This past Saturday, the world came together to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day and remember the 11 million innocent lives lost, including six million Jewish victims, during this incredibly dark time in history. This evil genocide carried out by the Nazi regime serves as a stark reminder of the horrors unleashed when hatred and prejudice go unchecked. As antisemitism and attacks on Jewish communities increase today, reflecting on this atrocity becomes more crucial than ever.

In my previous article, written after the tragic shooting in Iowa, I described the crisis in public schools related to students with a high potential for violence. Such students represent a tiny fraction of children, but they have a disproportionate, disruptive impact on schools. We know how to identify these children, and they can almost always be helped with intensive interventions, but we currently have few options for them. So, we send them back to home and school.

The Oklahoma House of Representatives will gavel in for the Second Regular Session of the 59th Legislature onMonday, February 5. The House completed bill filing on January 18 with 1,210 House Bills, 12 House Joint Resolutions, and one House Concurrent Resolution.

For you NFL fans out there, if you watched the late game on Sunday, you saw the Kansas City Chiefs come away with a narrow win against the Buffalo Bills. While the game was great, there was one moment that really stood out and it was not on the field.

The 17th century French philosopher René Descartes famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” And what Descartes meant by that was he knew he existed because he was conscious of himself; what is called self-consciousness. Selfconsciousness is a uniquely human attribute that is shared by all non-impaired individuals. However, consciousness, and self-consciousness are two very different things, and the distinction is important. Humans, for some particular reason, are uniquely endowed with both consciousness and self-consciousness.

January is Mental Wellness Awareness Month, at time to recognize the importance of attending to our own personal mental health, especially seeing the significant numbers of the population who deal with mental health issues and disorders, both personally and with loved ones.

In 1883, the German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche wrote these words: “Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace,and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed.

Pure terror unfolded in Perry, Iowa recently, when a student did the unthinkable. Lives were lost, people were injured, and everyone is devastated. A school shooting is the nightmare that haunts every educator, law enforcement officer, and parent. Thankfully, disturbed or violent students are incredibly rare. Whether or not they ever pick up a gun, however, this tiny percentage of students are a daily crisis in America’s schools.

There has been a great deal of news coverage regarding Oklahoma’s refusal to accept federal fundstosupport children who qualify for free and reduced school lunches during the summer months. The fact is this failure will leave many Oklahomachildrenhungry.According to the Food Research & Action Center, the nation’s top private entitytrackinghungerissuesacross the states, because of this refusal, more than 403,000 eligible Oklahoma children will not receive an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card for their families to receive approximately $40persummermonth when the children are not in school.

Last week we began to look at the research findings of two neuro-physicians who conducted extensive research studying the relationship between human consciousness and “the persistent particularly human longing to connect with something larger than ourselves.” Darwinians have long argued that religion is simply a human invention that evolved to serve as a coping mechanism in a cruel world. Nietzsche even went so far as to claim that God “needs himself and makes himself necessary. He is a type of circulus vitiosus deus” (God is a vicious circle). Likewise, since religion is a mythical creation of the evolving human mind, there are striking similarities between all religions throughout history. Or so it would seem.