Tulsa Race Riot

On a tight 5-4 vote, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled last week that a measure to increase the tax burden on car purchases was constitutional.

If the ruling stands — and we'll just assume that Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter is going to appeal this one — it could lead to a huge number of criminal appeals and the need to reconsider an enormous number of convictions in federal court.

Oklahomans know how fast a tornado can spin up, and it could just be bad luck that it happened so rapidly in a part of town with a lot of people and commerce, but we'd like to see the explanation offered by emergency management officials validated. An authoritative third party should review Sunday's events and see that everything happened as it should and when it should.

Oklahoma's outrageous habit of throwing away salvageable lives is just plain bad. If the more morality of the issue doesn't convince you, consider these arguments: It runs up the state's corrections budget, robs money from education, overcrowds our prisons, makes it harder to hold onto dangerous criminals, shrinks the work forces, continues the cycle of poverty across generations, and establishes the precedent that Oklahoma treats medical problems with incarceration.

U.S. Sen. James Lankford and nine other Senate Republicans have called on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to cancel their August break so that work can continue on critical national priorities.

We agree.

It is wrong and unsustainable for the state to push constantly the burden of higher education to the backs of students and parents. Students will either walk away from those higher prices or accept them and end up graduating with more debt, a drag on our future economy.

State funding to public schools — which wasn't adequate to begin with — came up $54 million short last year.

And, in the crazy world of Oklahoma education circles, that's almost good news.