not heard any explanation for these. The URL lists all 2.5+ earthquakes in the past 30 days. There is one just across the border in Kansas... According to USGS, there are 123 Earthquakes in the past 30 days in the Oklahoma area. These are all very small earthquakes or better termed tremors.

It used to be that if you went to a college-level debate tournament, the students you’d see would be bookish future lawyers from elite universities, most of them white. In matching navy blazers, they’d recite academic arguments for and against various government policies. It was tame, predictable, and, frankly, boring. No more. These days, an increasingly diverse group of participants has transformed debate competitions, mounting challenges to traditional form and content by incorporating personal experience, performance, and radical politics. These “alternative-style” debaters have achieved success, too, taking top honors at national collegiate tournaments over the past few years. But this...

...Towson University won the 2014 Cross Examination Debate Association's national championship. Towson defeated the University of Oklahoma. What was Towson's strategy? Inexplicably using the N-word over and over again in an incomprehensible tirade. Here is an actual excerpt (with profanity redacted). See if you are able to tell what Towson is arguing in favor or against: They say the n*****s always already qu***, that's exactly the point! It means the impact is that the that the is the impact term, uh, to the afraid, uh, the, that it is a case term to the affirmative because, we, uh, we're saying...

UTHRIE, Okla. (AP) — Firefighters worked through the night and into early Monday to battle a large wildfire that destroyed at least six homes and left one person dead after a controlled burn spread out of control in central Oklahoma.

Remember all the commotion earlier this year about the proposed Satanic monument to be installed in front of the Oklahoma Capitol? Well, Vice has the first look at it in all its glory.

It’s all in the timing. Now we know where they draw the line. Helen Pow, Daily Mail: The White House says a botched execution of a death row inmate in Oklahoma fell short of the humane standards required when the death penalty is carried out.Officials halted Clayton Lockett’s execution Tuesday when he convulsed violently and tried to lift his head after a doctor declared him unconscious. He later died of an apparent heart attack after spending 40 minutes writhing in pain.[White House Press Secretary Jay] Carney says the U.S. has a fundamental standard that the death penalty must be carried...

House Dem: Climate change bigger health threat than AIDS, malaria By Andrew Restuccia - 04/06/11 12:25 PM ET Just hours before a vote Wednesday on a GOP plan to block Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations, Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) called climate change a bigger public health threat than AIDS, malaria and pandemic flu. Capps and several other liberal Democrats spoke out Wednesday morning in opposition to the legislation, authored by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.). The lawmakers, who were joined by officials from the American Lung Association and the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the Upton...

Hey, kids! Come sit on Baphomet's lap! The Satanic Temple, based out of New York City, allowed Vice a sneak-peek at their crowdfunded statue that they plan to place right alongside a monument of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of Oklahoma's capitol building in Oklahoma City. The seven-foot-tall statue includes an effigy of a 14th Century pagan figure known as Baphomet surrounded by two children gazing up at him. A throne, complete with a pentagram, is also being constructed for the figure to rest upon. After the design is complete, the statue will be cast in bronze and delivered...

Nonetheless, the satanists are building this thing, and I was offered an early peek at the work in progress by Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves. Greaves told me he has received numerous threats from people who want to attack the sculpture, but that he “wouldn’t expect these outraged and nearly insensible reactionaries to actually know how to assault a bronze monument without severely hurting themselves in the process.” Still, he’s not taking any chances. The Temple is building a mold of the sculpture so they can pop these things out like evil, terribly expensive action figures whenever they need a new...

Physician-entrepreneurs Drs. Keith Smith and Steven Lantier of the private Surgery Center of Oklahoma are proving that the free market can deliver top-quality healthcare at a fraction of the cost of ObamaCare and our current government-corporate cartel model. Surgery Center of Oklahoma Leads the Way in Healthcare The New American 02 May 2014 The Surgery Center of Oklahoma may be the beacon of hope that millions of Americans have been searching for in the overwhelming darkness and seemingly unsolvable problems of our present healthcare crisis. For 17 years, the surgeons at this private, state-of-the-art facility have been performing surgeries for...

He’s dead, isn’t he? Clayton Lockett. The guy in Oklahoma. If he’s dead, how do they figure that his execution was botched? And that was the official word: “botched.” Every news story used it, the White House used it, the activists used it, the Democrat politicians used it. They said his execution was botched. And yet he is, in fact, deader than a door nail. And that’s just the way it should be. Because, if we can wipe away our crocodile tears for Clayton Lockett, we ought to remember Stephanie Nieman for just a moment. She was the teen-aged girl...

Updated 6:37 p.m. | Sen. Ted Cruz gathered a group of House conservatives in his office Tuesday night, talking about immigration and House GOP leadership elections slated for after the midterm elections. As CQ Roll Call first reported last October, Cruz held a secret meeting with members at Tortilla Coast during the height of the government shutdown drama. Many of these same Republicans are the agitators who aren’t happy with Speaker John A. Boehner. The Texas Republican gathered roughly 10 members of the GOP Conference at 8 p.m. Tuesday for a 90-minute session that included candy bars, crackers and soda....

Frustrated with President Barack Obama’s reaction to Russian action in Ukraine, a group of Republican senators said Wednesday they will introduce legislation outlining a more muscular response. “What we’ve seen from the administration is a lot of rhetoric,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. The White House has been dealing “with the situation after something bad has already occurred,” he said. Earlier this week, violence flared up in another area of Ukraine that hugs the Russian border, as the new government in Kiev criticized local police...

Ted Cruz feels the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) should be reducing claims on public lands. The Republican Texas Senator is among those lawmakers weighing in on the Red River Texas and Oklahoma boundary dispute with the federal agency. As previously reported by The Inquisitr, the BLM Red River boundary dispute may cause approximately 90,000 acres of privately held land to fall into the hands of the federal government. Texas rancher Tommy Henderson has become the focal point of the BLM dispute. Supporters from around the country are rallying around Henderson, much in the same manner as protesters did for...

Oklahoma is preparing to use a new lethal injection formula on two death row inmates who are scheduled to die in the state's first double execution since 1937. Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner both are scheduled to be executed Tuesday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.