For the Elmbrook School District, near Milwaukee, Wis., graduation ceremonies were a challenge because the high school gym was hot, cramped and uncomfortable. The Elmbrook Church allowed officials to hold the ceremony in the church’s large, modern and air-conditioned sanctuary.

That arrangement worked for a decade, but then nine students and parents sued, claiming the school had violated a constitutional ban on “an establishment of religion” because the sanctuary displayed a large Latin cross. The 7th Circuit Court sided with the plaintiffs; the defendants now want Supreme Court review.

Like so many church-state lawsuits, this one appears driven not by any true state establishment of religion, but by thin-skinned people who think they have a constitutional right to be protected from learning that their neighbors may hold different religious beliefs than their own.

Uncle Sam gives and he takes away. Promising to cover 100 percent of Medicaid expansion for three years and 90 percent thereafter could be like so much pie crust — flaky.

The U.S. Forest Service is asking a dozen states to return federal revenue-sharing funds used to fight wildfires. Because of sequestration, it “has no alternative” but to ask for a refund, an agency manager said. Before the Federal Aviation Administration got a sequestration reprieve, the University of Oklahoma was poised to assume air traffic controller duties at a Norman airport.

Governors resisting Medicaid expansion are worried that Washington won’t keep its funding promise. They should be worried that Washington will ask for states to pay for more of existing Medicaid expenses.

We again wonder if the states will eventually be asked to bail out the federal government as it continues its Greece-like march toward insolvency.

Like others, we’ve noted that Obamacare’s insurance mandates, which kick in for employees working 30 hours or more per week, actually encourage businesses to reduce workers’ hours, making it harder for people to get ahead financially.

It turns out government workers aren’t immune from this fiscal reality.

The Wall Street Journal reports the city of Brunswick, Ohio, has instituted a 28 hours-per-week maximum for about 100 employees. The state of Virginia has started implementing a 29-hour cap for about 37,000 employees, including college adjunct faculty. And the Iowa Association of School Boards reports that some schools even considered a 29-hour weekly max for bus drivers, cooks and student learning aids.

Although Sara Redding Wilson, director of the Virginian Department of Human Resource Management, explains this trend succinctly, we suspect many liberals will still be baffled: “Some people don’t like it, and I get that, but we couldn’t afford it.”

Protesters in Oklahoma (but not necessarily from Oklahoma) this week continued their childish antics of fastening themselves to construction equipment, getting arrested for it and — no doubt — tweeting about their heroics. Monday’s protest came on the final day of the U.S. State Department’s formal comment period for the project.

Also this week, the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in with the dog-bites-man news that it has major concerns about Keystone’s link between Cushing and Canada’s vast oil sands reserves. And a survey was released showing that nearly 75 percent of Americans support the project. This exceeds the 68 percent support registered in Canada.

While the Obama administration continues to dawdle on the northern leg, the route from Cushing to the Gulf Coast has the blessing of Barack Obama himself. He made a campaign stop near Cushing last year to announce his approval of the project. Yet the protesters keep showing up in southern Oklahoma to take a stand.

This week marked the fifth such effort. One protester said he came from Ames, Iowa, to defend the Red River. Really? Defend it from what? A Texas invasion?

The remark illustrates the mindlessness of this effort. Irrelevant comparisons to a pipeline break in Arkansas are about the only thing the protesters have going for them. We suggest that the Iowan head home and help defend Mississippi River towns from an extant flooding threat.

That would be productive and heroic.

Washington state officials are considering a proposal to shift state workers out of their current health plans and into those offered through Obamacare exchanges.

Because pay for many of those employees is low enough to qualify for federal subsidies, the shift would “save” Washington state government $120 million over two years, shifting costs to federal taxpayers instead. Other states are expected to do the same.

The plans offered through exchanges are expected to have more limited provider networks than traditional insurance, so this is hardly a boon to state workers. It’s just one more instance where Obamacare is exacerbating problems in health insurance instead of solving them, and shifting costs instead of lowering them.

President Barack Obama claims he’s for “balanced” deficit reduction that relies on the rich paying just a little more. It turns out Obama defines “rich” to include those earning less than $10,000 annually, based on an analysis of his latest budget proposal by the Tax Policy Center.

The center found Americans at all income levels would face 2015 tax increases under Obama’s plan — which, we must point out, still fails to balance the budget even with $1.1 trillion in tax increases over a decade.

Obama’s plan includes a tobacco tax increase, which would fall disproportionately on the poor. While those earning between $50,000 and $200,000 would see after-tax income decline one-tenth of 1 percent, the center estimates those earning less than $50,000 would see after-tax income decline by two and three times that amount.

Who knew Obama considered a welfare recipient with a cigarette the equivalent of John Rockefeller?

Presently 65,000 visas are given to high-tech companies that want to hire skilled workers from other parts of the world. Another 20,000 are available for foreign workers who earned an advanced degree from a U.S. university.

The Homeland Security Department began taking applications Monday for this year’s visas, and expected to outstrip supply in just a matter of days. The Associated Press noted that political support has grown in recent years to proposals that would increase the number of available visas, and they’re now a big part of immigration reform talks.

Here’s hoping the politicians get this one right — the more bright people we have working in America, the better.

Evidence of his growing influence can be seen in a recent profile published in Roll Call, a newspaper dedicated to congressional coverage. The article notes Lankford’s role as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee has made him a crucial link between House leadership and rank-and-file members.

That will give Lankford — and therefore, Oklahoma — considerable influence over future debates on immigration, transportation, and education.

Lankford’s demeanor is credited with building good relations in Congress while remaining true to conservative philosophy. “I want us to be known more for what we represent and what we stand for than the volume with which we say it,” Lankford said.

Oklahomans can be proud to have a congressman who proves influence is not incompatible with humility and thoughtfulness.

The honor is the first new combat-related medal in decades and will be given to service members who assist operations from afar — drone operators and the like. Panetta said in approving the medal that he had long felt these folks deserved recognition for their work.

Perhaps they do. What has members of Congress upset is the medal’s placement ahead of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, which are awarded for valor while in harm’s way.

Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., said the Bronze Star and Purple Heart shouldn’t rank below a medal “for someone who sits far from the battlefield and operates a remote control panel thousands of miles from the battlefield.”

Members of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars also have urged the administration to downgrade the award. This hasn’t happened and, given President Obama’s bullish use of drones, may not be likely.

Restoration of the 2 percent payroll tax cut on Jan. 1 was a type of sequestration, says a blog posting by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, the conservative counterpart to OK Policy.

In response to Barack Obama’s Chicken Littleism about effects of that other sequestration, the OCPA says average folks took a pay cut when the payroll tax went back to its previous rate. OCPA says the headlines today should be on the order of “Family Eliminates One Movie Outing Per Month” or “Billy Settles for Regular Shoes, Not Air Jordans!” instead of “Sequestration Will Destroy Nation As We Know It!” — or some such.

Families react to having less money by making “simple, minor adjustments in their spending practices, with little or no pain and cost, to reflect the 2 percent taxpayer sequester,” the blog says.

Obama? The Great Divider reacts with partisan fear-mongering.

As the sequester neared, Reason magazine editor-in-chief Matt Welch was among those arguing that the looming government budget cuts didn’t go nearly deep enough.

Writing at cnn.com, Welch pointed out that the amount cut would equal “a tiny sliver of the federal budget” and should leave people asking what the country gained from doubling government spending from 2000 to 2010.

“If the bureaucrats can’t produce an explanation for the price increase of government, then they should not expect their budgets to be rubber-stamped by an already suffering public,” Welch said.

Complaints are coming from “a government money machine having difficulty adapting to a political universe that no longer accepts automatic annual increases,” he said, and those will continue until politicians muster the gumption “to align government expenditures within miles of revenue.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Talk about clearing a low hurdle.

Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer route, which runs from Oklahoma City to Forth Worth, Texas, is considered one of Amtrak’s success stories because it loses only $43 per rider. In the private sector, that’s a path to bankruptcy. In government, that’s an achievement.

A report by The Brookings Institution found that only four Amtrak routes nationwide manage to generate enough revenue to cover costs and most lose far more than the Heartland Flyer.

Oklahoma is one of 15 states that contribute to local Amtrak routes. The state will take on a larger role after Oct. 1 when states will be required to provide greater financial support for short routes. The only consolation for Oklahomans may be that this bad deal could have been much worse.

Robert Bacharach’s confirmation this week to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ended his 13-month wait and fills a seat that’s been open for two-and-a-half years.

The first few tries at nominating someone were sidelined by Inhofe, R-Tulsa, and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee. Finally Bacharach’s name surfaced and President Barack Obama nominated him in January 2012. Bacharach, a U.S. magistrate judge in Oklahoma City since 1999, had sterling credentials, was not a controversial choice and sailed through vetting by the Senate Judiciary Committee last June.

Then silly political games got in the way — Senate Republicans hoping for a change in the White House refused to allow votes on circuit court nominees in advance of the election. Coburn and Inhofe, sadly, did nothing to help Bacharach’s cause.

The folly of this gamesmanship is reflected in Monday’s vote on Bacharach by the full Senate’s — 93-0.

President Obama mentioned the College Scorecard during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, and rolled it out the next day. It lets prospective college students compare such things as graduation rates, average costs and employment prospects upon graduation.

The scorecard doesn’t provide a ranking for schools, only a broad idea of where they fall in various categories. For example, it says the University of Oklahoma’s net price is low to medium compared with peer schools. OSU’s net price is at the low end.

The system isn’t perfect but the idea has merit. The same is true of Oklahoma’s A-F grading system for public schools, which has been heavily criticized by the education establishment. Why no such howling over the president’s plan?

Well, that didn’t last long.

This week President Barack Obama announced he was disbanding his jobs council. Obama formed the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness — a group of businessmen and women from across the country — in January 2011, shortly after Democrats got hammered in midterm congressional elections.

The council ostensibly was aimed at coming up with ways to improve the economy. But the president met just four times with the group during its two-year run, and not at all after February of last year.

Unemployment was above 9 percent when the council formed. Now it’s at 7.9 percent, with more than 12 million still out of work. Administration officials say Obama will continue to seek input from business leaders about how to help the economy. But many have already told him that new and stricter federal regulations are a huge problem. How’s that worked out for them?

That takes some gumption, suggesting it doesn’t matter what triggered the attack — our ambassador and three others were killed — or what the administration knew and told the American people about it.

Clinton spent much of her time at Wednesday’s hearing suggesting breakdowns in security and other areas were the fault of others within the State Department. It was five hours of tap dancing.

Soon she’ll be leaving the job at State and may very well set her sights on the White House in 2016. If so, opponents are sure to bring Benghazi up again, and they should.

Sensibly, the public has responded to this phony outreach with phony requests. A petition to build a Stars Wars-style Death Star easily cleared the 25,000-signer threshold. Paul Shawcross, an administration adviser on science and space, actually responded with a memo turning down the Death Star project. Shawcross is paid $162,702 annually.

In the meantime, Obama has yet to provide a serious deficit-reduction plan. That sums up the Obama administration in a nutshell: Paying six-figure salaries to make joke responses to prank requests, but doing nothing to address the country’s serious problems.

Gosh, who would have thought the capital city of Oklahoma — reddest state in the nation, dominated by political leaders who expressly reject the “tax and spend” economic philosophy touted by the current occupant of the White House, whose state leaders openly advocate and advance policies actually running the opposite direction — would somehow achieve an unemployment rate far, far below what President Barack Obama claimed was achievable only if lawmakers passed his “stimulus” measure in 2009?

Thanks mostly to people leaving the workforce, Obama was finally able to lower national unemployment below 8 percent. In Oklahoma, we’ve lowered the rate the old-fashioned way: job creation. Sadly, we doubt Obama will take note.

Instead, reporting by The Wall Street Journal reveals, Reid did little more than ignore efforts by Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to cobble together a deal to avoid the cliff. McConnell finally grew tired of Reid’s slow-footing and placed a call to Vice President Joe Biden. “Does anyone down there know how to cut a deal?” McConnell asked.

The Journal said the two men subsequently talked 15 times during the next day-and-a-half, ultimately producing a plan in which neither side got exactly what it wanted.

Of course Reid has become rather adept at doing nothing: The Senate he controls has failed to produce a budget in more than three years.

Inouye volunteered for the military after witnessing Japanese planes attack Peal Harbor. He was a member of the famed Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team and lost his right arm in a battle with Germans in Italy.

With Inouye’s passing, there are now only three members of Congress who served in World War II: Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.; Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., and Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas.

And the clock is swiftly winding down for the last of the World War II vets in Congress. Lautenberg turns 89 in January. Dingell is 86. Hall recently became the oldest person to ever serve in the U.S. House and will turn 90 in May.