Can the state board, Walters really do this?

Also, about St. Isidore, when does the church finally answer some questions?

State superintendent Ryan Walters, two flags and several bottled water containers, empty and otherwise. (NBC News Photo)

Here are a few questions.

Can Gentner Drummond step in right now?

Can he see what’s going on and come up with a law, because there’s got to be one to keep Ryan Walters from doing what the laughingstock known as our state department of education just approved him to do.

For that matter, get Kevin Stitt on the line. At some point the governor’s got to get in the way of the state superintendent and can’t this be the time?

Can’t there be some public pressure to make it the time?

Of course, that to which I refer could be anything given Walters’ corruption, his trans-panic fantasies and the Christo-fascist agenda he dreams of carrying him into … actually, I can’t imagine, just that it involves a throne, yes-men minions and yes-women idolators, recruited out of Moms for Liberty.

But today, it’s this.

Though the Oklahoma Supreme Court has already ruled he and the state department of education holds no standing allowing his intervention into the legal fight over what might become the nation’s first religious public school, AKA St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School; like a child who wants what he wants when he wants them, Walters is nonetheless charging up that hill again.

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According to Murray Evans’ reporting for The Oklahoman … actually, rather than quoting Evans’ story, why don’t I just lay down a chunk of it here:

The Oklahoma Board of Education approved state schools Superintendent Walters' request Wednesday to retain out-of-state lawyers for an attempt to reverse an Oklahoma Supreme Court denial of his initial request to intervene in the lawsuit filed by state Attorney General Gentner Drummond to stop formation of the school. 

Attorneys from Plano, Texas-based First Liberty Institute, which bills itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans,” and Overland Park, Kan.-based Spencer Fane LLP will represent Walters and the state Board of Education’s interests in the case.

According to the state Board of Education’s contract with First Liberty Institute, its attorneys will be working pro bono on the case. So will Spencer Fane’s attorneys, an Oklahoma State Department of Education spokesman said.

A little history, Walters’ first interventionist foray into the case came via a Nov. 9 filing he claimed would allow the education department “to defend its interest in distributing state aid without religious discrimination,” which is every bit as absurd as claiming one plus one equals three.

Because, to believe that, one must interpret public schools themselves, by not showing favor to any religion nor denomination, as discriminatory by their very nature because they don’t, which is beyond ridiculous because the only way to remedy it would be to create religious public schooling for every religion and denomination, which is impossible.

Right?

Yet, I digress, because this is not supposed to be about that, but about about this:

Once spurned, the guy can go back to his rubber-stamp committee and receive approval to bring in a bunch of out-of-staters to take on the state supreme court again?

Isn’t that a run around the sovereignty of the very state he’s supposed to serve?

Those out-of-state attorneys are working pro bono, but are they covering their expenses, too? If they’re moving in and out of the state, or if Walters is coming to them, who’s covering the costs?

But those are small things.

Far bigger?

The attorneys are from something called “First Liberty Institute,” billing itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religions liberty for all Americans.”

Thus, by its own claims, First Liberty is a political operation with an interest in Walters’ political agenda.

Let it help Walters set up a political action committee. Let it handle the legal work for Walters’ next political campaign. Let it write policy papers appearing on Walters’ campaign website.

Let it do political work in a political realm.

Do not allow it to be hired by the state education department in hopes of allowing the state superintendent to insert himself into an issue the highest court in the state has already ruled he doesn’t belong.

Walters is supposed to be in the education business, not run a fiefdom.

Given the state supreme court’s already ruled, and given it’s attorney general Drummond who’s supposed to represent the state’s legal interests and he’s already taken the position St. Isidore is wholly unconstitutional on its face, can’t something be done?

Can’t Kevin Stitt, at least once, act in his own party’s political interests, telling Walters, or the voters, this is one the state superintendent should sit out, because his extremist extra-constitutional lurches are political killers for his party?

Finally, Walters’ most-important-man-in-the-world machinations aside, can one other thing happen, too?

Can a gang of reporters wait outside the doors of both the Oklahoma City Archdiocese and Tulsa Diocese, wait for archbishop Paul S. Coakley or Bishop David A. Konderla to walk to their cars, interrupt that walk and ask them why the church itself is choosing an unconstitutional path.

Has it really thought it through?

Is it really against the First Amendment?

It remains unthinkable these guys have yet to be put on the record.

What makes them so special?

Even Walters must face the media music.

They should, too.

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