By Theodore King

This is my 40th column in The Oklahoma Constitution. It completes a full ten years of my writing for this paper. I thank Steve Byas and Ron McWhirter for allowing me to write during these ten years, and I thank you readers as well.

On January 19th, my late mother's birthday, Massachusetts sent Republican Scott Brown to serve in the U.S. Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for 46 years. She would be very pleased. With the election of Senator Brown, the entire health-care bill is now in doubt. Did any of you ever think you would say: Thank God for the voters in Massachusetts?

One of the big issues in the health-care bill has been abortion coverage. The left has been determined to insert funding for abortion into this bill, in other words, make you pay for it! After abortion funding was taken out of the House version of the bill after heavy lobbying by many groups including U.S. Catholic bishops, The Affordable Health Care for America Act (affordable, chuckle) was passed by the House on November 7th by a vote of 220 to 215. No member of the Oklahoma delagation voted for this socialistic bill.

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, said the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops should have their tax exempt status questioned because the bishops' conference weighed in against abortion funding in the health-care bill. The "gentle lady" from California told The Politico on November 9, 2009: "I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill. I just didn't expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Who elected them to Congress?" It's actually a conference, not council. She suggested that perhaps the Internal Revenue Service should reexamine the tax exempt status of the bishops for their efforts to "..dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure." Ms. Woolsey is the current co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Progressives (i.e. liberals) don't like opposition.

Over in the Senate on December 8th, Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer of California led a successful effort to kill the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment, which was a prohibition on federal funding of abortion in the health-care bill. This amendment was like the pro-life House amendment barring funds from being used for abortions in the health-care bill.

With health-care legislation somewhat now in doubt, something on the horizon could be just as bad. H.R. 4173, The Wall Street Consumer Protection Act of 2009, proposed by Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, passed the House on December 11th by a vote of 223 to 202. Not one member of the Oklahoma delegation voted for this bill, and that's a good thing. The bad thing is that it passed anyway. It is important also to note that there was no committee hearing about H.R. 4173, and only three hours of debate were allowed before the vote. Andrew Moylan, Director of Government Affairs for the National Taxpayers Union, in a December 10th letter stated that H.R. 4173 will create: "...[a] $150 billion slush fund to the newly created Financial Services Oversight Council, whose bureaucrats could bail out private institutions at their whims. The American people have been outraged by the failures of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and yet H.R. 4173 would establish a "mini-TARP" which could potentially have even less accountability and greater moral hazard. Investors will gain no certainty from such an arrangement."

Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann has warned that this bill allows the executive branch to bypass Congress the next time a bank or industry deemed "too big to fail" needs a bailout from the federal government. It also extends power to the federal government over banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions. It would create the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which would make decisions for the public about the kinds of mortgages and small business loans the public may access. Barney Frank, who created this bill, has never so much as run a laundromat. Congressman Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who sits on the Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, called this bill "an assault on the fundamental economic liberties of the American citizen." This bill is currently over in the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

A few words about former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee: he's done. In late November, Maurice Clemmons shot and killed four police officers in Washington state. A few days later, he was shot and killed by police. Maurice Clemons was one of more than one thousand Arkansas inmates granted clemency by then governor Mike Huckabee. On December 1st, Sean Hannity on his radio show briefly tried to shift blame from Governor Huckabee to the prosecutor in the Clemmons case. Do you believe Sean Hannity would gloss over Mike Huckabee's granting clemency for Maurice Clemmons, had Governor Huckabee been a liberal Democrat like Michael Dukakis? Of course not. For those of you who support the Fair Tax that Huckabee supported, my advice to you is forget Huckabee; you don't need him. As time passes, public support for that good idea will grow, and you should be able to find another candidate to champion your cause.

In November, I received some mail that was addressed to a man whose name and address do not remotely resemble my own. One piece of mail was a notice from the Oklahoma Tax Commission that his car tags were due for renewal (kind of important), and there was also a fundraising letter from the Oklahoma Democrat Party! I called this man on the phone and told him that the Post Office had sent me his mail, and I pointed out that he apparently is a Democrat. I then said that as a Democrat he probably wants the same government to provide health care that just delivered his mail to my house. He said that while he didn't want the government to control health care, he did want to insure the millions that are currently uninsured. I replied to him that he just wanted me, not the Post Pffice, to return his mail. We both had a good laugh, and I did return his mail via the Claremore Post Office that afternoon.

There is an effort underway to replace 1st District Congressman John Sullivan. One of those mentioned as a potential challenger is former University of Tulsa football player and coach Dave Rader, http://www.draftdaveforcongress.com. One of the reasons for the dissatisfaction with Congressman Sullivan is his vote for the bailout of the banks in October of 2008. He also has the self-inflicted wound of alcoholism which forced him to miss a crucial vote on Cap and Trade in the House last summer. John Sullivan takes this challenge seriously. In the last three days, I have received two e-mails from his campaign. One e-mail is about the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, and the other is about his pro-life stance on the 37th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.

If we are really going to bring about reform to America this November, we are not going to do it by electing the same cynical opportunists who tell us what we want to hear and then go along to get along once in Washington. I have signed the Draft Dave petition, and I encourage you to so as well. Nathan Dahm is an announced candidate for the district 1 seat. His web site is: www.nathandahm.com.

Some unexpectedly sad news came to the inbox of my e-mail. Dr. Brian Rader (I don't know if he is any relation to Dave Rader), professor of Political Science at Northeastern State University, died at his Tahlequah home on Friday, January 22nd. He was 69. I was one of Dr. Rader's students at NSU, and I learned a great deal from him. He was a good professor who may have leaned left, but I must admit I didn't mind because he was about educating students, not indoctrinating them. I regret that was not always the case with some of my other professors at NSU. I am grateful for the education I received at NSU, and Dr. Rader was an intergral part of that education.

"That's what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors . . . and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process."

January 31, 2008, then candidate Obama on health care