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(CNN)With tensions running high after the shooting of two officers in Ferguson, Missouri, state and county police took over protest security in the St. Louis suburb Thursday. St. Louis County Police and the Missouri State Highway Patrol are assuming “command of the security detail regarding protests,” St. Louis County Police said, while Ferguson Police will remain responsible for “routine policing…

The University of Oklahoma continued its quest for healing Wednesday while a national fraternity was trying to determine if racist chants such as the one that made national headlines in Norman ars pervasive at Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapters elsewhere in the nation. A day earlier, university President David Boren expelled two students accused of playing a “leadership role” in the…

Forty-seven Republican senators have signed an open letter to the Iranian government, and the White House is none too happy about it. I would like to make three points. President Obama said, “I think it’s somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran. It’s an unusual coalition.” In the final…

The best is yet to be. Do you believe that? This question is especially relevant if you’re in the midlife season. Are the best years over and somehow you missed it? It may feel like it if you’re living life through the rear view mirror. What if you were told that being 50, 60 or 70+ were the years of greatest influence—that no…

TUPELO – Not many people can say exactly where they were and what they were doing mid-afternoon on July 17, 2009. J.J. Jasper can. That’s the day the American Family Radio personality and his 5-year-old son, Cooper, were riding in their two-seater go-kart, doing a donut as they’d done countless times before. This time, the vehicle flipped and broke Cooper’s…

I don’t know which is more maddening, President Obama’s repeatedly claiming he finds out about important matters only after reading the newspapers, his expectation that we’ll swallow that, the even scarier prospect that it could be true, or that the media continue to give him a pass on it. Obama told CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante that…

Difference is the biblical normal. Community is not about conformity toward sameness. It is according to popular author, Scot McKnight, a “fellowship of differents.” Using the metaphor of a salad bowl, McKnight argues passionately that the Church ought to look like a “salad” of different tastes, different ingredients, and different mixes. In fact, the Church is “God’s world changing social…

Gary Chapman, Paul White and Harold Myra have written a modern fable called Sync or Swim (2014). It illustrates how to change a toxic work environment to a positive work environment, using the five love languages of relationship from Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages, and insights from their 2013 jointly authored book Rising Above A Toxic Workplace. They dedicate…

In each of our lives, we will experience a storm. Not maybe. Not probably. But definitely. And not just one storm, but many. Big and small. Some of us are in the depths of the waters right now with the raging waves tossing us on every side and we can’t help but wonder when it will all be calm again. Some…

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised? I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this…

Yesterday, I heard a CNN reporter talking about the movie 50 Shades of Grey like she was promoting a Disney Movie. I was stunned by what she was saying. She was giddy with approval (not sure how that was journalism) and telling me to take my husband or boyfriend to see the movie. Oh, but leave dad at home. So, in her opinion,…