Craig Dawkins .....Liberty Thoughts

Notable Deaths of 2016 – Numbered, not ranked. 1. David Bowie 2. Alan Rickman 3. Glenn Fry 4. Antonin Scalia 5. Aubrey McClendon 6. Billy Paul 7. Muhammad Ali 8. Thomas Schelling 9. Gerald Dawkins 10. Marva Collins 11. Prince 12. Alan Thicke 13. John Glenn 14. Fidel Castro 15. Gene Wilder 16. Gwen Ifill 17. Leon Russell 18. John McLaughlin 19. Abe Vigoda

Cool Things of 2016 – Numbered, not ranked.  1. Oklahoma Senator Kyle Loveless’attempt to reform Oklahoma’s asset forfeiture laws. 2. Oklahomans passed a state question to allow strong beer and wine to be sold in grocery stores. 3. Oregon and California allowed over the counter birth control for women without a prescription. 4. Lady Gaga sang the National Anthem at Super Bowl 50. Best since Whitney Houston. 5. On April 12th, Miroslav Volf, who wrote the book "“Allah: A Christian Response," spoke at Oklahoma Christian University about the Christians and Muslims worshipping the same God, understood differently. 6. A study from the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank based in Arlington, Va., was published demonstrating that immigrants started more than half of the current crop of U.S. based startups valued at $1 billion or more. 7. Palestinians completed a delicate restoration project at the Church of the Nativity, giving a much-neede...

Notable Stupidity of 2016 – Numbered, not ranked.  1. Big 12 Conference realignment committee and efforts. 2. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt sought to select own independent auditor in defiance of Oklahoma state law. 3. Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain questioned Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for president due to his birth in Canada. 4. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and Nebraska’s AG likened Colorado to a drug cartel while arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court. 5. Oral Roberts University required all incoming freshmen to wear Fitbit fitness tracking devices that reported to their D2L gradebook, automatically logging aerobics points. 6. Nevada native Ammon Bundy and a group of militia members seized and illegally occupied facilities at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. 7. Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples, attended the State of the Union speech in January. 8. The Oklahoma Libertarian Part...

Noteworthy Events of 2016 – Numbered, not ranked. (But the first three are mighty important.) 1. One granddaughter learned to walk and say “Papa.” Another granddaughter began preschool. 2. My son got his master’s degree with honors in Applied Mathematics. 3. My daughter-in-law got her Juris Doctorate from OU School of Law with honors. 4. Netflix ‘Making a Murderer’ series resulted in the release of Brendan Dassey who was released by a Wisconsin judge in light of information the program exposed. 5. The pollsters got election forecasts completely wrong. 6. WikiLeaks exposed the Democratic Party and their plotting and rigging of their presidential primary. 7. Republican Party Vice Chairman Estela Hernandez resigned to join the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. 8. Former police officer, Daniel Ken Holtzclaw, was sentenced to serve 263 years for sexually assaulting black females between December 2013 and June 2014 while a police officer. 9. Flint, Michigan le...

Accept Responsibility for the Loss and Take Legitimate Steps to Reform Your Party  Stop Blaming the Russians for the Loss.... Even IF you believe the Russian hack was an organized attempt to tilt the election in favor of Trump, it could only be effective by showing the unvarnished dialogue about their primary process and incestuous relationship between the DNC and old line media outlets. For the first time in our nation's history, Americans received real time transparency, during a presidential election, of what was going on inside the DNC infrastructure with regard to how they tilted the outcome away from Bernie Sanders and towards Hillary Clinton. In a system of only two major parties, it's more than relevant to see how insurgent candidates, who are outside the party establishment, are treated by party leadership and operatives. What we found out was what was suspected. The GOP demonstrated the exact same antipathy for their insurgent candidate, only it was very public...