The Gadfly On The Wall

FBI, McMahan: Word that two FBI agents spent 90 minutes with Auditor and Inspector Jeff McMahan, has, logically, sent political tongues wagging. Recall that McMahan got some straw donor campaign money from those implicated in the southeastern Oklahoma scandal involving Gene Stipe, Mike Mass, Steve Phipps and others. The donations, however, would be state (not federal) matters, so the question is: What was the FBI doing with McMahan? And, is he a "target" in the investigation, or simply a possible witness to something the FBI wants to know about? No word from McMahan or his spokeswoman, Terri Watkins. Watkins declined to make McMahan available to reporter Tony Thornton of The Oklahoman, who broke the FBI interview story on Friday morning, so from McMahan we have nothing. This story has been developing for more than a year. McMahan and Phipps, despite what McMahan said earlier, had a relationship that involved out-of-state trips and in-state events. Phipps was a partner with Stipe in a string of state abstract companies, regulated by McMahan, and abstractors (as we reported last fall) poured tens of thousands of dollars into McMahan's campaign. Developing....

The Blogosphere: While it is true that few standards apply to what's posted on blogs, one can only hope that a basic rule of fairness applies. Unfortunately, some bloggers don't agree and we find some outrageous (offered without a single fact) allegations bandied about, with reckless disregard for reputations, and many of the allegations come from posters who hide behind screen names. Other blogs so obviously pursue vendettas against individuals that their entire credibility is open to question.

New Blogs: We continue to see new blogs (www.Jiminhofe.com/blog, www.RedOklahoma.org) most of them by conservatives. We try to keep up with the worthy ones and list them in our links on the right side of this page. Our basic rule of thumb is that we list them and continue to list them unless they fail to post regularly. We've removed some recently because their posts were non-existent or sporadic. There are a couple we now have listed that are so reckless in the posts they allow that we're inclined to unlink them.

ORA Convention: I'll be hanging with a bunch of gun nuts Saturday. The annual Oklahoma Rifle Association Convention is going on at the Biltmore, ending with the evening awards banquet. It's always a pleasure to be in a room with 250-300 fellow gun rights advocates, 90 percent of whom are armed (and some of whom are police officers or retired police officers). Never feel safer than when I'm with ORA or NRA members. Ann and I are hosting a table, at which will be daughter Shelli (has more guns than I do), husband Howard (NRA all-around firearms instructor), grandson Kevin (a top-flight Olympic-quality air pistol competitor) and his date; blogger/former radio talk show host Mark Shannon and his wife, Kris; and hunter/columnist/blogger/radio talk show host Ron Black and his wife, Suzanne (NRA rifle instructor).

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